Thanks to Ray Fowler for posting a fascinating chart about the most popular highlighted Bible passages in the six top-highlighted Bible translations on Kindle (which are all also six of the top 50 highlighted books on Kindle).

Ray observes, “I found it interesting how many of these highlights focus on trusting God and not worrying.” Commenter Thomas points out, “users of NLT and ESV appear to highlight several different passages, while users of all the other translations concentrate exclusively on just a very few verses.”

The top highlighted verses were all highlighted in multiple translations, but one set of verses, Romans 8:38-39, was highlighted (relatively) often in the NLT, but not often in any of the other six. Why do you think

We find the story of the widow’s mite in Mark 12:41-44 and Luke 21:1-4. In both passages (which are nearly identical), Jesus makes the point that the widow’s gift to the Temple treasury was very costly to her, because it represented everything she had. But the challenge for the translator is to determine how best [...]

Erik Kowalker, of Kowalker.com, wrote a post yesterday, “Why I switched to the New Living Translation.” He describes his journey to considering the NLT and his thorough, thoughtful inquiry into Bible translations, centered on his three big questions

What method did the NLT translators use in making the NLT?
Who were the translators of the NLT?
What texts [...]

I just found a new visual search tool, eyePlorer. Running a search on “New Living Translation,” it seems to do a pretty good job of arranging topics related to the NLT by category (though less of a good job arranging by importance). It indicates that the most important and common topics (indicated by size) [...]

If you live in the Dallas area, have you considered attending the Christian Book Expo? It’s a new event this month that offers author signings, seminars, and an exhibit hall with 60 exhibitors –mostly publishers.

Tyndale will be there with several authors and will also be offering a seminar by Mark Taylor, Sean Harrison, and [...]

Mark D. Taylor
Brent Kercheville has been writing a series of blogs about his interaction with the NLT text. One of those posts is called “Tongues vs. Languages (1 Corinthians 12-14).” Brent appreciates the NLT’s use of “languages” in place of the more obscure term “tongues” in 1 Cor 12, but he expresses frustration that the [...]

By Mark D. Taylor
The issue of sentence structure in English Bibles is interesting. On the surface, one might assume that an English Bible could/should simply follow the structure of the sentences in Hebrew and Greek. But the very concept of a “sentence” differs from language to language.
Let’s look at the prologue to Romans (Rom 1:1-7) [...]

Mark D. Taylor
As a dynamic-equivalence translation, the NLT translates the Hebrew and Greek text in natural, understandable English. This means that we try to avoid technical terms that the average reader would not understand.
Two such technical terms not used in the NLT are “propitiation” and “expiation.” The Bible Translation Committee chose not to use these [...]

Coins of at least three different nations were used in everyday life in Judea during the NT era. The NT text uses the names of Greek coins, Roman coins, and Jewish coins. The original readers of the NT were presumably very familiar with all of these terms and also knew their relative values, just as [...]