The New Living Translation (NLT) is a translation of the

Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...

in contemporary English. Published in 1996 by Tyndale House Foundation, the NLT was created "by 90 leading Bible scholars." The NLT relies on recently published

critical editions Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts (mss) or of printed books. Such texts may range i ...

of the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. The origin of the NLT came from a project aiming to revise ''

The Living Bible The Living Bible (TLB or LB) is a personal paraphrase, not a translation, of the Bible in English by Kenneth N. Taylor and first published in 1971. Taylor used the American Standard Version of 1901 as his base text. "The Way", an illustrated ...

'' (TLB). This effort eventually led to the creation of the NLT—a new translation separate from the LB. The first NLT edition retains some text of the LB, but these are less evident in text revisions that have been published since.

Translation philosophy

The ''New Living Translation'' used translators from a variety of

Christian denomination A Christian denomination is a distinct Religion, religious body within Christianity that comprises all Church (congregation), church congregations of the same kind, identifiable by traits such as a name, particular history, organization, leadersh ...

s. The method combined an attempt to translate the original texts simply and literally with a

dynamic equivalence Dynamic equivalence and formal equivalence, in translation and semantics, are the principle approaches to translation, prioritizing respectively the Meaning (linguistics), meaning or the literal translation, literal structure of the source text ...

synergy approach used to convey the thoughts behind the text where a

literal translation Literal translation, direct translation, or word-for-word translation is the translation of a text done by translating each word separately without analysing how the words are used together in a phrase or sentence. In translation theory, anoth ...

may have been difficult to understand or even misleading to modern readers. A part of the reasoning behind adapting the language for accessibility is the premise that more people will hear the Bible read aloud in a church service than are likely to read it or study it on their own. It has been suggested that this "thought-for-thought" methodology, while making the translation easier to understand, is less accurate than a literal (formal equivalence) method, and thus the ''New Living Translation'' may not be suitable for those wishing to undertake detailed study of the Bible.

Textual basis

The

Old Testament The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Isr ...

translation was based on the

Masoretic Text The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; ) is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (''Tanakh'') in Rabbinic Judaism. The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocaliz ...

(

Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, abbreviated as BHS or rarely BH4, is an edition of the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible as preserved in the Leningrad Codex, and supplemented by masoretic and text-critical notes. It is the fourth edition in ...

) and was further compared to other sources such as the

Dead Sea Scrolls The Dead Sea Scrolls, also called the Qumran Caves Scrolls, are a set of List of Hebrew Bible manuscripts, ancient Jewish manuscripts from the Second Temple period (516 BCE – 70 CE). They were discovered over a period of ten years, between ...

Septuagint The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek ...

, Greek manuscripts,

Samaritan Pentateuch The Samaritan Pentateuch, also called the Samaritan Torah (Samaritan Hebrew: , ), is the Religious text, sacred scripture of the Samaritans. Written in the Samaritan script, it dates back to one of the ancient versions of the Torah that existe ...

Syriac Peshitta The Peshitta ( ''or'' ') is the standard Syriac Bible translations, edition of the Bible for Syriac Christianity, Syriac Christianity, Christian Church (congregation), churches and traditions that follow the ritual family, liturgies of the Syri ...

, and

Latin Vulgate The Vulgate () is a late-4th-century Latin translation of the Bible. It is largely the work of Saint Jerome who, in 382, had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Gospels used by the Roman Church. Later, of his own initia ...

. The New Testament translation was based on the two standard editions of the Greek

New Testament The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus, as well as events relating to Christianity in the 1st century, first-century Christianit ...

(the UBS 4th revised edition and the Nestle-Aland

Novum Testamentum Graece (''The New Testament in Greek'') is a critical edition of the New Testament in its original Koine Greek published by ''Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft'' (German Bible Society), forming the basis of most modern Bible translations and biblical crit ...

27th edition).

Translation history

Work on this revision began in 1989 with ninety translators; it was published in July 1996, 25 years after the publication of ''

''. Advanced reader copies of the

Epistle to the Romans The Epistle to the Romans is the sixth book in the New Testament, and the longest of the thirteen Pauline epistles. Biblical scholars agree that it was composed by Paul the Apostle to explain that Salvation (Christianity), salvation is offered ...

were originally printed as the ''New Living Version'', but eventually renamed the New Living Translation to avoid confusion between this new work and ''The Living Bible''. NLV is still used to identify the New Living Translation in

ONIX for Books ONIX for Books is an XML format for sharing bibliographic data pertaining to both traditional books and eBooks. It is the oldest of the three ONIX standards, and is widely implemented in the book trade in North America, Europe and the Asia–Pac ...

. Soon after that, a new revision was begun and The Second Edition of the NLT (also called the NLTse) was released in 2004. A revision in 2007 comprised mostly minor textual or footnote changes. Other revisions were released in 2013 and 2015 with minor changes throughout. In 2016,

Tyndale House Tyndale House (also known by its sister organization Tyndale House Foundation) is a Christian publisher in Carol Stream, Illinois. History Tyndale was founded in 1962 by Kenneth N. Taylor in order to publish his paraphrase of the Epistles ...

Publishers, the

Conference of Catholic Bishops of India The Conference of Catholic Bishops of India (CCBI) is the national episcopal conference of the bishops of the Latin Church of the Catholic Church in India, functioning in accordance with canon 447. There are 132 Latin Catholic dioceses in the c ...

Commission for Bible, ATC Publishers Bengaluru, and twelve Biblical scholars collaborated to prepare a New Living Translation Catholic Edition. After reviewing the changes introduced in the Catholic edition, Tyndale subsequently approved and adopted the Indian Bishops' edits into the main body of the 2015 edition, where they appear in all subsequent editions, Protestant and Catholic alike.

Translation properties

The New Living Translation is (according to its publisher) intended to be easily accessible to readers of

modern English Modern English, sometimes called New English (NE) or present-day English (PDE) as opposed to Middle and Old English, is the form of the English language that has been spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in England England is a Count ...

. As part of this effort: * Weights and measures, money, dates and times, etc., are described in modern terms, with footnotes giving the literal translation. For example, John 6:7 reads: "Philip replied, 'Even if we worked for months, we wouldn't have enough money to feed them, with a note that the Greek text reads "Two hundred denarii would not be enough" and an explanation that a

denarius The ''denarius'' (; : ''dēnāriī'', ) was the standard Ancient Rome, Roman silver coin from its introduction in the Second Punic War to the reign of Gordian III (AD 238–244), when it was gradually replaced by the ''antoninianus''. It cont ...

was equivalent to a laborer's full day's wage. * Some phrases are translated into contemporary English; e.g. "they beat their breasts" (Luke 23:48) is translated as "They went home in deep sorrow", again with footnotes providing more literal interpretations. *

Gender-inclusive language Gender-neutral language or gender-inclusive language is language that avoids reference towards a particular sex or gender. In English, this includes use of nouns that are not gender-specific to refer to roles or professions, formation of phrases i ...

is used where the editors believed that it was appropriate, thus () is translated "brothers and sisters".

Circulation

In July 2008, the NLT gained the No. 1 spot in unit sales, unseating the

NIV The New International Version (NIV) is a translation of the Bible into contemporary English. Published by Biblica, the complete NIV was released on October 27, 1978, with a minor revision in 1984 and a major revision in 2011. The NIV relies ...

for the first time in over two decades. According to the

Christian Booksellers Association CBA (formerly known as the Christian Booksellers Association), subtitled "The Association for Christian Retail since 1950", is a trade association that was established in 1950. History The association was first organized by 219 Christian booksto ...

(as of March 2014), the NLT is the second most popular Bible translation based on unit sales, and the fourth most popular based on sales numbers. A

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

edition of the NLT with the

Deuterocanon The deuterocanonical books, meaning 'of, pertaining to, or constituting a second canon', collectively known as the Deuterocanon (DC), are certain books and passages considered to be canonical books of the Old Testament by the Catholic Chur ...

was published by ATC Publications in Bangalore, India. The NLT Catholic Edition (NLTCE) was granted an

imprimatur An imprimatur (sometimes abbreviated as ''impr.'', from Latin, "let it be printed") is a declaration authorizing publication of a book. The term is also applied loosely to any mark of approval or endorsement. The imprimatur rule in the Catho ...

by Oswald Cardinal Gracias, Archbishop of Bombay and President of the Council of Catholic Bishops of India. It was later released in North America as the ''Catholic Holy Bible Reader's Edition'' on October 17, 2017. Although the imprimatur does not extend to use of the NLTCE in the liturgy, it has been officially approved by the Catholic Church for private study and devotional use. The NLT is available in numerous editions as well as numerous study Bible editions, including: ''The Life Application Study Bible'', ''The Life Recovery Bible'', '' The NLT Study Bible'', and the ''NLT Illustrated Study Bible''. The Cornerstone Biblical Commentary series uses the second-edition NLT text as its base. In June 2017, the ''Africa Study Bible'', edited by

Africa International University Africa International University is a Christian university in Karen, Nairobi, Kenya Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya ...

dean John Jusu, was offered to African English readers.

Notes

References

External links

Official webpage

"Meet the Bible Translation Committee" (New Living Translation) on www.tyndale.com
{{English Bible translation navbox 1996 books 1996 in Christianity Bible translations into English Tyndale House books