NET Bible Preface (2019)
FROM THE NET BIBLE TEAM
A translator’s work is never done.
As the KJV translators observed in their 1611 preface, “Nothing is begun and perfected at the same time, and the latter thoughts are thought to be the wiser”- an observation that stands true today. Our team’s goal of faithfulness to the original languages is not a one-time accomplishment but an ongoing process. From the earliest edition of 2001 to the most recent updates completed in 2019, the NET Bible has reflected the translators’ commitment to constantly reviewing the latest discoveries of biblical manuscripts, accounting for changes in English usage and grammar, and incorporating current developments in textual criticism.
We do all of this because of our deeply held belief that Scripture is inspired (2 Timothy 3:16), that every single detail matters (Matthew 5:18-19), and that faithfulness proves more important than tradition (Mark 7:8). Although the NET has benefitted from perhaps the most extensive and open review process of any translation of Scripture (with millions of review hours logged by pastors, teachers, laypersons, and students around the world) our goal has never been to create a consensus translation, nor to tune it for popularity, but to strive for faithfulness to the original autographs.
The NET is a uniquely transparent translation. Thanks to the 60,000 translators’ notes documenting every major translation decision and interpretive difficulty, we are able to invite readers to “look over the translators’ shoulders” and see for themselves how we got from the biblical manuscripts to the English text of the NET. As always, we invite input from those who are reading, studying, and teaching from the NET: share any suggestions or concerns at bible.org/comments so we can continue making improvements.
When we began the NET Bible, there was no modern English translation online, nor could you post major collections of Bible studies online that quoted any modern English translation. The NET Bible led the way in changing that paradigm; today nearly every major Bible translation is accessible for free online. We are deeply committed to our “ministry first” approach, ensuring maximum availability and accessibility of Scripture and study resources for the benefit of God’s kingdom. Visit bible.org/ministryfirst for more details. In addition to making the NET Bible as accessible as possible for ministry purposes, we also serve thousands of pastors and teachers around the globe on a daily basis with an ever-growing collection of quality Bible study resources, freely available at bible.org.
Bible translators are often overcome with the humbling responsibility of their work; they know well that what they produce will be relied on as the Word of God by countless readers. Translators endure various trials and carry this tremendous responsibility with varying degrees of personal sacrifice. We salute the translators of this and other translations for their lifelong pursuits of scholarship and service to the kingdom. The NET would have been impossible without the faithful service of many translators working diligently for decades, often as volunteers.
We pray that your walk with God will be enriched by the study of Scripture and the application of God’s will in your life.
The editors, translators, staff,
and sponsors of the NET Bible
TO THE READER
A Brief Introduction to the New English Translation
“You have been born anew … through the living
and enduring word of God.”
1 Peter 1:23
The New English Translation (NET) is the newest complete translation of the original biblical languages into English. In 1995 a multi-denominational team of more than twenty-five of the world’s foremost biblical scholars gathered around the shared vision of creating an English Bible translation that could overcome old challenges and boldly open the door for new possibilities. The translators completed the first edition in 2001 and incorporated revisions based on scholarly and user feedback in 2003 and 2005. In 2019 a major update reached its final stages. The NET’s unique translation process has yielded a beautiful, faithful English Bible for the worldwide church today.
What sets the NET Bible apart from other translations? We encourage you to read the full story of the NET’s development and additional details about its translation philosophy at netbible.com/net-bible-preface. But we would like to draw your attention to a few features that commend the NET to all readers of the Word.
Transparent and Accountable
Have you ever wished you could look over a Bible translator’s shoulder as he or she worked?
Bible translation usually happens behind closed doors-few outside the translation committee see the complex decisions underlying the words that appear in their English Bibles. Fewer still have the opportunity to review and speak into the translators’ decisions.
Throughout the NET’s translation process, every working draft was made publicly available on the Internet. Bible scholars, ministers, and laypersons from around the world logged millions of review sessions. No other translation is so openly accountable to the worldwide church or has been so thoroughly vetted.
And yet, the ultimate accountability was to the biblical text itself. The NET Bible is neither crowdsourced nor a “translation by consensus.” Rather, the NET translators filtered every question and suggestion through the very best insights from biblical linguistics, textual criticism, and their unswerving commitment to following the text wherever it leads. Thus, the NET remains supremely accurate and trustworthy, while also benefiting from extensive review by those who would be reading, studying, and teaching from its pages.
Beyond the "Readable vs. Accurate" Divide
The uniquely transparent and accountable translation process of the NET has been crystalized in the most extensive set of Bible translators’ notes ever created. More than 60,000 notes highlight every major decision, outline alternative views, and explain difficult or nontraditional renderings. Freely available at netbible.org and in print in the NET Bible, Full Notes Edition, these notes help the NET overcome one of the biggest challenges facing any Bible translation: the tension between accuracy and readability.
If you have spent more than a few minutes researching English versions of the Bible, you have probably encountered a “translation spectrum”—a simple chart with the most wooden-but-precise translations on the far left (representing a “word-for-word” translation approach) and the loosest-but-easiest-to-read translations and paraphrases on the far right (representing a “thought-for-thought” philosophy of translation). Some translations intentionally lean toward one end of the spectrum or the other, embracing the strengths and weaknesses of their chosen approach. Most try to strike a balance between the extremes, weighing accuracy against readability–striving to reflect the grammar of the underlying biblical languages while still achieving acceptable English style.
But the NET moves beyond that old dichotomy. Because of the extensive translators’ notes, the NET never has to compromise. Whenever faced with a difficult translation choice, the translators were free to put the strongest option in the main text while documenting the challenge, their thought process, and the solution in the notes.
The benefit to you, the reader? You can be sure that the NET is a translation you can trust-nothing has been lost in translation or obscured by a translator’s dilemma. Instead, you are invited to see for yourself, and gain the kind of transparent access to the biblical languages previously only available to scholars.
Ministry First
One more reason to love the NET: modern Bible translations are typically copyrighted, posing a challenge for ministries hoping to quote more than a few passages in their Bible study resources, curriculum, or other programming. But the NET is for everyone, with “ministry first” copyright innovations that encourage ministries to quote and share the life-changing message of Scripture as freely as possible. In fact, one of the major motivations behind the creation of the NET was the desire to ensure that ministries had unfettered access to a top-quality modern Bible translation, without needing to embark on a complicated process of securing permissions.
Visit netbible.com/net-bible-copyright to learn more.
Take Up and Read
With its balanced, easy-to-understand English text and a transparent translation process that invites you to see for yourself the richness of the biblical languages, the NET is a Bible you can embrace as your own. Clear, readable, elegant, and accurate, the NET presents Scripture as meaningfully and powerfully today as when these words were first communicated to the people of God.
Our prayer is that the NET will be a fresh and exciting invitation to you—and Bible readers everywhere—to “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” (Colossians 3:16).
The Publishers
FEATURES OF THE NET BIBLE, FULL NOTES EDITION
The Translators' Notes
The NET Bible, Full Notes Edition, contains more than 60,000 translators’ notes outlining every major translation decision, interpretive challenge, and textual variant. In these extensive notes, you will encounter three distinct types of notes:
TN (translator’s note) — Explains the rationale for the translation and gives alternative translations, interpretive options, and other technical information.
- Notes introduced by “Or” need no further explanation. They introduce alternative translations that (unless accompanied by additional discussion in the note) are regarded by the translators and editors as more or less equally viable alternatives to the translation used in the text, with the choice between them made for reasons of style, euphony, other characteristics of contemporary English usage, or slight exegetical preference.
- Notes introduced by “Heb,” “Aram,” or “Grk” give a gloss that approximates formal equivalence to the Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek text. This gloss was not employed in the translation, however, because it was inconsistent with English style or could possibly be misunderstood by the modern reader. Such glosses do not represent the “core” meaning of the word(s).
- Translators’ notes are also used to indicate major lexical, syntactical, and exegetical options for a given passage. In such cases the form of the note may vary, but in general the major options will be listed and in most cases a brief evaluation is included in the note. Standard reference materials and, on occasion, relevant periodical literature are frequently mentioned in the notes. Abbreviations for these materials, as well as abbreviations for both biblical books and nonbiblical literature, generally follow the standard abbreviations established by Patrick H. Alexander et al., eds., The SBL Handbook of Style: For Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and Early Christian Studies (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1999). Full bibliographic citations are given for periodical literature. Standard reference works and special studies, such as commentaries and monographs, are referenced by abbreviations or shortened citations; full bibliographic citations are given in the List of Cited Works.
- In some cases where a rather lengthy note occurs on multiple occasions within the same book, the note will be given in full only on its first occurrence in the book, while succeeding repetitions of the note will refer back to the first occurrence by phrase and verse. This is intended to conserve space by avoiding excessive repetition of identical notes within the same book.
SN (study note) – Includes comments about historical or cultural background, explanation of obscure phrases or brief discussions of context, discussions of the theological point made by the biblical author, cross references and references to Old Testament quotations or allusions in the New Testament, and other information helpful to the modern reader.
TC (text-critical note) – Discusses alternate (variant) readings found in the various manuscripts and groups of manuscripts of the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament. Text-critical note indicators followed by a double dagger (TC ‡) indicate several hundred instances where the Greek text underlying the NET Bible differs from Nestle-Aland 28th edition Greek New Testament (NA28).
The Presentation and Design
The NET’s layout is innovative by way of tradition. There are many examples of ancient and medieval copies of Scripture that present the Bible text in a single-column, surrounded by scribal notations and scholarly commentary. The NET is the first modern Bible consciously to draw inspiration from this ancient aesthetic. The layout provides several advantages over more traditional study Bible layouts:
- With the single-column design and an optimal line length of 65 to 75 characters, the Bible text remains exceptionally readable, even with the vast number of notes.
- The NET Bible has more translators’ notes than any other Bible, introducing a true design challenge. By presenting the notes in triple-column, the NET Bible maximizes the amount of space for Scripture on each page, allowing better balance between the Bible text and the translators’ notes.
- Furthermore, the lighter hue of the notes ensures that Scripture remains the focal point, visually jumping off the page. And yet, the notes remain easily readable, thanks to the customized typeface, which was designed specifically for legibility at any size.
The NET Bible, Full Notes Edition, is presented in Thomas Nelson’s exclusive NET Typeface, created especially for the New English Translation by 2K/DENMARK A/S. Recognizing that the NET represents a true renaissance in Bible translation, the designers looked to the Renaissance time period for inspiration. While the letterforms reflect the aesthetic and stylistic developments characteristic of Renaissance typography, the overall typeface proportions benefit from the very best in modern typographic technology. The result is a typeface that embodies the NET’s clarity and elegance, and immediately communicates this translation’s blend of scholarly excellence, beauty, and faithfulness to the sources.
The paragraph-style Bible text allows you to follow along with the text’s logical flow, while in-text subject headings provide additional clarity about the events and ideas in the text.
The many books of Scripture form a unified whole that points to Christ and the gospel message. The NET helps readers see the links between various parts of Scripture by using footnotes and typographic design to indicate every place in the New Testament that refers to a passage from the Old Testament. Whenever the New Testament directly quotes from the Old Testament, the words are displayed with semi-bold italic type. In other cases, the New Testament writers allude to an Old Testament passage without quoting it verbatim; these cases are indicated with italics.
How Are the Verses In the Old Testament Arranged?
Some of the divisions found in copies of the Hebrew Bible were already established by the end of the Masoretic era (ca. A.D. 900). While it is generally understood that the division of the Old Testament text into verses goes back to the early centuries of the Christian era, the standard verse division which has continued in use up to the present was fixed by the Ben Asher family around A.D. 900.
In the places where the Hebrew versification differs from that of the English Bible, the NET Bible follows standard English practice, but a study note (SN) gives the corresponding Hebrew versification. Unlike the Hebrew text, which treats the superscriptions to individual psalms as the first verse, the NET Bible follows most English Bibles in leaving the superscriptions unnumbered, and they are set in a different style to distinguish them from the text of the psalm proper.