My pastor at New Covenant Bible Church in Cedar Rapids, IA uses the NET Bible and I kept wondering about it.
Interesting stuff:
From http://dev.bible.org/drupal/node/32
The Problem: It's difficult to quote a modern Bible translation legally
Bible.org's ministry objective is to be used by God to mature Christians worldwide. To accomplish this we needed to quote a modern Bible translation in the production of thousands of trustworthy Bible Study resources that could be offered on the Internet for free. We predicted in 1995 that the number of Bible verses quoted in these studies would soon surpass available legal permission limits. We tried for a year, but could not obtain the necessary permissions. Lack of a legal ability to quote the Bible online makes online Bible studies impossible and threatened bible.org's "Ministry First" model. Quite simply the only way we could secure permission to quote a modern Bible was to sponsor a new translation - the NET Bible. We now want to ensure that other ministries and authors don't experience the same roadblocks. The NET Bible is not just for bible.org, but for everyone.
You may ask (as we have): "Why not just make the NET Bible public domain? Wouldn't that solve the problem?" It does solve the permission problem but stifles ministry another way. When a publisher prints a public domain KJV they pay no royalties to anyone, but they still make millions of dollars in revenue - and don't have to spend any of that money on ministry or charity. We didn't create the NET Bible to save royalties for such publishers. We think a better approach is to leverage copyright laws to ensure that anyone selling NET Bibles must support ministry.
How we intend to solve the problem
The first major step was taken 10 years ago when we posted the NET Bible on the Internet when no other major modern English Bible translations
From: http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=1183
“The extensive and reliable notes in the NET Bible were a wonderful help to our translation team as we worked to prepare the English Standard Version.”
Wayne Grudem
Member, Translation Oversight Committee, ESV
Research Professor of Bible and Theology
Phoenix Seminary
Scottsdale, AZ
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Endorsements by Christian leaders:
“There are many wonderful things I could say about the NET Bible, but the most important is this: the NET Bible is a Bible you can trust. The translation is clear, accurate, and powerful. And the notes, those wonderful notes! They bring to the layman scholarly insights and discussions that have up till now been accessible only to those trained in the biblical languages. If you are serious about studying Scripture, get a copy of the NET Bible.”
Chuck Swindoll
Chancellor
Dallas Theological Seminary
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“The complaint I hear from many Christians is that some of the translations of the Bible are too wooden. They are grammatically correct, but don’t seem to convey the passion of the writer. On the flip side, some paraphrases and translations convey the passion of the writer at the cost of an accurate translation. The NET Bible is the best of both worlds. The notes are helpful to the scholar and the lay person alike. This is the Bible for the next millennium.”
Tony Evans
Senior Pastor, Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship
Dallas, TX
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“The NET Bible New Testament is faithful to the original Greek. It is a refreshing and radical departure from previous translations of the Bible into English. It includes extensive translators' notes explaining and defending the translation and showing other options for handling difficult passages. The translators' notes, along with the study notes and textual notes, form an excellent resource for pastors, teachers, and students of the Bible. Yet the translation itself is still easy to read and understand, well suited for pulpit use as well as personal reading and study. Highly recommended!”
Howard G. Hendricks
Distinguished Professor
Chair, Center for Christian Leadership
Dallas Theological Seminary
2 comments:
Hmm, I've had the NET Bible on my computer for a while but haven't taken an in-depth look at it. The ESV is available for wide-spread use, as is the ISV (though translation is not entirely finished yet).
It's good to hear the ESV is quite quotable? I thought I remembered that. Since it's newer? it may be better than the NET Bible in some respects.
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