I spend a lot of time
evaluating English Bible versions. Both the ISV and NET Bible are very
accurate. Both were translated by Bible scholars fully committed to the
importance of each form in the original biblical language texts. Both
translations can be trusted not to lead anyone astray spiritually.
From
my perspective, the quality of English in the ISV far surpasses that in
the NET (and many other English Bibles). The NET Bible has uneven
quality English. At times it is fairly good, but many times it has some
awkward English. On the whole, the quality of English in the ISV is
quite good, especially for a translation that is fairly literal.
I think
that the ISV translators have succeeded in their goal of making a
translation that is fairly literal yet reads well. In my opinion, it
reads better than the NIV, TNIV, NRSV, RSV, ESV, HCSB, and the NASB, and
it competes well in terms of reading flow with idiomatic translations
such as the NLT, GW (God's Word), and NCV.
The
translators of the ISV paid more explicit attention to how the different
tenses of Greek verbs in the New Testament might best be expressed in
English.
For
me, the most outstanding quality of the NET Bible is that its team
produced a huge number of footnotes explaining their translation
decisions. Those translation notes plus thousands of other notes giving
background information can be quite helpful.
If you
would like to examine how the ISV and NET Bible have ranked in some
quantified studies I have done of English Bibles, go to
my webpage.
I
eagerly await the completion of the ISV Old Testament. A complete
ISV *should* provide a nice alternative to English Bible versions
available today which are good, but not quite as good as we might like
when it comes to quality of English and translation precision.
Wayne Leman
Bible translation website:
http://www.geocities.com/bible_translation
