The name was chosen to reflect the restorationist theology of the authors, who believe many of the doctrines in their translation (such as justification by faith alone) were lost by the church before being recovered later.

[5] The translators believe that the understanding of the Bible has progressed in the past two thousand years, in part due to "philological and exegetical scholarship that makes more precise the meaning of the biblical words or phrases or practices" and in part due to an accumulation of Christian experience.

The Recovery Version claims to avoid biases and inaccurate judgments and to express the message of the Bible in English as accurately as possible.

[7] Its translation is essentially literal/word-for-word/formal equivalent, seeking to preserve the wording of the original Hebrew or Greek text and the personal style of each biblical writer.

[7] There are complete and partial editions of the Holy Bible Recovery Version in other languages, including Chinese (恢復本),[15] French (Version Recouvrement),[16] German (Wiedererlangungs-Übersetzung), Polish (Przekład Odzyskiwania), Indonesian (Alkitab Versi Pemulihan), Japanese (回復訳),[17] Korean (회복역),[18] Portuguese (Versão Restauração),[19] Russian (Восстановительный перевод),[20] Spanish (Versión Recobro), Tagalog (Salin sa Pagbabawi), and Cebuano (Hubad Pahiuli).