(from a netfriend):

Hi everyone,

I have been meaning for some time to alert people to a reasonably new resource for people who preach and lead Bible studies – The Source New Testament with notes “by” Dr Ann Nyland.

Description from the web:

THE SOURCE NEW TESTAMENT WITH EXTENSIVE NOTES ON GREEK WORD MEANING is the only New Testament translation based on word meaning evidence from the recently discovered papyri and inscriptions. For centuries, translators had to guess the meaning of hundreds of New Testament words. After 1976, huge numbers of papyri and inscriptions were discovered containing these New Testament words in everyday documents and thus revealing their meaning.

THE SOURCE is the only New Testament translation by a Classical Greek scholar (rather than a theologian) and not financed by, or translated by, a committee of a specific denomination.

THE SOURCE NEW TESTAMENT WITH EXTENSIVE NOTES ON GREEK WORD MEANING contains abundant and detailed documentation for the meaning of hundreds of Greek words which appear in the New Testament. – Publisher20

Price: aound $50 AUD – paperback.

My take:

The layout of this translation is not particularly pretty, but the wealth of information provided in boxes at various places in the text is really useful. If you want to take seriously as your starting point what writers of particular texts were trying to convey to their intended audience, then Nyland’s translation is really helpful, because she’s looked at how many words that translators previously made guesses about were actually used in the times that the NT texts were written. No translation is, of course, value free and Nyland is quite overt about the fact that she wants to remove gender bias as far as possible from the text, so she has avoided some very familiar phrases which imply gender where the Greek does not imply it. I happen to like this, but I think The Source with notes (not the straight text version which is much cheaper) would be a useful resource for most people who preach/lead studies.