NIV 84?

Andrew Chapman said:

'nor is it self-evident that the best way to render that phrase in a way that would have the same meaning in our culture as in Peter's is how the LEB vs. the NIV11 translates it'

But he addressed the people in that culture. The reader should be allowed to know what he actually said, faithfully translated into English. ἀνήρ means man, and must be translated as such.

Very probably women did respond to his message. But that doesn't mean that Peter addressed them, and we shouldn't pretend that he did.

Andrew

As you probably know the NIV (both 84 and 11) try to translate the meaning of the message communicated, so that what we read is as close as possible to what the original writers meant to communicate. There are many examples where a literal translation would not work well in English. I stumbled across one of these this weekend in reading Philemon. In Philemon 12 Paul says of Onesimus that he is "my heart." But that's not what the Greek says. In Greek it says that Onesimus is "my bowels." In Rev. 2:23 Jesus is said to search minds and hearts in most translations, but literally it's kidneys and hearts. In both of those cases it is uses that determines the meaning. 

The two most important questions we ask in translating is 1) what does it say; 2) what did it mean to those who first wrote it for those who would first hear it. Sometimes this is a judgment call, as in the case with the above example. Whether the NIV11 rendered this the best possible way is a matter of debate (I might have chosen differently with this verse too). Whether this translation changes the actual meaning or message in some way is not self-evident--at least not to me.

BTW, though I prefer the NIV84 as well, I've found the NIV11 does a better job in several places than the NIV84. One of those is Philemon 6 (which is a very, very difficult passage to translate). I also strongly prefer the way the NIV11 reverts to translating sarx as "flesh" vs. as "sinful nature."