The New Living Translation combines the latest biblical scholarship with a clear, dynamic writing style that communicates God’s Word powerfully to all who hear and read it. It renders the message of the original texts of Scripture into clear, contemporary English that was written to be read aloud. With a focus on clarity, The New Living Translation invites readers to go deeper into the biblical text to discover God’s story for their lives and the world.

NLT Life Recovery Bible, Second Edition: Addiction Bible Tied to 12 Steps of Recovery for Help with Drugs, Alcohol, Personal Struggles - With Meeting Guide by Stephen Arterburn 1,488. The Holy Bible, New Living Translation provides a wonderful balance of readability and authority. It is easy to understand, poetically beautiful, powerful, and emotive. At the same time, due to the careful work of ninety leading Bible scholars, it is accurate to the original Greek and Hebrew text.

What Readers are Saying

“The New Living Translation is very readable. Let me add it’s very trustworthy. The scholarship is thorough. . . people understand what it’s saying and therefore they will have an easier time understanding what it means.”
Pastor Chuck Swindoll
Evangelical Christian pastor, author, educator, and radio preacher
“I opened this book and it was comforting to be able to look at a passage and say, “Yes, I understand.’”
“I’ve been using the NLT version for years since I was a teenager and I’ve always loved how easy it is to read while still providing depth and life.”
Rach
NLT Reader
“The New Living Translation is not only a clearly communicated translation of God’s Word but a powerful tool for ministry in our world today. God’s Word is generally difficult for folks to understand, but the NLT cuts through language and phrasing that often pose a barrier to Gospel communication. Whether it is artistic declaration of God’s Word through Streetlights, public reading while preaching or in depth study with a group of young people, the NLT connects with ‘how we speak’. We have been empowered toward Gospel proclamation, Bible translation and clear Bible teaching through the New Living Translation. What a gift to the Kingdom for our day and age!”
Esteban Shedd
Director of Streetlights & Musician with Alert312

The NEW LIFE Version, available SINCE 1969 - continues to be the most readable and most understandable Bible without sacrificing accuracy. It is not a paraphrase, or man's idea of what the Bible says. Truths expressed in the original are in no way violated. Leading clergy from most denominations endorse and approve its use. The New Living Translation was founded on the most recent scholarship in the theory of translation, with the goal of communicating the meaning of the ancient Bible texts as accurately as possible to the modern reader.

New Living Translation
Full name	New Living Translation
Abbreviation	NLT
Complete Bible published	1996
Derived from	The Living Bible
Textual basis	OT: Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (1977); additional sources in difficult cases^[1] NT: UBSGreek New Testament (4th corrected ed.); Novum Testamentum Graece (27th ed., 1993); additional sources^[2]
Translation type	Both formal and dynamic equivalence^[3]
Reading level	Middle School
Version revision	1996, 2004, 2007, 2013, 2015
Copyright	Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. All rights reserved.
Webpage	www.tyndale.com/nlt/
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. Then God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light.^[4] 'For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.^[4]

The New Living Translation (NLT) is a translation of the Bible into modern English. Originally starting out as an effort to revise The Living Bible, the project evolved into a new English translation from Hebrew and Greek texts. Some stylistic influences of The Living Bible remained in the first edition (1996), but these are less evident in the second and third editions (2004, 2007). In March 2014, the Christian Booksellers Association ranked the NLT as the second most popular English version of the Bible based on unit sales.^[5]

Translation philosophy[edit]

The New Living Translation used translators from a variety of Christian denominations. The method combined an attempt to translate the original texts simply and literally with a dynamic equivalence synergy approach used to convey the thoughts behind the text where a literal translation may have been difficult to understand or even misleading to modern readers. A part of the reasoning behind adapting the language for accessibility is the premise that more people will hear the Bible read aloud in a church service than are likely to read it or study it on their own.^[6]

It has been suggested that this 'thought-for-thought' methodology, while making the translation easier to understand, is less accurate than a literal (formal equivalence) method, and thus the New Living Translation may not be suitable for those wishing to undertake detailed study of the Bible.^[7]

Textual basis[edit]

The Old Testament translation was based on the Masoretic Text (Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia) and was further compared to other sources such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, Septuagint, Greek manuscripts, Samaritan Pentateuch, Syriac Peshitta, and Latin Vulgate. The New Testament translation was based on the two standard editions of the Greek New Testament (the UBS 4th revised edition and the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece 27th edition).

Translation history[edit]

Work on this revision began in 1989 with ninety translators; it was published in July 1996, 25 years after the publication of The Living Bible. Advanced reader copies of the book of Romans were originally printed as the New Living Version, but eventually renamed the New Living Translation to avoid confusion between this new work and The Living Bible. NLV is still used to identify the New Living Translation in ONIX for Books. Soon after that, a new revision was begun and The Second Edition of the NLT (also called the NLTse) was released in 2004.^[8] A revision in 2007 comprised mostly minor textual or footnote changes.^[9] Other revisions were released in 2013 and 2015 with minor changes throughout.

In 2016, Tyndale House Publishers, the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India Commission for Bible, ATC Publishers Bengaluru, and twelve Biblical scholars collaborated to prepare a New Living Translation Catholic Edition.^[10] After reviewing the changes introduced in the Catholic edition, Tyndale subsequently approved and adopted the Indian Bishops' edits into the main body of the 2015 edition, where they will appear in all subsequent editions, Protestant and Catholic alike.^[11]

Translation properties[edit]

The New Living Translation is (according to its publisher) intended to be easily accessible to readers of modern English. As part of this effort:^[6]

Weights and measures, money, dates and times, etc., are described in modern terms, with footnotes giving the literal translation. For example, the Gospel of John 6:7 reads:

Free New Living Translation Bible