I want to make clear that I do not think that the New Living Bible is a bad Bible to own and read. If anything, it is these translations that can make the Bible more comprehensible to the average reader, and I think that is great!

The reason that I was not recommending it to Sentinel, however, is because it is not a "study" Bible in my opinion. I may be wrong in this, of course, but I believe that the purpose of the NLV is to put the Bible in modern language, and that the translators understood going in that there would be some things "lost" in that translation. This is not even necessarily a bad thing per se, since ANY translation technique will lose some things. Such is the nature of the beast. Translating words is hard enough, trying to make concepts and precepts that were formulated two to three thousand years ago in another culture is even worse.

So, all of that said, for those readers that want to read the Bible in today's language, I think that the NLV may be the one for them. I will recommend one other, and that is the Contemporary English Version Bible which was written with the same purpose as the NLV. Either is very good, so long as the reader understands the limitations of the translation method being used, and has another Bible (like the NIV or RSV) to cross reference in their studies.

Peace,

Nomad

Here is an online version of the Contemporary English Version (CEV) that Nomad mentioned.