Some of the footnotes in the NIV are deceiving: look at the one for I Corinthians 11 v 7. This is incorrect. Paul is instructing women to wear a covering when they pray and prophesy (and men not to). Long hair is a 'covering' but, in Greek, it is a totally different word from the one Paul says should be on a woman's head. That covering is not a covering of hair.

There are also examples of translation which, in deviating from the literal meaning, become interpretation. This may also happen, admittedly, in the AV, but the scholars who made that translation were dedicated to precision and utmost accuracy in conveying the meaning of a text which they firmly believed to be fully inspired by God in every word. But these modern translators are contaminated by modern, liberal scholarship and theology which has no time for the fundamental doctrines of our faith. For them, the Person of Jesus is in doubt, redemption is not through the blood and salvation by faith alone is for ignorant fanatics. Unfortunately, the NIV, although associated with Evangelicals and professing to hold to a High View of Scripture, is similarly affected. Its translators are not even being honest in their objectives when they claim to begin with and be faithful to the original text, when they have been shown to be using documents of spurious origin. In the Preface to the NIV New Testament it is stated quite clearly that "where existing texts differ, the translators made their choice of readings in accord with sound principles of textual criticism." These were the "sound principles" of Westcott and Hort who established the Minority Text in the 19th Century. They both denied the doctrine of atonement, of the substitution of Christ for the sinner. Both denied that the death of Christ counted for anything as an atoning factor. In fact, Hort went as far as to call the idea of a substitutionary atonement immoral.

Both Westcott and Hort were ardent Papists. Hort, at the age of twenty three, when he had read only a little of the Greek New Testament, and knowing nothing of the texts and certainly no Hebrew, referred to the Received Text as 'villainous' and 'vile'. With such prejudice, he went on to establish the corrupt, Alexandrian text, going to extremes in using Codex Vaticanus.

The 'sound principles' on which Vaticanus and Sinaiticus were preferred were that these manuscripts were of greater antiquity. We have already shown that their survival was the result of their rejection as heretical and consequent lack of use. That is why so few copies were made of them. However, references in the NIV footnotes to 'most reliable MSS' and 'ancient MSS' show that the translators have been charmed into accepting these false notions. Sadly, by the use of such language, and, since people do not wish to appear foolish and ignorant, they have deceived many young believers.

The principles they have used are not sound. The vast mass of manuscripts (80 to 95% of the 5000 plus available) support the Received Text, yet the translators reject them in favour of the few.

Evangelicals have always stood against the destructive, critical methods of modernistic, liberal theologians, yet, in accepting versions like the NIV, they have taken them on board without even realising it.

The acceptance by young Christians of modern versions of the Bible like the NIV (and worse still the GNB) is, I am sure, done in ignorance. Deceived Christian booksellers and evangelical church leaders advise them to buy a translation in modern English, easy to understand. However, the question needs to be asked whether what people are understanding so easily is, in fact, God's Word or a corruption of it. And if something in modern English were the real issue, why is it necessary to produce a plethora of new translations? Even at the moment of writing two new versions are on the shelves of bookshops and are being pushed - the Revised English Bible and, the most recently published, 'God's Word'. The end result is confusion and the opposite from that professed. Instead of knowing the Scriptures better, Christians have today a greater ignorance of the Bible's teaching; because there is such a variety of versions in use, people are less able to memorise and quote the scriptures and, therefore, lack the ability to meditate on God's Word day and night.

It has been shown that the Alexandrian text followed by these new versions is a corrupted text, tampered with by heretics from the second century onwards. The AV, admittedly with some errors of translation, was made from the Received Text which is far more reliable and far more widely attested. If you read it prayerfully and with faith, the Lord will open your understanding. Do not be deceived.

READ Galatians 1 vv 6-8.