NET for a Month
08/03/2007 17:58 Filed in: Faith & Reason
I’m doing this so that I can get to know the translation better. When I wrote my Top Ten Bible Translations series, I included the NET Bible in my honorable mentions but not in my top ten. Like most who are familiar with the NET, I’ve been very impressed with the inclusion of the 60K+ notes in the regular edition, but I’ve never spent a whole lot of time with the translation itself. I’ll confess that my limited amount of time with the NET has made me think the translation is a bit flat at times, kind of like the original NIV. However, this may be an unfair assessment since as I have said, I really have not spent enough time with it to give the NET translation a fair evaluation.
I’d been planning this little experiment for a while, but today I received in the mail a nice top grain leather edition of the Reader’s Edition of the NET sent to me by Mitch Guthrie who works with Bible.org. This is a really nice edition of the NET Bible, with only about 10% of the full notes, but fits in the hand quite well. It has a very readable print size and mercifully, it’s not a thinline. [Thanks again for the Bible, Mitch.]
So, in an attempt to become better friends with the NET, I am going to attempt to use it as a primary (but not exclusive) translation over the next month or so. That means when I leave the house, I’ll take the NET Bible with me. I’ll use it for teaching as well as preaching (I’m filling in for my pastor day after tomorrow) and I’ll use it in my IWU classes for our devotionals. As I often bring along a Greek NT in my book bag, too, I’m going to take the NET Diglot instead of the normal Greek NT I carry.
Although my top ten series is over, I promised to continue reviewing Bible translations. So after my 30 days or so with the NET Bible, I’ll post a full review along the same kind of format as my earlier reviews. Look for this sometime in September.