Gupta and Cohick appointed to New Living Translation Committee of Senior Translators

Dr. Lynn Cohick (Provost, Professor, Northern Seminary) and I (Nijay) both accepted invitations recently to join the Bible Translation Committee for the New Living Translation (50 million + copies sold). Cohick’s area of focus will be the Gospels and Acts, mine the Epistles and Revelation. This is a dream come true for me—I love the NLT and I often consult it in research, teaching, and preaching. I am excited to lean into this important work in view of future revisions and updating. 

For more information on the NLT and the official committee of senior translators, see HERE.

The official press release (from Northern Seminary) is below.

Tyndale House Publishers (@tyndalehouse) has appointed Dr. Lynn Cohick and Dr. Nijay Gupta to the Bible Translation Committee (BTC) for the Holy Bible, New Living Translation. 

Lynn Cohick, PhD, is the Provost of Northern Seminary and Professor of New Testament. She has written The Letter to the Ephesians (New International Commentary on the New Testament) and co-authored with Amy Brown Hughes Christian Women in the Patristic World. In addition to her administrative responsibilities at Northern, she teaches in the MA in Women and Theology program. She also directs the Women, Theology, and Leadership track within Northern Seminary’s DMin program and the Center for Women in Leadership. She serves as President of the Institute of Biblical Research. As a member of the BTC, she will be specifically responsible to oversee ongoing review of the Gospels and Acts in the NLT. 

Nijay K. Gupta, PhD, is Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary. His recent books include Paul and the Language of Faith and A Beginner’s Guide to New Testament Studies. He has published commentaries on Colossians, 1-2 Thessalonians, Philippians, and Galatians (forthcoming), and has served as chief editor of Bulletin for Biblical Research and Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters. He is co-editor of two important forthcoming works: Dictionary of Paul and His Letters (2nd ed.) and The State of Pauline Studies. As a member of the BTC, he will be specifically responsible to oversee ongoing review of the Epistles and Revelation in the NLT. 

The New Living Translation (NLT) was first published in 1996, and since then more than 50 million copies have been sold. It is consistently among the top English translations in terms of copies sold each year. The NLT was created by a team of 90 top Hebrew and Greek scholars. They started with the text of The Living Bible, a paraphrase by Northern Seminary alumnus Kenneth N. Taylor that was first published in 1971. The teams of scholars compared every word of every verse in The Living Bible with the underlying Hebrew or Greek texts, making changes where necessary to improve the translation. Their goal was to create a modern English translation that was true to the meaning of the original texts and was as readable and dynamic as The Living Bible.  

The central committee of twelve scholars and English-language stylists reviewed and approved every word of the New Living Translation. After the first edition was published in 1996, the BTC decided to go through the entire text of the NLT again to work at refining the translation’s precision even further. The second edition was published in 2004. 

The NLT was created under the auspices of Tyndale House Publishers, and Tyndale is the primary publisher of the NLT. The Bible Translation Committee is a semi-independent body that is responsible for ongoing review of the text of the NLT. 

The NLT Bible Translation Committee has seen significant changes with the passing of Dr. Grant Osborne, general translator for the Gospels, and Dr. Norm Ericson, general translator for the Epistles. Recent committee discussions have focused on the need to include younger scholars who represent the next generation of translators. They will offer fresh insights as they participate in overseeing the NLT text into the future. 

For more information about studying with Dr. Cohick and Dr. Gupta, contact grarmstrong@seminary.edu