Report from NLT Committee Meeting (June 2025)

Jun 30, 2025

Recently we had our yearly New Living Translation Bible translation committee meeting in Branson, MO. We are currently working on a major revision of the NLT, but as a long-term project it will take us several years to complete. Each year we work on about 5-10 biblical books depending on the length of the book. It’s an amazing blessing to study and learn about Scripture from world-class experts who also happen to be amazing human beings. We spend our time discussing issues that are difficult to translate and weighty texts where we really need to get the translation as perfect as we can.

**Top L-R:** Jeremy Taylor, Amy Peeler, Mark Norton, Jon Bryant, Andy Abernethy, Lynn Cohick, me (Nijay Gupta), Michelle Knight, Ron Beers, Jerry Hwang; **Seated L-R: Dan Taylor, Tremper Longman, Mark Taylor, John Oswalt, Dan Block (Not pictured: Brittany Melton)**

Celebrating Dr. John Oswalt

Dr. John Oswalt is an OG, he was part of the original NLT translation committee. This year, sadly, is his last year as he is stepping down from his committee work to hand the reins over to the new folks. We have learned so much from John and he will be dearly missed. His passion for Scripture, for Jesus, and for the church are always clear in our meetings. While he has distinguished himself as an expert on Isaiah, his knowledge of the whole Hebrew Bible is extraordinary. John is in incredibly good health and at 85 years old is rightly scaling back his academic commitments.

Whenever we produced an English phrase for Bible translation that was too esoteric or stilted, John would always say, “No one’s gonna understand what that means!” The vast majority of the time, he was right and we kept working on it until we got it right. I’ll carry that spirit with me as we continue the work—Scripture can only transform us if we understand what it is saying!

All of us on the committee confess that this is the greatest privilege of our careers, whether we are early career, mid (like me), or retired (like John). It is an immense responsibility to carefully and faithfully convey God’s Word in English to produce and refine the text that many millions of English readers read, study, and memorize as “the Bible.” We don’t take that honor lightly. I humbly believe this revision will serve the Church well for decades to come.