¹ Wycliffe Bible Translators, for example, has included the NET Bible (with all the translators' notes) in its standard reference software furnished to its field translators.

² There is an average of two translators' notes for each verse in the Bible.

³ Many of the dates surrounding Gutenberg's development of the printing press are uncertain or speculative (for more information go to www.gutenberg.de).

⁴ Modern Luther scholars have questioned whether Luther actually posted his theses publicly on the Wittenberg church door; he may have circulated them privately. The famous story about the door was related by Melanchthon after Luther's death; Luther himself never mentioned it.

⁵ The NIV New Testament was issued in 1973 and the entire Bible (with revised NT) published in 1978.

⁶ Bible translation has certainly not stood still in the interim, however, with the publication of Good News for Modern Man (Today's English Version, 1976), the New King James Version (1979) as the successor to the KJV, the Reader's Digest Bible (1982) as a condensation of the RSV, the New Jerusalem Bible (1985) as a revision of the JB (1966), the NRSV (1989) as a significant revision of the RSV (1952), the Revised English Bible (1989) as a revision of the NEB (1970), the New Century Version (1991) as successor to the International Children's Bible (1986), Eugene H. Peterson's paraphrase The Message: The New Testament in Contemporary Language (1993), the 21^st Century King James Version (1994) as another successor to the venerable KJV, the Contemporary English Version (1995), the NASB update edition (1995), the New International Reader's Version (1995) based on the NIV, the New Testament and Psalms: An Inclusive Version (1995) based on the NRSV, and the New Living Translation (1996), successor to The Living Bible (1971).

⁷ The English language changed enough within twenty years to warrant the release of the Contemporary English Version (CEV) in 1995, although as a vernacular translation it was similar to the Good News Bible/TEV published in 1976. (A more vernacular translation must be revised more frequently to keep up with changes in the English language.)

⁸ With formal equivalence each word of the original language is represented by a word in the receptor (target) language, and the word and clause order is kept as nearly identical to that of the original language as possible. This approach has been stated as a translation rule by J. B. Lightfoot: "the same English words to represent the same Greek words...as far as possible in the same order." Thus this approach translates word for word. As a matter of fact, the King James Version itself did not subscribe to this approach, but used a variety of English words to translate the same Greek or Hebrew word on various occasions.

⁹ With functional equivalence (sometimes called dynamic equivalence) the goal is to render the original language text in the closest natural equivalent in the receptor language, both in meaning and style. This approach translates phrase for phrase or thought for thought.

¹⁰ There are, however, occasions in which a more formally equivalent translation is found in the translation; in such instances, the interpretive options are usually found in a footnote.

¹¹' This illustration is taken from "An Open Letter regarding the NET Bible New Testament" by D. B. Wallace, Notes on Translation 14.3 (2000).

¹² The NET Bible website (www.bible.org) is used by millions of people each year. The public beta-testing process began in 1995 and spanned the 10-year development process of the translation and notes.

¹³ BAGD and BDAG are abbreviations which refer to the second and third editions respectively of the standard Greek-English lexicon used in New Testament studies. The third edition appeared in print after the text and notes of the NET Bible New Testament were largely completed.

¹⁴ This includes the brief portions of the Old Testament written in Aramaic.

¹⁵ There are some exceptions. The New American Bible, for example, follows the Hebrew versification and treats the superscription as verse 1 of the psalm.

¹⁶ Divisions of material in the New Testament (somewhat analogous to chapter divisions) date back to codex Vaticanus (B) in the 4th century a.d. The present chapter divisions in the English Bible are attributed to Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, around a.d. 1205. The first edition of the New Testament to be divided into verses was the fourth edition of Robertus Stephanus published in 1551. One of the first translations to be divided into paragraphs (as opposed to the individual verses of the King James Version) was the American Standard Version (1901).

¹⁷ For example, both the NA²⁷ and UBS⁴ editions of the Greek text (along with the NRSV, which generally follows the versification of the critical editions of the Greek text in the New Testament) place the familiar phrase "I have been crucified with Christ" at the end of Galatians 2:19, while most other English versions place these words in Galatians 2:20. This is explained in a note in the NET Bible.

¹⁸ Ecclesiasticus (also known as Sirach) is a book of the Old Testament Apocrypha.

¹⁹ The institution listed in each case is the institution granting the degree.