Origins

• In 1966, a group of leaders from the National Association of Evangelicals and the Christian Reformed Church met in Palos Heights, Illinois to discuss the need for a new, contemporary translation of the Old and New Testaments. This group came to a consensus that a new translation was indeed needed; leaders from several denominations and churches supported the group's conclusion. In 1967, the New York Bible Society agreed to financially sponsor the project, and scholars from all over the English-speaking world of many different denominations gathered to begin the translation process.
  
  

Primary Sources

• The translators for the NIV used primary texts for translation. For the Old Testament, scholars used the Masoretic Text as represented in the then current edition of Biblia Hebraica. When issues concerning textual variants arose, translators consulted the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Latin Vulgate, the Syriac Peshitta, the Aramaic Targums, the Greek Septuagint, Jerome's Juxta Hebraica (for Psalms only) and the Greek versions Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion.
  
  The translators worked with original Greek manuscripts for the translation of the New Testament. No one text, such as the Greek text compiled by Nestle-Aland or the United Bible Society, provided the base for the NIV. Instead, translators utilized original manuscripts as much as possible to reconstruct the text.
  
  

Textual Emendation

• The NIV translators followed the Masoretic Text unless adequate support was provided to emend the text. The scholars followed standard principles of textual criticism in order to emend the text. When translators made an uncommon or radical decision, this is noted in the NIV's footnotes. For the New Testament, translators similarly followed standard principles of textual criticism. Translators made selections based on the best archaeological and manuscript evidence available at the time of publication.
  
  

Translation Philosophy

• The NIV translators worked with the text in order to produce a contemporary and idiomatic translation. The NIV is not a word-for-word or a paraphrase translation. The editors made great efforts to avoid idiosyncrasies or dated expressions, including pronouns such as "thee" and "thou" and verbal forms such as "doest." Translators also worked to preserve the individual style of each Biblical author.
  
  

Translation Process

• The editorial team assigned each individual book of the Bible to a team of scholars for initial translation. This translation then passed through three major revisions, each thoroughly checking the translation with the original texts. Stylistic consultants also read each book twice throughout the process, offering suggestions for more idiomatic language or clearer verbiage.