An extract from: “The Challenge of Bible Translation”

by John H. Stek

“Who despises the day of small things?” – ZECHARIAH 4:10

The beginning of the New International Version (NIV) was truly a “day of small things.”1 The soul of one man grew so frustrated that it finally stirred him to action. He began to make noises that aroused others—eventually a host of others. And their efforts produced an English version of the Bible that for the first time in three centuries successfully challenged the dominance of the King James Version.

That lone soul was Howard Long. He was not a biblical scholar or a well connected ecclesiastic. Although a man of many parts—inventor, pilot, engineer, college physics instructor, businessman, traveling representative for General Electric—he was first of all a devout Christian who seized every opportunity to point others to Jesus Christ. The Bible that had long nourished his faith was the King James Version. It felt comfortable in his hands, sounded familiar and sweet in his ears, and much of it was “written on his heart.” But when he opened it to show others the Way, he met with incomprehension—or worse. The Bible he read to them and urged them to read was to them sometimes quite unintelligible, generally rather strange and quaint, and occasionally even hilarious.

With such a version in hand, anyone who wished to spread the gospel through one-on-one evangelization could only know frustration. And loneliness. Howard Long tried out the more recent English versions, but for various reasons found them unsatisfactory. He also tried translating the old English Bible into more modern idiom as he witnessed to others, but that failed to serve. However good his effort, it had no weight, no authority. His was only a lone voice against an old and greatly venerated text.2

But this lone soul was really not alone. Howard was a member of the Christian Reformed Church in Seattle,Washington, a congregation of a modest-sized denomination that had sprung up among Dutch immigrants in the 1850s. And Howard had a pastor—just the right pastor as it turned out. Pastor Peter De Jong was a man of firm convictions with a ready pen who did not hesitate to take on the establishment whenever he felt the cause warranted it.