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In what's described as the largest Bible translation launch in history, a modernized version of the standard-bearer of evangelical Protestant Bibles is being hyped to believers and spiritual seekers in the prized 18- to 34-year-old demographic.

A decade in the making, Today's New International Version Bible (TNIV) is the work of Zondervan, a commercial Christian publisher, and the Colorado Springs-based International Bible Society, which is publishing versions for churches geared toward evangelizing.

A team of 15 biblical scholars made some 50,000 changes to the New International Version (NIV) Bible, which debuted in 1978 and accounts for one in three Bible sales.

In all, nine versions of the TNIV have been shipped to bookshelves in the past two weeks, from Bibles for men and women to "The Story," a translation in novel form. By trying to update old language and reflect the latest theological thinking, translators took a risk. After all, evangelical Christians hold the Bible as their guiding authority and the literal word of God.

The riskiest task was choosing which masculine references to pluralize in places the scholars concluded referred to people generally, not just men.

When the TNIV New Testament was released in 2002, more than 100 conservative Protestant scholars blasted the gender changes as theologically dubious and a front in a war against traditional gender roles.

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SI Moderator - Greg Gordon