The New International Version NIV is a completely original translation of the Bible developed by more than one hundred scholars working from the best available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts.
The initial vision for the project was provided by a single individual — an engineer working with General Electric in Seattle by the name of Howard Long. Long saw the need for a translation that captured the truths he loved in the language that his contemporaries spoke. For 10 years, Long and a growing group of like-minded supporters drove this idea. The passion of one man became the passion of a church, and ultimately the passion of a whole group of denominations.
And finally, in , after several years of preparatory study, a trans-denominational and international group of scholars met in Palos Heights, Illinois, and agreed to begin work on the project — determining to not simply adapt an existing English version of the Bible but to start from scratch with the best available manuscripts in the original languages.
Their conclusion was endorsed by a large number of church leaders who met in Chicago in A self-governing body of fifteen biblical scholars, the Committee on Bible Translation CBT was formed and charged with responsibility for the version, and in the New York Bible Society which subsequently became the International Bible Society and then Biblica generously undertook the financial sponsorship of the project. The translation of each book was assigned to translation teams, each made up of two lead translators, two translation consultants, and a stylistic consultant where necessary.
The initial translations produced by these teams were carefully scrutinized and revised by intermediate editorial committees of five biblical scholars to check them against the source texts and assess them for comprehensibility. Each edited text was then submitted to a general committee of eight to twelve members before being distributed to selected outside critics and to all members of the CBT in preparation for a final review.
