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Frequently Asked Questions about the NIrV

How is the NIrV different from the NIV?

The NIrV is based on the NIV. The NIV Committee on Bible Translation (CBT) didn't produce the NIrV. But several members of CBT worked hard to make the NIrV possible. The words of the NIV were used when possible. When the NIV words were long, shorter words were used. The NIV sentences were also made much shorter to make the NIrV really easy to read and understand.

What other Helps does the NIrV have?

The NIrV gives you a lot of other help too. For example, sometimes a verse is quoted from another place in the Bible. When it is, the translators put the Bible book's name, chapter and verse right after the verse that quotes another place. They separated each chapter into shorter sections. They gave a title to almost every chapter. Sometimes they even gave a title to a section. They did it to help you understand what the chapter or section is all about.

Sometimes the writers of the Bible used more than one name for the same person or place. For example, in the New Testament the Sea of Galilee is also called the Sea of Gennesaret and the Sea of Tiberias. But in the NIrV, they decided to call it the Sea of Galilee everywhere it appears in the New Testament. They did this because that is its most familiar name.

The translators also wanted to help readers learn the names of people and places even in verses where those names don't actually appear. For example, when they knew that "the River" meant "the Euphrates River," they used those words even in verses where only the words "the River" are found. When they knew that the name of "Pharaoh" in a certain verse was "Hophra," they wrote his name in that verse. The translators did all of those things because they wanted to make the NIrV as clear as possible.

Does the NIrV say what the First Writers of the Bible said?

The translators of the NIrV wanted it to say just what the first writers of the Bible said. So they kept checking the Greek New Testament as they did their work. That's because the New Testament's first writers used Greek. They used the best and oldest copies of the Greek New Testament. Earlier English Bibles couldn't use those copies because they had not yet been found. The oldest Greek New Testaments are best because they are closer in time to the ones the first Bible writers wrote. That's why they kept checking the older copies instead of newer ones.