Holy Bible: New Living Translation

The New Living Translation is my favorite for reading. This translation conveys both truth and grace. The NLT is translated with the goal of sharing the intent of the text in modern language rather than a word-for-word translation. This makes this Bible not as useful for theological studies, but the ideas and concepts of the text agree with those of other translations from the oldest manuscripts that have been discovered.

What I like:
- Modern, easy to read and understand language.
- A fresh look at God's messages to us.
- It's emphasis on God's desire to rescue us and his unfailing love.

What I didn't like:
- It's hard to say I don't like something about the Bible. I'm not going to go into theology or opinions about choices in translating particular texts.
- The NLT is hard to have in a social (church) setting unless it is being used by those reading it aloud. In places it uses similar verbiage and in others it is quite different making it easy to get distracted during a presentation.
- The reader is dependent on the translation team to accurately convey the meaning of a text. (This is an inherent weakness of all translation, not just Bible translation.) Word studies of the original text takes a lot more work with this translation, but that was not the goal of this translation. The goal was to be a daily reading Bible, which it accomplishes quite well.