The New Century Version (NCV) Bible

The New Century Version (NCV) is a revision of the International Children's Bible (ICB). The ICB is a Bible translation aimed at young readers and those with low reading skills/limited vocabulary in English. It is written at a 3rd-grade level (from the introduction) and is both conservative and evangelical in tone. The New Testament was first published in 1983, and the Old Testament was published in 1987. The ICB was revised to a more sophisticated 5th-grade reading level and was dubbed the New Century Version. A gender-neutral edition was first published in 1991, supplanting the original. Grudem and Poythress wrote, "The earliest complete translations of the Bible to adopt a gender-neutral translation policy were apparently the New Century Version (NCV) and the International Children's Bible (ICB), both published by Worthy Publishing Company, which was sold to Word Publishing in 1988. The simplified ICB says nothing about its gender-neutral translation policy in its preface. But the NCV gives some explanation. The goal of the NCV was to make a Bible that was clear and easily understood, and the translators based their vocabulary choice on a list of words used by the editors of The World Book Encyclopedia to determine appropriate vocabulary ('Preface,' p. xiii).

New Century Version (NCV) Permissions

The text from the New Century Version® (NCV®) may be quoted in any form (written, visual, electronic, or audio), up to and inclusive of 500 verses or less without written permission, providing the verses quoted do not amount to a complete book of the Bible, nor do verses quoted account for 25% or more of the total text of the work in which they are quoted, and the verses are not being quoted in a commentary or other biblical reference work.

This permission is contingent upon an appropriate copyright acknowledgment as follows:

Scripture taken from the New Century Version®. Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

For churches requesting to use a small selection of material for church bulletins, sermons, or classroom use that falls within our “gratis use” guidelines, formal written permission is not necessary. Churches may use stand-alone quotations/scriptures in sermons, bulletins, newsletters, or projected in a worship setting without asking written permission provided the translation is correctly cited.

For requests not covered by the above guidelines, write to HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Attention: Permissions Department, P.O. Box 141000, Nashville, TN 37214 or go to http://www.harpercollinschristian.com/permissions/