New International Version

This is the form of the New International Version that became especially dominant in evangelical use in the late twentieth century. Comprising the complete Bible, it was translated from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek on the basis of modern critical texts, and follows a mediating translation philosophy, seeking a middle path between strict formal equivalence and free paraphrase. It is classed as a substantial revision, taking the NIV of 1978 as its predecessor and base translation, and is distinguished from that earlier edition by numerous textual and stylistic refinements. The NIV itself arose from a mid-twentieth-century initiative among English-speaking evangelical scholars who sought a contemporary-language Bible independent of the King James tradition, produced by an international, interdenominational translation committee. In this 1984 form the version circulated very widely in churches, study Bibles, and commentaries, and for many readers it served as the standard English text through the following decades.