NET Bible

The NET Bible (New English Translation) is a project of Biblical Studies Press, the publisher behind Bible.org. Work began in 1995, the first complete edition came out in 2006 and the second in 2017. The founding idea was bold for its time: a fresh translation straight from the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek that would travel freely on the internet instead of staying locked in print.

More than 25 scholars of the original languages worked from the best critical texts available. The main text reads in plain contemporary English and commits to a meaning, close to dynamic equivalence, while the notes kept the literal form, the textual variants and the options the team set aside. John 1:1 shows the style: where most versions say the Word was God, the NET says the Word was fully God, spelling out a reading others leave implicit.

If you want to know what a passage says without stumbling over archaic English, few translations are clearer. The honest limit is that the NET was designed to be read with its notes: that is where the translators explain why they decided as they did. Without them, the text sometimes interprets more than other versions do, and the reader cannot see the reasoning. Check hard passages against a more literal translation.

The NET is not under a free license. Midvash uses it with permission from Biblical Studies Press for non-commercial use of the text, with the (NET) abbreviation and a link to netbible.org. The famous 58,000 or so translators' notes are not on Midvash; to read them, go to netbible.org. You can read the text here for free. Because the permission is non-commercial, the NET stays out of the public API, audio and AI features.