Africa Study Bible Sampler - Flipbook - Page 35
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the scholars, skilled English stylists were
needed to shape the text into clear, contemporary English.
With these concerns in mind, the Bible
Translation Committee recruited teams of
scholars that represented a broad spectrum of
denominations, theological perspectives, and
backgrounds within the worldwide evangelical community. (These scholars are listed at
the end of this introduction.) Each book of the
Bible was assigned to three different scholars
with proven expertise in the book or group of
books to be reviewed. Each of these scholars
made a thorough review of a base translation
and submitted suggested revisions to the appropriate Senior Translator. The Senior Translator then reviewed and summarized these
suggestions and proposed a first-draft revision
of the base text. This draft served as the basis for several additional phases of exegetical
and stylistic committee review. Then the Bible
Translation Committee jointly reviewed and
approved every verse of the final translation.
Throughout the translation and editing process, the Senior Translators and their scholar
teams were given a chance to review the editing
done by the team of stylists. This ensured that
exegetical errors would not be introduced late
in the process and that the entire Bible Translation Committee was happy with the final result.
By choosing a team of qualified scholars and
skilled stylists and by setting up a process that
allowed their interaction throughout the process, the New Living Translation has been refined to preserve the essential formal elements
of the original biblical texts, while also creating
a clear, understandable English text.
The New Living Translation was first published in 1996. Shortly after its initial publication, the Bible Translation Committee began
a process of further committee review and
translation refinement. The purpose of this
continued revision was to increase the level of precision without sacrificing the text’s
easy-to-understand quality. This secondedition text was completed in 2004, with minor changes subsequently introduced in 2007,
2013, and 2015.
Written to Be Read Aloud
It is evident in Scripture that the biblical documents were written to be read aloud, often in
public worship (see Nehemiah 8; Luke 4:16-20;
1 Timothy 4:13; Revelation 1:3). It is still the
case today that more people will hear the
Bible read aloud in church than are likely to
read it for themselves. Therefore, a new translation must communicate with clarity and
power when it is read publicly. Clarity was a
primary goal for the NLT translators, not only
to facilitate private reading and understanding, but also to ensure that it would be excellent for public reading and make an immediate and powerful impact on any listener.
The Texts behind the New Living Translation
The Old Testament translators used the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible as represented in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (1977),
with its extensive system of textual notes;
this is an update of Rudolf Kittel’s Biblia Hebraica (Stuttgart, 1937). The translators also
further compared the Dead Sea Scrolls, the
Septuagint and other Greek manuscripts, the
Samaritan Pentateuch, the Syriac Peshitta,
the Latin Vulgate, and any other versions or
manuscripts that shed light on the meaning of
difficult passages.
The New Testament translators used the
two standard editions of the Greek New Testament: the Greek New Testament, published
by the United Bible Societies (UBS, fourth revised edition, 1993), and Novum Testamentum
Graece, edited by Nestle and Aland (NA, twentyseventh edition, 1993). These two editions,
which have the same text but differ in punctuation and textual notes, represent, for the most
part, the best in modern textual scholarship.
However, in cases where strong textual or other scholarly evidence supported the decision,
the translators sometimes chose to differ from
the UBS and NA Greek texts and followed variant readings found in other ancient witnesses. Significant textual variants of this sort are
always noted in the textual notes of the New
Living Translation.
Textual Differences between the
NLT and the King James Version
Many readers are familiar with the King James
Version (KJV) and may have questions about
how the NLT differs from the KJV. Some of
the differences can easily be explained by differences in translation philosophy; this has
already been explored above. Other differ
ences are related to the NLT’s more contemporary English style. The NLT uses the English
spoken today, whereas the KJV was translated