It turns out that Scottish New Testament scholar I. Howard Marshall (1934-2015) was a driving force behind the NIV's redefinition of adelphoi as brothers and sisters

Under I. Howard Marshall's influence, the NIV ended up interpolating "sisters" and "sister" in the New Testament about 150 times when they didn't appear in the Greek, in order to make the NT more gender neutral.

 

But to do this it had to supply a novel definition of "brothers" to justify doing so, even though the New Testament authors were perfectly capable of writing "sisters" when they wanted to, and did.

 

An example of the novel definition is shown below at Acts 1:16.

  

 

Except there is no Greek word for brothers and sisters, and it certainly isn't adelphoi.

 

To convey this meaning the language routinely relied on compounding the two words. If "brothers" were in fact the shorthand for "brothers and sisters" as the NIV insists, it is news to the gospels, which shouldn't have bothered to say "sisters" alongside "brothers" for example in Matthew 19:29, Mark 10:29f., and Luke 14:26.

 

If "brothers" means "brothers and sisters", why use "sisters" anywhere at all?

 

I. Howard Marshall (The Gospel of Luke, 1978, reprint 1986, 688) was remarkably uninstructed by the Luke 14:26 example above (If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple) in his interpretation of Luke 18:29 (And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God's sake), where Marshall says sisters is omitted because "brothers will include both brothers and sisters just as Luke uses parents for father and mother". 

 

His authority for this is not in any early Christian literature, but in usages outside the New Testament which themselves appear only occasionally and in special contexts (e.g. when referring specifically to a brother-sister pairing, or with the classical Greek dual which virtually disappears in koine). Ordinary usage everywhere in classical and koine displays the typical male dominance of "patriarchal" society.

 

It is simply not the case in Luke 14:26 that brothers includes both brothers and sisters, nor is it justified to say brothers contains sisters in Luke 18:29 in the same way that parents contains mother and father.

 

On the contrary, Luke used parents and father and mother freely, even when parents alone would have served:

 

And when he came into the house, he suffered no man to go in, save Peter, and James, and John, and the father and the mother of the maiden. ... And her parents were astonished: but he charged them that they should tell no man what was done.

 

-- Luke 8:51, 56.

 

Marshall was straining for excuses to justify his novel definition of brothers instead of relying on New Testament and especially Luke's own usage. 

 

The fact of the matter is Luke edited out "sisters" once before when the parallels had included it (Mark 3:35 and Matthew 12:50):

 

And he answered and said unto them, My mother and my brethren are these which hear the word of God, and do it.

-- Luke 8:21.

Marshall strangely missed this opportunity at 8:21 to argue that brothers included the sisters on his new definition of adelphoi. Instead he says Luke is abbreviating Mark to avoid referring to the distasteful topic of the strife which existed between Jesus and his family. 

It's characteristic of Luke sometimes to compress language and omit elements, especially those which may seem needlessly repetitive, descriptive, or offensive to him.

Luke famously omits the scourging of Jesus by Pilate, which would have been a distasteful topic for Luke's Roman audience to read.

Luke tones down the coming judgment of Israel at the center of an eschatological drama from Matthew in favor of a gospel preached to the ends of the earth by Paul, culminating at the center of the world. "And so we came to Rome" (Acts 28:14).  

Luke omits "lands" in addition to "sisters" at 18:29, possibly as Marshall says because Luke is against the idea of material reward for disciples. Luke emphasizes that the gospel is good news for the poor, not the rich (Luke 1:53; Luke 4:18; Luke 7:22). Luke well understood that the cost of discipleship was saying goodbye to everything which one owned (Luke 14:33). Luke is nothing if not uncomfortable with the talk of rewards in Mark 10 and Matthew 19, to the point that he is completely non-committal about just what the "manifold more" actually is which the disciples will enjoy "in this present time". 

Is Luke omitting "sisters" twice in his gospel not because they are subsumed under "brothers" but rather because Luke just thinks that they are not worth mentioning? That dismissiveness could simply be unconscious expression of the "patriarchal" mindset of the times reflected more broadly in the language itself, against which feminists in the church have been raging since the 1960s.

Marshall was nothing if not a child of this time, as were the early Christians in theirs. 

Luke generally is omitting things here and there mostly because as the longest of the gospels he has to make room for a lot of other things which he wished to emphasize. Occasionally the hobby horse of a crank is a victim.

In keeping with most Greek speakers of the time, Luke does not think of females when he thinks of "brothers". He thinks of males. Marshall knew and admitted this, but Marshall's ideological prejudices overrode what he knew to be the truth: 

... Ian Howard Marshall, who was one of the translation committee members for the gender-inclusive TNIV Bible, has made an argument along these lines in a recent article:

What we are suggesting is that the usage is one in which sometimes the context may make it clear that the reference is exclusive and purely to males, but that the letters are addressed directly to mixed audiences, and therefore generally adelphoi is used in a way that does not exclude women, even if it is probable that the author may have been thinking primarily of the men. 

... But there is a problem with this argument. The problem is, the writers of the epistles ordinarily seem to be "thinking primarily of the men," as Marshall allows, and so his statement that the epistles are "addressed directly to mixed audiences" is rather problematic. If the writer is thinking primarily of the men when he addresses the congregation, then he is not really addressing the men and the women equally. Yet Marshall proceeds to build his argument concerning the meaning of adelphoi squarely on the idea that men and women are addressed equally, as equals, in the epistles of the New Testament. It is largely on the basis of this idea that a gender-neutral sense for adelphoi is posited by him and by Strauss. The whole argument collapses under the simple recognition that the apostles directed their attention primarily to the men, and used language which reflected this orientation. There is no intent to "exclude women," but the habits of speech reflect a male orientation.

... First, it is clear that Marshall's egalitarian vision of the early Church has prejudiced his whole approach to the linguistic issue at hand, in such a way that no careful philologist is likely to approve. Second, this egalitarian vision of the early Church is simply false. It represents an anachronistic illusion about the early Church, and not the historical fact of the matter. Despite the "trajectory" imagined by Marshall, men and women were not equal in the early Church. Third, Marshall ignores the contrary linguistic evidence from New Testament itself. Fourth, we note that his argument shows the inner connection of "inclusive language" with egalitarian views on the TNIV committee of translators. Spokesmen for the International Bible Society have repeatedly denied that any such ideological connection exists, and have asserted that the reasons for their gender-neutral TNIV are purely linguistic, but Marshall makes the connection clear. A revisionist egalitarian view of the early Church plays an important part in his "linguistic" argument. ...

This is why men don't go to church anymore

 

Men don't go to church anymore because the church is out to cancel them. That's part of it, anyway. Why go where you're not wanted or respected?

The Acts of the Apostles in The New International Version of the Bible is a good example of this.

The NIV, perhaps the best selling Bible in America, especially among Evangelicals, wants its translation to reflect gender equality, so, for example, whenever brothers appears it often adds "sisters" even though "sisters" is not even there. The NIV's gender equality ideology actually trumps the text by adding "sisters" in 124 places where the Greek New Testament doesn't have it. It also adds the singular "sister" about 26 times. I guess the feeling on the part of the women is that the sisters have been canceled long enough, but the fact is they were never there to be canceled in the first place.  

We meet up with this even more acutely, however, in Acts, which is famous for its many orations by individuals which begin "Men, brothers" or "Men and brothers" (ἄνδρες ἀδελφοί), but "men" in these cases are actively canceled by the NIV.

An NIV footnote to the first of these at Acts 1:16 informs us that 

The Greek word for brothers and sisters (adelphoi) refers here to believers, both men and women, as part of God’s family; also in 6:3; 11:29; 12:17; 16:40; 18:18, 27; 21:7, 17; 28:14, 15.

Yes, Inigo, they keep using that word but it does not mean what they think it means. If the text had meant to add "sisters" (ἀδελφαὶ) it would have. Unfortunately for the NIV, "sisters" appears just nine times (or eight) in the Greek New Testament, and this ain't one of 'em. It goes without saying that "sisters" is missing also in 6:3; 11:29; kai ta loipa (the funniest of these being Acts 6:3 where the NIV with a straight face wants us to imagine that The Twelve tell the brothers and sisters to choose seven "men").

The tell though is that the NIV manages to never translate ἄνδρες in these instances in Acts, except where it absolutely had no other choice in Acts 7:26. Otherwise the "men-ness" of the brothers is simply ignored, because it is counter evidence to the NIV's assertion that adelphoi means "brothers and sisters".

Here are all the instances of canceling ἄνδρες before ἀδελφοί in the NIV of Acts: 

The NIV has "brothers and sisters" at Acts 1:16;

"fellow Israelites" (not there at all!) at Acts 2:29;

"brothers" at Acts 2:37;

"brothers and fathers" (fathers is there) at Acts 7:2, even though it had to translate "Men you are brothers" at Acts 7:26 (the NIV shows by this that it knows it is up to no good); 

"brothers" at Acts 13:15;

"fellow children" at Acts 13:26 (ROFLMAO);

"my friends" at Acts 13:38 (even more ROFLMAO);

"brothers" at Acts 15:7, 13;

"brothers and fathers" at Acts 22:1;

and "my brothers" (!) at Acts 23:1, 6; and Acts 28:17, ending on a chummy note that isn't there either.

This is a completely disgraceful business, an indefensible slaughterhouse of "men" and the maleness of ἀδελφοί.

No wonder men don't go anymore.

The King James Version (observe "Men, brethren" as opposed to "Men and brethren" at Acts 7:2, 26 and Acts 22:1), and Young's Literal Translation both are among the translations which retain the forms of address which preserve the maleness and the dignity of the brothers as men.

The RSV was the Bible of my youth, and the KJV has been the Bible of my old age. But the NIV will never even be a Bible to me. It is literally an abomination. 

 

KJV

 

YLT

When are Evangelicals going to get upset about their Orwellian woke NIV?

 

 

Maybe not until this generation passes away.

 

Evangelicals think they embrace gender equality in obedience to their god. I say they do it in obedience to the spirit of the age. They most certainly do not do it in obedience to the meaning of words, and have assembled scholars for themselves who will defend this absurdity to their last breath. They are in thrall to an ideology. 

 

For example, ἀδελφή and ἀδελφαὶ, the Greek words for "sister" and "sisters", occur about 26-times in the Greek New Testament.

 

But Evangelicals' favorite Bible, The New International Version, has "sister" about 42-times in the New Testament, and "sisters" a whopping 133-times in the New Testament, supplied completely out of thin air alongside "brothers" in order to be gender-inclusive, even for example alongside ἄνδρες ἀδελφοί ("men, brothers") in Acts 1:16, where the footnote says "The Greek word for brothers and sisters (adelphoi) refers here to believers, both men and women, as part of God’s family".

 

 ROFLMAO.

 

Compare the much-maligned "liberal" translation of yesteryear, the old RSV. It has "sister(s)" 24-times in the New Testament. It follows the manuscript evidence, unlike the woke NIV.

 

"The NIV relies on recently published critical editions of the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts", Wikipedia assures us, except for the 149 instances of sister and sisters in the New Testament for which there isn't a shred of evidence, and who knows what else. 

 

If you ever wondered how variant readings popped up in the Bible in the first place, the human capacity for dishonesty, pride, and self-deception on display here explains it pretty well.

 

The NIV translation project began in earnest in 1967, with origins in the liberal Christian Reformed Church headquartered in Grand Rapids, MI. Psychoanalyst Robert Stoller of UCLA was the first to formalize the split between biological sex and gender identity in 1968.

The one who gives up praying to God is faithless and is already "from evil"

 

No English translation of Luke 18:1 adequately captures the sense of μὴ ἐγκακεῖν, "don't be from evil".

Some examples:

"And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint;" (KJV)

"Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up." (NIV)

"And he told them a parable, to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart." (RSV)

"Now He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart," (NASB)

"Then Jesus told them a parable to show them they should always pray and not lose heart." (NET).

These failures of translation are not surprising given the thoroughgoing effort to suppress the failed eschatological message of Jesus and reinterpret it from the beginning. As usual, however, Luke remains its rare honest reporter.

The translations suffer from reading into Luke's usage of the term, the only one in the gospels, the usage from Paul, which has already become patently psychological and introspective (e.g. 2 Cor.4:16). Luke's use, however, is plainly eschatological in its context (Luke 17:20ff. through Luke 18:8) and knows nothing of this later "introspective conscience of the West". It focuses on the behavior which springs from the inner man, not on the inner man itself. Yes, Scripture ought to interpret Scripture as the Lutherans insist, but it is Luke who ought to interpret Luke. 

The one who gives up praying to God in Luke is representative of the many faithless at the end of the world, who are literally "from evil" (ἐκ κακός) because they have given up believing in the very idea of justice in the first place. The many are all jaded and don't even bother asking for justice anymore. In fact, to them the seat of justice itself is so unhinged the effort would be doomed from the start. The representatives of justice have become such thoroughgoing individualists and laws unto themselves who do not see themselves as beings in relation to God or even to other men that it would be impossible even to make a case to them. So why even try?

The few who will be saved, however, are like the persistent widow of this narrative. She alone among all her peers has not given up on the idea of a justice which is outside herself and represents the ground of being. No one else but she even bothers to try anymore. No one else but she even believes that a decent case can be made for it. She is ridiculously outnumbered. The capriciousness of unjust justice she faces at the fullness of time, at the end of the world, is shown in that it is moved no longer by principles of God or man but only by its own exhaustion with this harpy. This lone defender of Absolutes wins because she is stronger and more enduring because of the Absolutes, not because of her faith in the Absolutes. She simply knows the strength of her case, and refuses to give it up. She knows it can't be beaten, and that it will win. That Jesus must admonish even his own closest disciples to be like her and not join the many in their backsliding behavior is very telling. His promises of the imminent consummation were beginning to ring hollow even in their ears.

It calls to mind Jesus' instruction to his disciples elsewhere about the paradigmatic discipleship of a widow, who put into the treasury (ὅλον τὸν βίον αὐτῆς) "her whole life" (Mark 12:44/Luke 21:4), perhaps the most important two cents in the history of the West. For whatever else might be said about the failure of the kingdom of God to appear, Christendom yet stands for that same transcendent, unshakeable moral order for which a widow sacrificed everything that she had.

The human capacity for and ubiquity of evil were taken for granted by Jesus. What remains remarkable is that he believed some could repent, and no longer "be bad".

The NIV, the unhappy translation which can lead one into Christological error similar to Bill Johnson of Bethel Redding

To paraphrase Dick the Butcher, the first thing we do, let's kill all the Bible translators.

If Paul meant in Philippians 2:7 that Jesus set aside his divine "nature" as the NIV translation unhappily implies ("being in very nature God . . . he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant"), Paul would have been contradicting himself.

Paul states clearly elsewhere that there is a qualitative difference between the human First Adam and the human Second Adam, so that the former is entirely earthy, that is, made from a pile of dirt, while the latter is literally "from heaven":

"The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven." -- 1 Cor. 15:47.

As is so common in Greek, the action of the main verb in Philippians 2:7, "he emptied himself", is defined straightforwardly by the modifying participle supplied by Paul, so that there can be no question about what he meant about emptying: "taking the form of a slave".

There is no setting aside of anything going on, but rather taking up, adding on.

Paul means to say in Philippians 2 that the divine Son was so secure in his divinity that his equality with God would not be diminished in the slightest by condescending to take on human nature to accomplish the work of salvation for sinful man. Moreover the whole context is exhortation of believers to imitate the divine Son's example, not doctrinal instruction.

The NIV is irresponsible for introducing "nature" into Philippians. If Paul meant to do that he could have used Greek φύσις, as he does elsewhere.

Shameful business, that.

Off with their heads!

Believe it or not, the King James Version of the Bible remains the most read in America

The NIV is second most read version of the Bible.

It must be true. I read it here in The Washington Post, which also says 88% of Americans own at least one copy and that 40 million Bibles are sold here annually:

'The Bible business is booming. There are annual sales of 40 million Bibles — from study Bibles to family Bibles to pocket Bibles. That’s not even counting foreign markets. As journalist Daniel Radosh observed, “The familiar observation that the Bible is the best-selling book of all time obscures a more startling fact: The Bible is the best-selling book of the year, every year.”'