The Holy Bible: New English Translation (NET)

Overview & Distinctives

• NET is a modern English translation created with a goal of transparent translation, pairing the Bible text with an unusually large set of translators’ notes (60,000+).
• The project emphasized open review and digital access from the start, making early drafts available online and inviting public scholarly feedback.
• Its notes document textual, lexical, and interpretive decisions verse-by-verse, giving readers a “look over the translators’ shoulders.”

Origins & Development (1990s–2006)

In the mid-1990s a team of scholars began the NET with the ambition of releasing a rigorously edited, internet-distributable translation accompanied by full explanatory notes. After years of drafting and open review online, the First Edition was released in the mid-2000s and was notable for publishing tens of thousands of notes alongside the text.

Second Edition (2019)

The 2019 Second Edition updated both the English text and translators’ notes, reflecting ongoing scholarship and reader feedback, and was issued in multiple print formats while continuing the digital-first ethos.

Translation Philosophy

The NET aims to be accurate, readable, and elegant, recognizing the tension among these aims. Its extensive notes surface places where formal correspondence, idiom, textual variants, and context inform the final rendering, allowing readers to weigh alternatives and see why particular choices were made.

Digital-First Strategy & the Notes

From inception, NET drafts were posted online for broad review before print—an unusual move at the time. The digital format enabled a very large notes apparatus (over sixty thousand in the full-notes edition), covering translation options, text-critical issues, and background information. This transparency remains one of the NET’s signature contributions.

Annotated Bibliography

1. “Big News at Bible.org.” DTS Voice, July 7, 2006. Brief release note announcing the First Edition of the NET Bible, highlighting its internet-based development and 60,932 translators’ notes. Useful for dating the project’s public milestone and quantifying the notes apparatus.
2. Thomas Nelson Bibles. “NET Bible: Full-Notes Edition.” Publisher overview of the NET’s distinctive transparency and the 60,000+ notes. Helpful for understanding current print formats and positioning.
3. Logos. “The NET Bible: Full-Notes Edition (2nd ed.).” Notes that the Second Edition contains updated text and notes—concise confirmation of the 2019 revision.
4. “Preface to the NET Bible.” (reproduced at Bible-Researcher). Explains the project’s internet-first approach and the rationale for extensive footnotes; valuable for primary-source statements on philosophy and process.
5. Bible.org Blog. “A Little More on Our Translation Philosophy.” March 23, 2010. Summarizes core aims—accuracy, readability, elegance—and discusses how trade-offs are handled; good short exposition to cite when describing translational method.
6. Logos. “The NET Bible (Second Edition).” Additional catalog confirmation of the revised second edition and its feature set.

Citation Style Notes

This page uses short annotations with a consolidated bibliography. Where applicable, publisher descriptions and official prefaces are treated as primary documentation of aims, features, and edition history.