This page was migrated in July 2022 from my older website, biblicalambiguities.net.
30 July 2022
The New Living Translation is an evangelical translation of the Bible, leaning towards a free or more paraphrased translation style than commonly used. For someone who wishes to see what the Bible means to evangelicals, expressed in an often informal English style, the NLT should work fine. For someone who wants something a bit more literal, or who is interested in reading a translation that more accurately reflects the views of mainstream biblical scholarship, perhaps something like the NRSV or ESV would be more suitable.
I will admit that I have not spent much time with the NLT, and so I cannot give a very detailed personal evaluation of its contents. Spot-checking does reveals that they admirably bite the bullet about the relationship between verses 18 and 19 of Genesis 2, not attempting to shoehorn the "formed" of 2:19 into a pluperfect, and even using "So" at the beginning of the verse to make clear the logic of the story. However, in Isaiah 7:14, they choose evangelical tradition over mainstream scholarship.
It is significant that the NLT, according to Wikipedia, has been revised in consultation with the Roman Catholic Church, and has produced a Catholic edition. I think its fair to say that this fits into a broader trend of improving relations between the evangelical world and Catholicism.
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