The Holy Bible, New Living Translation, was first published in 1996. It quickly became one of the most popular Bible translations in the English-speaking world. While the NLT’s influence was rapidly growing, the Bible Translation Committee determined that an additional investment in scholarly review and text refinement could make it even better. So shortly after the publication of the first edition, the committee began an eight-year process to increase the NLT's precision without sacrificing its clarity. The result is an all-purpose text especially good for study, devotional reading, and reading aloud in public worship. The goal of any Bible translation is to convey the meaning of the ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts as accurately as possible to contemporary readers. The challenge for our translators was to create a text that would communicate as clearly and powerfully to today's readers as the original texts did to readers and listeners in biblical times. The NLT second edition set the standard for excellence in Bible translation, while maintaining the warmth, clarity, and living language that are the hallmarks of the New Living Translation.