As promised, here are some examples of biased and dangerously misleading mistranslations in the New International Version of the Bible. Sorry it took me a while to come back with this but I dont have immediate access to a copy of the NIV, and Im very pleased about it!
You can read the preface to the New International Version at
http://www.gospelcom.net/ibs/niv/background.php
Note that the project was initiated by committees from the Christian Reformed Church and the National Associations of Evangelicals. It claims that since scholars were from many different backgrounds, there was no sectarian bias. The churches named are Anglican, Assemblies of God, Baptist, Brethren, Christian Reformed, Church of Christ, Evangelical Free, Lutheran, Mennonite, Methodist, Nazarene, Presbyterian, Wesleyan. All of these are Protestant, and most of them are evangelical or contain strong evangelical wings. Again, we are told that the translators were united in their commitment to the authority and infallibility of the Bible as God's Word in written form. In other words, they were fundamentalists.
You can find some more information on the NIV at
http://www.bible-researcher.com/niv.html which cites a couple of biased translations. It also talks about the fact that many hardline conservatives (almost exclusively in America, where the Authorised Version of the Bible is still revered by many) also hate the NIV and think it doesnt go far enough in its conservatism. Very peculiar people (they assume that the King James Bible is the standard, not the original text in the original languages) and proof that the poor old NIV translators have managed to alienate people on both sides. Id almost feel sorry for them if they hadnt made such a dodgy translation.
Here are a few examples of mistranslation in the New International Version. They are all from the New Testament, because I know it much better than the Old Testament and in any case I dont know Hebrew at all.
For each of these verses, Ive given a literal translation of my own (based on The Interlinear Greek-English New Testament by A. Marshall, London: Bagster 1958), followed by the RSV version of the text, then the NIV, and then an explanation of whats going on.
Matthew 26:63-64
Literal And the high priest said to him, I demand of you, by God the living, that you tell us if you are the Christ, the son of God. Jesus said to him, You say yet I say to you, from now you will see the son of the man sitting on the right of the power and coming on the clouds of heaven.
RSV And the high priest said to him, I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus said to him, You have said so. But I tell you, hereafter you will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.
NIV The high priest said to him, I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God. Yes, it is as you say, Jesus replied. But I say to all of you: In the future you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.
This is from Jesus trial before the high priest shortly before his crucifixion. The high priest asks Jesus if he is the Messiah or Christ. Jesus answers, You say
yet I say
This formulation in Greek (plen yet) means something like but on the contrary, so Jesus is saying here, That is what *you* say, but *I*, on the contrary, say this
In other words, Jesus is essentially denying that he is the Christ, and instead talks about the Son of Man. The NIV has completely changed the meaning to make it seem that Jesus agrees with the high priest calling him Christ, rather than disagreeing with it. The Greek for the first part of Jesus answer is just two words su eipas you say. Where has this Yes come from? (This is an odd verse anyway, since the parallels in the other Synoptics contradict it. See Mark 14:62, where Jesus really does claim to be the Christ, and Luke 22:70, where he dodges the question. The NIV also mistranslates the Luke passage to make it seem that Jesus claims to be Christ.) Obviously, the translators of the NIV (1) want to make different texts that refer to the same event agree with each other, because they cant accept the notion of there being anything in the Bible that isnt true and (2) want to make the Bible say that Jesus is the Messiah. So, irrespective of whats actually in the Bible, they do that by completely making up new text for it.
Romans 1:1-4
Literal Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called an apostle, separated to the Gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in holy writings about his son, born from the seed of David according to the flesh, appointed son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by a resurrection of the dead, Jesus Christ the lord of us.
RSV Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, he gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our lord.
NIV- Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God, by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.
This is the opening of Pauls letter to the Romans, and scholars agree that this passage is actually an earlier statement of Christian faith that Paul has put right at the start of his letter to show that he and the Roman Christians believe the same thing (Paul had not met this church before he wrote to them). In other words, this is a very old doctrinal statement, one that predates Paul himself. It seems to suggest that Jesus started off as a normal human being, but at his resurrection became something else the Son of God in power. This is whats sometimes called a two-stage Christology the idea that Jesus nature changes as he goes from an earthly life to a heavenly one. The crucial word in Greek in this passage is horizein, which I translated as appointed. Does it mean that Jesus actually *became* the Son of God at his resurrection (classic two-stage Christology) or does it mean that he was *always* the Son of God, even before, and it was only at this point that he was *recognised* to be Son of God? The latter interpretation would be more in line with later understandings of Christ, which would become orthodox. According to those, Jesus was always fully human and also fully divine. The two stages of earlier belief were replaced by two natures. And we find that the NIV translates horizein simply as declared implying this interpretation. In other words, they have changed the meaning of this verse to fit in with later theology. In fact, horizein always means appoint or designate, both in the New Testament and in other contemporary writings. To be fair, the NIV does have a note at the bottom saying or was appointed to be the Son of God with power, which is more accurate. But they relegate the correct translation to a footnote and have the inaccurate, biased one in the main text. Thats not very helpful. Anyone without the Greek to hand which is presumably most readers would assume that the version in the main text is the most likely translation, or the one that most accurately conveys the meaning of the Greek.
Romans 3:25
Literal -
for a showing of his righteousness because of passing by the previously occurring sins in the forbearance of God
RSV This was to show Gods righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins
.
NIV He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished
Now this is a biggie, even though it might seem pretty incomprehensible. Paul is talking about Christs sacrifice on the cross. He is saying that, in the past (that is, before Christ), God did not deal with sins, but now by sacrificing Christ he has proved that he is indeed righteous (presumably, although this is not explicit, by dealing with those past sins after all, and by providing a means to salvation for everyone now).
There are two subtle mistranslations here in the NIV. The first is of dikaiosunes, which I have translated righteousness. This is the usual meaning of the word (it has moral overtones). However, no-one completely agrees on what it means here in fact there is a vast literature arguing about just this one word (it is a word that reappears frequently in Romans and elsewhere in Paul and is clearly very important for understanding his theology). Basically, Greek words with the dik- root originally meant in accordance with custom. That is, you had dikaiosunes if you were right if you fitted in. But in Judaism, the word took on a new meaning, because the authors of the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures) used it to translate Hebrew words of the sdk group, which similarly mean conforming to a social norm. These words can also mean conforming to the norm of government that is, justice and also the norm of God that is, being right with God. And so the Greek dik- words took on this meaning within Judaism too and hence within Christianity as well. In other words, if you see a word beginning with dik- in the New Testament, you know that it could mean one of a range of things. However, in the context of God, it generally seems to have moral overtones. That is, it means doing what is right, being right, fitting in, being all right with God.
(This, incidentally, is quite apart from another massive controversy over what Paul means when he says that God gives people dikaiosunes. Does he mean he actually changes them so that they become right, or simply that he chooses to treat them as if they are right without actually doing anything to them? But thats an argument for another day.)
The RSV goes for righteousness while the NIV goes for justice. As Ive suggested, in this sort of context (God) righteousness is probably a better translation. Justice is how you would translate dikaiosunes in a legal or political context. But dikaiosunes has already cropped up several times in Pauls argument in Romans, and each time it is clearly talking about the relationship between human beings and God. Compare, for example, dikaios in Romans 1:13 which even the NIV translates righteous. Again, see 3:5, where the NIV correctly talks about our unrighteousness. Obviously these verses are talking about immoral behaviour making people out of kilter with God there is no notion here of what we would think of as injustice, which is a more specific kind of immoral phenomenon.
The second and more blatant mistranslation in Romans 3:15 is paresin, passing by. The RSV correctly translates this as passed over, but the NIV inexplicably goes for left... unpunished.
To understand why these are misleading, and what they are doing there, you need to know two important things. The first is that conservative evangelicals, such as the translators of the NIV, believe that Christs death was a divine punishment. They believe that Gods justice demanded that he punish everybodys sins, so he transferred those sins to Christ (himself, of course, since Christ was God) and punished him *in our place*. The demands of cosmic justice were therefore met and humanity could get away scot-free.
The second thing you need to know is that, historically, this is a minority view among Christians. Nobody believed it before the Middle Ages and not many people believed it before the Reformation. After the Reformation, however, it became very popular among Protestants (largely because Calvin and his immediate successors developed and preached it) to such an extent that many Protestants today genuinely believe it to be a central doctrine of Christianity. It is not: what is central to Christianity is that Christ, in his life and death, provides the means to salvation. But there is no official explanation of how this works. The notion that Jesus was punished in our place is one such explanation, but not the only one. Throughout history, different Christians have believed all kinds of different explanations for how salvation is possible through Christ. And if you want to know Pauls, read Romans 6, where he explains that through faith in Christ we become united to him: therefore, when he dies, we sort of die as well a spiritual death, which allows us to escape from sin. Because Christ was raised from the death, our union with him means that we too will be raised from the dead and live a new life. No mention of divine justice or punishment there.
Back to this verse. By using the word justice, the NIV suggests that dealing with sins is a legal matter rather than a moral one, as righteousness (and the preceding two chapters of Romans) would suggest. That ties in very closely with the punishment theory the idea that the basic way of dealing with sin is to punish it, that sin is a problem for justice to deal with. And the NIV backs that up with its use of the word punished in reference to sins of the past. In other words, the NIV is teaching that Gods justice demands that sins be punished but God did not punish sins in the past. Now, however, he has dealt with sin, and we can see that he is just after all. The implication, of course, is that he has dealt with sin by punishing it after all by punishing it in the person of Christ.
In other words, what we have here is a subtle but very definite mistranslation of the passage to support the conservative evangelical doctrine of the atonement.
I read the one with the most convenient translation 
