The New International Reader's Version® (NIrV) is a new Bible version based on the New International Version® (NIV). The NIV is easy to understand and very clear. More people read the NIV than any other English Bible. We made the NIrV even easier to read and understand. We used the words of the NIV when we could. Sometimes we used shorter words. We explained words that might be hard to understand. We made the sentences shorter.

 We did some other things to make the NIrV a helpful Bible version for you. For example, sometimes a Bible verse quotes from another place in the Bible. When that happens, we put the other Bible book's name, chapter, and verse right there. We separated each chapter into shorter sections. We gave a title to almost every chapter. Sometimes we even gave a title to the shorter sections. That will help you understand what each chapter or section is all about.

Is the NIrV an Accurate Bible?

 At the time the Bible was written, God's people used the Hebrew and Greek languages. So the first writers of the Bible used those languages. We wanted the NIrV to say just what the first writers of the Bible said. So we kept checking what the Hebrew and Greek said.

We used the best and oldest copies of the Hebrew and Greek. Some of the first English Bibles could not use those copies because they had not yet been found. But today we can check copies that are closer in time to the ones the first Bible writers wrote. We wanted to make sure we were giving you the actual Word of God.

 Key Points

 The New International Reader's Version® (NIrV, 1996; Update 2013) is a new Bible version developed to enable early readers to understand God's message. Begun in 1992 and co-sponsored by International Bible Society and Zondervan Publishing House, the New International Reader's Version is a simplification of the New International Version (NIV), today's most popular translation of the Bible.

 The NIrV was designed to make the Bible clear and understandable to early readers and can be read by a typical fourth grader. For this reason, it is also of value to the millions for whom English is a second language. It intends to be distinguished by five fundamental characteristics-readability, understandability, compatibility with the NIV, reliability, and trustworthiness. It serves as a natural stepping-stone to the NIV when the time is right.