THE NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION
(NET BIBLE)
Bible.org. Various formats and prices.
There is no end of Bible translations, but this one is worth a look. It advertises itself as the newest complete translation of the Bible into English, but it’s not really that new.
A team of scholars with connections to Dallas Theological Seminary got together in 1995 to produce a totally new translation that would be freely available online (hence the NET Bible). Every working draft was made publicly available for comment on the internet, leading to the claim that ‘no other translation is so openly accountable to the worldwide church or has been so thoroughly vetted’.
It has been available online for some time, along with its 60,000 textual and exegetical footnotes. A major update was completed in 2019, leading to a variety of printed editions published by Thomas Nelson (and available here from eden.co.uk). I bought the no-frills hardback edition for £10.94. The print is okay, the paper is opaque, it is set out as you would expect and it lies flat when open. No complaints.
Readability v accuracy
Every translation must decide where it wants to sit on the readability-accuracy spectrum. The NET Bible claims to have solved this dilemma by putting its preferred translation in the text and then explaining in the notes the various options and why they have made the choice they have, which makes it more transparent than others.
In reality, they, like some others, have sought a judicious balance between readability and accuracy. If you find the ESV a bit too wooden and the NIV a bit too loose, try the NET Bible. It is similar to the CSB (Christian Standard Bible) in seeking a middle path, and, like the CSB, does it well. If the CSB is the Baptist Bible, I guess the NET Bible is the Dispensational Bible, but the theology doesn’t flavour the translation in either case, as far as I could tell.
Inclusive language?
These days we all want to know where a translation stands on inclusive language. The NET Bible expands ‘brothers’ to ‘brothers and sisters’, and Genesis 1:27 reads ‘God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them’. On the other hand, Phoebe (Rom.16:1-2) is a ‘servant’ of the church (not ‘deacon’, NIV, NRSV) and a ‘great help’ to many (not ‘benefactor’, CSB, NIV, NRSV). Andronicus and Junia (Rom.16:7) are ‘well known to the apostles’. The WEB translation (Woke English Bible) it’s not. Happily.
A few other examples to give the flavour. I find it hard to read Psalm 23 in anything but the old KJV, but I thought their version quite lovely. Until I got to the end: ‘I will live in the Lord’s house for the rest of my life.’ What happened to ‘forever’? They believe in forever, but they don’t think it is the right translation here, as they explain in their notes.
Genesis 3:16b reads ‘you will want to control your husband but he will dominate you’. Full marks for picking up both the context and the close parallel in Genesis 4:7. The point is that sin has twisted the marriage relationship into a grasping desire and a harsh rule. Only the NLT follows the NET Bible in capturing this.
In Paul’s epistles the apostle introduces himself as a ‘slave’ of Christ. Unsettling but quite right: the word is doulos, not diakonos. In Romans 3:25 the hilasterion is the ‘mercy seat’. Several reputable translations, including the CSB, take it this way; some of the most conservative (KJV, ESV, NASB) use ‘propitiation’; the NIV and NRSV have ‘sacrifice of atonement’. Probably ‘place of propitiation’ is the sense.
Isaiah 53:6 is quite jarring: ‘All of us had wandered off like sheep; each of us had strayed off on his own path, but the Lord caused the sin of all of us to attack him.’ Attack? What’s wrong with ‘the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all’? Well, the verb used here occurs 43 times in the OT and never once is it translated (by the ESV) as lay or laid, but it is often translated as attack or strike down. And the language used here is not that which is used in the OT to describe a sinner laying his hands on a sacrificial animal to depict the transfer of sin and guilt. The NET folks have a long technical footnote, but I was still left somewhat puzzled about what the phrase means when translated with ‘attack’.
I hope I haven’t given the impression that the NET Bible is eccentric or idiosyncratic. It’s not. Most passages read smoothly and say what you would expect them to say. For the occasional non-standard translation there is always a thorough explanatory footnote. (The full-notes print edition will set you back £34.93 and may aggravate your back problem, but it’s all available completely free online.)
One disappointment was Philippians 2:6. ‘Though he existed in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped.’ Some years ago Roy Hoover, in an impressive survey of Greek literature, argued that ‘to regard (something) as a harpagmos’ means to exploit, or use to one’s own advantage, something that is already in one’s possession. This makes eminently good sense of the passage, and many translators (NIV, CSB, NRSV) and commentators have taken it up, but the NET Bible doesn’t even devote a footnote to this crucial phrase.
Good, but not perfect
In conclusion, I like the NET Bible and I’m impressed with their rigorous approach to the Hebrew and the Greek originals. Is it now my go-to translation? No, but I don’t have a go-to translation. There is no perfect translation, nor even a best translation (best for what?). If I had to be limited to just one English translation, I don’t know what I would choose, and happily we’re not faced with that dilemma.
