Summary of eRumor:
NIV Bible publisher HarperCollins has cut more than 64,000 words, or 45 complete verses, from the NIV Bible.
The Truth:
It’s true that there are differences between the King James Bible and the NIV (New International Version) Bible, but parts of this rumor are misleading or disputed.
Claims that the NIV Bible has cut 64,000 words, or 45 complete verses, have been around for decades. They’re not the result of a “new” edition released by HarperCollins. They started in the early 1990s when author Gail Riplinger stumped for exclusive use of the King James Bible in her book “New Age Bible Versions.” Riplinger often repeated the claim on television appearances promoting her book.
Then, in July 2015, the eRumor went viral when singer Erica Campbell posted a meme on her Facebook page that quickly generated 100,000 shares:
Hello beloved saints,
I’m sure you know that NIV was published by Zondervan but is now OWNED by Harper Collins who also publishes the Satanic Bible and The Joy of Gay Sex.
The NIV has now removed 64,575 words from the Bible including Jehovah, Calvary, Holy Ghost and omnipotent to name a few…
The NIV has also now removed 45 complete verses. Most of us have the Bible on our devices and phones.
Try and find these scriptures in NIV on your computer, phone or device right now if you are in doubt:
Matthew 17.21, 18:11, 23:14; Mark 7:16, 9:44, 9:46: Luke 17:36, 23:17; John 5:4; Acts 8:37
…you will not believe your eyes
Refuse to be blinded by Satan, and do not act like you just don’t care. Let’s not forget what the Lord Jesus said in John 10:10 (King James Version)
Again, it’s undisputable that there are differences between the NIV Bible and King James Bible. Also, it’s true that HarperCollins Christian publishes the NIV Bible — but the publishing house isn’t responsible for the translation or “cutting” 45 verses from it.
Biblica ministry is the group that translates the NIV Bible from original Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts. It was founded in New York in the 1800s to translate Scriptures so that U.S. immigrants could study them. In 1965, a group of evangelical scholars began translating original manuscripts of the Bible into contemporary English for what would become the first version of the NIV Bible. The updated (and most recent version) of the NIV Bible was released in 2011.
Biblica denies that HarperCollins, or any other group, has editorial control over the translation:
The text of the NIV is entrusted to the Committee on Bible Translation (CBT), a self-governing body of 15 evangelical Bible scholars. No outside group — no publisher or commercial entity — can decide how the NIV is translated.
In keeping with the original NIV charter, the CBT meets every year to monitor developments in biblical scholarship, as well as changes in English usage. Every year, they solicit (and receive) input from scholars, pastors, missionaries, and laypeople.
Also, Zondervan (the division of HarperCollins Christian that publishes the NIV Bible) disputes that there are any missing verses at all:
Often times, readers will come across what they feel are “missing verses” in their NIV Bible. These verses, however, are not really missing. They are included in the footnotes on the same page of the Bible where the “missing” passage is located. During the exacting translation process for the NIV Bible, some verses were found not to be included in the oldest or most reliable manuscripts that the NIV translators had available to use. Most of these manuscripts were discovered after the King James Version was first translated, some 400 years ago. When those verses could not be verified by the more reliable or older manuscripts, the NIV translators moved them to a footnote to reflect greater accuracy.
Please be assured that your NIV Bible is extremely accurate, trustworthy and reliable. Additional information on the translation process and use of footnotes is located in the Preface of your NIV Bible. If you have any other questions, please let us know.
Debate over different versions of the Bible have persisted for centuries, and that’s not likely to change anytime soon. Many different versions of the Bible have been translated into English, and new translations continue today:
The first complete English-language version of the Bible dates from 1382 and was credited to John Wycliffe and his followers. But it was the work of the scholar William Tyndale, who from 1525 to 1535 translated the New Testament and part of the Old Testament, that became the model for a series of subsequent English translations. All previous English translations culminated in the King James Version(1611; known in England as the Authorized Version), which was prepared by 54 scholars appointed by King James I. Avoiding strict literalism in favour of an extensive use of synonym, it was a masterpiece of Jacobean English and the principal Bible used by English-speaking Protestants for 270 years.
About the time of the invention of printing in ad 1450, there were only 33 different translations of the Bible. By about 1800 the number had risen to 71; by the late 20th century the entire Bible had been translated into more than 250 languages, and portions of the Bible had been published in more than 1,300 of the world’s languages.
New translations of the Bible into English proliferated in the 20th century.
So, it’s true that there are big differences between the NIV Bible and the King James Bible (as well as every other translation of the Bible) — but the idea that the NIV Bible has cut 64,000 words, or 45 complete verses, is disputed.