Preface to the First Edition

Format for printing
Submitted by Net on Wed, 2006-02-22 08:40.

The NET Bible

The NET Bible is a completely new translation of the Bible with 60,932 translators' notes! It was completed by more than 25 scholars - experts in the original biblical languages - who worked directly from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. Turn the pages and see the breadth of the translators' notes, documenting their decisions and choices as they worked. The translators' notes make the original languages far more accessible, allowing you to look over the translator's shoulder at the very process of translation. This level of documentation is a first for a Bible translation, making transparent the textual basis and the rationale for key renderings (including major interpretive options and alternative translations). This unparalleled level of detail helps connect people to the Bible in the original languages in a way never before possible without years of study of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. It unlocks the riches of the Bible's truth from entirely new perspectives.

Produced for ministry

Our ministry, bible.org, was created to be a source of trustworthy Bible study resources for the world, so that everyone is guaranteed free access to these high quality materials. In the second year of bible.org's ministry (1995) it became clear that a free online Bible would be needed on the bible.org website since copyrighted Bibles can't be quoted in a huge collection of online studies.

The NET Bible project was commissioned to create a faithful Bible translation that could be placed on the Internet, downloaded for free, and used around the world for ministry. The Bible is God's gift to humanity - it should be free. (Go to www.bible.org and download your free copy.) Permission is available for the NET Bible to be printed royalty-free for organizations like the The Gideons International who print and distribute Bibles for charity. The NET Bible (with all the translators' notes) has also been provided to Wycliffe Bible Translators to assist their field translators. The NET Bible Society is working with other groups and Bible Societies to provide the NET Bible translators' notes to complement fresh translations in other languages. A Chinese translation team is currently at work on a new translation which incorporates the NET Bible translators' notes in Chinese, making them available to an additional 1.5 billion people. Parallel projects involving other languages are also in progress.

Now serving individuals in 170 different countries on an average day, bible.org is the largest Bible study resource on the Internet with over 40,000 pages of Bible study materials currently available online for free. Also included are topical forums (www.bible.org/forum) where visitors to the site can dialogue and learn from each other. All this is done to support local church ministries and to build an effective online community of believers. Our passion is to see every person become mature in Christ and competent to teach and train others.

Accountability, transparency, and feedback

The NET Bible is the first Bible ever to be beta-tested on the Internet. In this beta-testing process all working drafts of the NET Bible were posted on www.bible.org for public review and comment. The significance of this is that the NET Bible team, from day one, has been listening to its readers. The purpose of the public review and comment was not to achieve a consensus translation, but to be accountable, to be transparent, and to request that millions of people provide feedback on the faithfulness and clarity of the translation as well as on the translators' notes. Countless valuable suggestions have been made by scholars, by junior high school students, by college professors, and by lay Christians who speak English as a second language. Because of the open approach of the NET Bible team, the resulting product has been enriched immeasurably. Each one of us comes to the Bible from a different perspective; scholars need to listen to the person in the pew as much as the layperson needs to listen to scholars. The translation reflects the latest scholarship, and the sources are cited in the translators' notes and documented in the appendices. The NET Bible is a truly symbiotic effort between the insights of biblical scholars and the needs of lay Christians. The combined effect of the notes and the nine year public review process has reinforced the translation's primary goal of faithfulness to the original languages. By creating a translation environment that is responsible both to the world's scholars and to lay readers, the NET Bible was read, studied, and checked by more eyes than any Bible translation in history.

The most important translation concept

The most important translation of the Bible is not from the original languages to English, but from the printed page into your life. If you have never read through a complete book of the Bible, we suggest you begin by reading the Gospel of John. We encourage you to recognize that the Bible is not merely a book. It is God's message to us all, and God continues to speak through it today. There is, after all, a reason far more Bibles have been produced than any book in history. Read it and see.

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Comment on the NET Bible

#2412 On Mon, 2006 12 11 02:23 Eric Maynard (not verified) said,

I was very excited to receive my NET First Edition Bible and readers' edition a few weeks ago. However, after having some time to review the text and notes in greater detail, I am a bit disappointed. I do not enjoy being critical, but there are a few things that I see that are hinderances with this translation.

1. It is too "wordy." It appears that the translation is trying too hard to explain what the text means rather than simply translating what it says. This makes it very difficult to read and sometimes even hard to comprehend.

Example: See 2 Corinthians 1:5-7 and compare it to the smoother reading in the ESV.

2. What's up with trying to be gender-neutral? Why not simpy translate the masculine nouns and pronouns as they are in the Greek? The NRSV and the TNIV are weak in this regard and unfortunately so is the NET BIble.

3. There are some extremely weak translations of the text.

Example: Matthew 18:22- "Jesus said to him, 'Not seven times, I tell you, but seventy-seven times." I realize there's a footnote on this, but try reading that to your congregation and see what happens. People are going to have more questions than certainty after hearing that.

My point is, it seems like there is an effort in this translation to be extremely unique in its rendering of the text. Rather than giving a familiar reading some different phraseology, this translation often causes you to scratch your head and ask, "Why was that necessary? It was fine the way it usually reads."

In future editions, I hope the NET will smooth out the translation and do more translating than interpreting. I also hope it will not seek to be gender-neutral and not try so hard to be unique in its rendering of the text.

Sincerely,
Pastor Eric Maynard
Charleston, IL

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