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The Holy Bible, ESV
Complete e-Bible, English Standard Version with user-friendly navigation, cross-references, footnotes, table of weights and measures and monetary units, concordance and list of abbreviations. Available in Adobe DRM ePub or Kindle format.
1846 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 23, 2018
1621 people are currently reading
197 people want to read
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* They are officially published under that name
* They are traditional stories not attributed to a specific author
* They are religious texts not generally attributed to a specific author
Books whose authorship is merely uncertain should be attributed to Unknown.
See also: Anonymous
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 194 reviews
June 7, 2019
It’s kinda ridiculous to review the Bible or choose a GoodReads shelf for it. (I want to read it. I am currently reading it. I have read it. And repeat.) But I want to invite everyone—especially anyone who has never gotten around to reading it—to join me right now. I’m reading along with the #SamePageSummer New Testament plan (available on YouVersion) now through August, and then we’ll plunge back in to read the whole thing from Genesis to Revelation again September-May with the Bible Reading Challenge.
Please join me!
Please join me!
November 28, 2019
I read through the Bible every year to get the big picture of God’s dealings with mankind. I have read many books, and nothing can match this Book. This year I read it twice, this time in chronological order. Reading chronologically helped me to see how the major and minor prophets fit into the history of Israel and Judah and when and to whom the Epistles were written in relation to the Acts of the Apostles. Highly recommended!
December 25, 2023
Great book. Would recommend.
December 31, 2025
Second time to read through the Bible but my first time to read the English Standard Version.
December 31, 2025
I listened to this for 365 days on the YouVersion at Bible.com. It was read by David Cochran Heath and is called the ESV Hear the Word Audio Bible. It is very well-read. I enjoy listening to the Bible because it slows me down. I quite often read too quickly and skip parts that are familiar to me. If I follow along in the text as I listen, I can't do either of those things.
YouVersion helps keep track of my reading. Perhaps you may want to start to read the Bible through in a year. You could start January 1 and finish December 31, 2023!
This is the review I gave this Bible at the end of last year. Nothing has changed except the year.
I plan to read it again next year. YouVersion is at Bible.com
Dec 30,2024 - I finished again this year and plan to read it again in 2025!
It is December 2025 - I read this again this year. I love following a guided plan and finih in a year.
YouVersion helps keep track of my reading. Perhaps you may want to start to read the Bible through in a year. You could start January 1 and finish December 31, 2023!
This is the review I gave this Bible at the end of last year. Nothing has changed except the year.
I plan to read it again next year. YouVersion is at Bible.com
Dec 30,2024 - I finished again this year and plan to read it again in 2025!
It is December 2025 - I read this again this year. I love following a guided plan and finih in a year.
February 22, 2024
i finally completed the bible over the last two years and following along with the bible recap podcast!
August 9, 2025
Spoiler: God wins
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 31, 2020
Greatest choice of 2020❤
December 26, 2021
It had been awhile since I had done a Read Through the Bible in a Year. It took me over a year, but I did finish 8 months into this year.
January 1, 2024
5 stars, no explanation needed
December 26, 2024
Absolutely the best book I've ever read. No contest.
December 23, 2025
Read through the whole thing this year. Does it count as 1 or 66 for my year end total?
December 31, 2025
Finished my Bible in a year plan = definitely counting it towards my reading goal 😬
Read
January 2, 2021I have officially read every word of every page in every book of The Holy Bible.
I learned SO MUCH about the content in the Bible but also the history behind the Bible as well. The authors (known and unknown), the geographical references, the corroborative evidence of history.
Fun Fact: I learned the stoic philosopher, Seneca, has a brother who is mentioned in the Bible (Gallio) and helped the apostle Paul escape death.
This has been an amazing learning experience for me. There are a ton of shocking things in the Bible but one of the biggest things I learned this year is that not everything that is in the Bible are the teachings of God/Jesus. I would say 75% of the Bible (just pulled that percentage out of nowhere but you get what I mean) is more about broken/sinful people and how God uses them rather than directly about God himself. So you see a ton of murder, rape, lying, stealing, adultery, hypocrisy, idolatry, slander, greed etc. because these people are broken and far from perfect. The beauty is that God still loves them and is patient with them (God’s patience is demonstrated most in the book of Judges).
It’s just been an awesome journey and I understand now that the Bible is one big book. It’s not OT vs NT. The OT isn’t complete without the content of the NT and the NT literally doesn’t make sense and is completely out of context without the OT.
With completing the Bible I also completed my 2020 reading challenge so this has been a great reading year. Can’t wait for 2021!
I learned SO MUCH about the content in the Bible but also the history behind the Bible as well. The authors (known and unknown), the geographical references, the corroborative evidence of history.
Fun Fact: I learned the stoic philosopher, Seneca, has a brother who is mentioned in the Bible (Gallio) and helped the apostle Paul escape death.
This has been an amazing learning experience for me. There are a ton of shocking things in the Bible but one of the biggest things I learned this year is that not everything that is in the Bible are the teachings of God/Jesus. I would say 75% of the Bible (just pulled that percentage out of nowhere but you get what I mean) is more about broken/sinful people and how God uses them rather than directly about God himself. So you see a ton of murder, rape, lying, stealing, adultery, hypocrisy, idolatry, slander, greed etc. because these people are broken and far from perfect. The beauty is that God still loves them and is patient with them (God’s patience is demonstrated most in the book of Judges).
It’s just been an awesome journey and I understand now that the Bible is one big book. It’s not OT vs NT. The OT isn’t complete without the content of the NT and the NT literally doesn’t make sense and is completely out of context without the OT.
With completing the Bible I also completed my 2020 reading challenge so this has been a great reading year. Can’t wait for 2021!
June 15, 2024
Bible in a year program that became a Bible in 19 months program haha
I’m always shocked when I’m reminded of how much the Bible does say and how much the Bible does not say. Christian culture has added and subtracted so much from this book over the years and especially now when “evangelicals” has become a voting bloc rather than a way of life.
There’s a reason this book is still changing lives thousands of years later. Would recommend finding out for yourself why.
I’m always shocked when I’m reminded of how much the Bible does say and how much the Bible does not say. Christian culture has added and subtracted so much from this book over the years and especially now when “evangelicals” has become a voting bloc rather than a way of life.
There’s a reason this book is still changing lives thousands of years later. Would recommend finding out for yourself why.
December 31, 2022
Read through chronologically with The Bible Recap podcast by Tara-Leigh Cobble.
December 28, 2024
Solid Words.
April 10, 2025
Would recommend
May 9, 2025
A must read!
January 28, 2025
Lowkey underrated.
January 29, 2025
“the grace of the lord jesus be with all. amen.”
cold line to finish ngl
cold line to finish ngl
October 29, 2019
WARNING: THIS REVIEW MAY BE OFFENSIVE.
This was a tough one. I had to check it out from the library 3 times to get through all of it, eventually taking five months off and on to complete it.
The Old Testament makes no mention of the origins of Satan or the existence of Hell at all except in some very general way. No mention of Satan being a fallen angel or even being the serpent in the Garden of Eden. In fact, this has always been a problem for me - the Eden story is basically all about Man being kept ignorant and when he desires to learn for himself, he’s punished. After all, he and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. I could barely get through all the meaningless genealogy (Genesis and Numbers and Ezra 2...ugh). Ridiculous ages of humans (Noah was 500 years old when he had kids, immediately after God says no man shall live more than 120 years, and then Noah goes on to live to be 950) and very contradictory in general. God is jealous, childish, violent, and extremely inconsistent. He creates humans then smites them for seemingly minor infractions. What, a few dudes in some village in the Middle East have sex with each other and you’re going to drown the *entire planet* with water, animals included?? I’m sure the Indigenous peoples of Australia or North America (who were there at least 20,000 years before Noah supposedly existed) were surprised when their world flooded for no good reason. Oh right, that’s because it didn’t. Funny enough, the entire story of the flood myth, complete with building an Ark and ending up on top of a mountain and setting a dove free which comes back with an olive branch is NOT from the Bible originally - it’s a Mesopotamian flood myth that predates Genesis by at least a thousand years and of course is part of the Epic of Gilgamesh (complete with the dove at the end). It wasn’t all bad, though. Then there’s Exodus - there is absolutely no evidence of the Hebrews being enslaved by the Egyptians. It simply never happened. I liked some parts though - Highlights include Joseph and his Coat of Many Colors (great storytelling) and of course my favorite book of Job, where Satan and God have a bet about whether Job will still worship God even if all his riches and health are taken away. Yes, God gambles with a man’s life, for no good reason, then when Job asks why God is letting all these horrible things happen to him, God basically says “where were you when I created the heavens and the earth, and all the creatures of the land and sea?” And Job basically goes “oh, right, my bad.” Then God gives him more riches than before. The moral of the story? Who cares, that’s messed up. Bonus points for the whack stuff like Isaiah 11 or when a bunch of young boys made fun of Elisha for being bald “go up you bald head!! go up you bald head!!” and he cursed them in the name of God and two female bears came out of the woods and mauled 42 of them to death. I’m going to be reading the Koran next, so it’ll be interesting to see where the 42 virgins came from, amongst other numerical borrowings.
New Testament - more repetition. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all tell the story of Jesus, except the story is inconsistent. Matthew blazes through Jesus’ life and Mark makes some passing reference to the Nativity, while Luke jumbles things up further. The story of Jesus is surprisingly scant on detail, and many of the “facts” I grew up with are not in the Bible at all. Turns out, a lot of stuff Christians believe was developed in Medieval Europe (thank you Durant for explaining this in The Age of Faith). The rest of the New Testament is mostly inane prophesy and gibberish with frogs and dragons and horses and I give up.
Overall, I think as a book of worship, it’s in dire need of some serious editing and simplification. There’s simply no point to at least 80% of it, and I dare say anyone who would get mad at that statement has not actually read it. I think that’s the most frustrating part - it’s a dumb book, padded with tons of filler so it seems daunting, yet people will literally kill each other over it, especially those who have never actually read the damn thing. Same goes for people who argue against evolution and natural selection without ever reading On the Origin of Species or even a cursory reading of the research. I look forward to the day when humanity can outgrow such ridiculousness, hopefully without destroying ourselves or our planet in the process. I feel like taking a shower after this one.
This was a tough one. I had to check it out from the library 3 times to get through all of it, eventually taking five months off and on to complete it.
The Old Testament makes no mention of the origins of Satan or the existence of Hell at all except in some very general way. No mention of Satan being a fallen angel or even being the serpent in the Garden of Eden. In fact, this has always been a problem for me - the Eden story is basically all about Man being kept ignorant and when he desires to learn for himself, he’s punished. After all, he and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. I could barely get through all the meaningless genealogy (Genesis and Numbers and Ezra 2...ugh). Ridiculous ages of humans (Noah was 500 years old when he had kids, immediately after God says no man shall live more than 120 years, and then Noah goes on to live to be 950) and very contradictory in general. God is jealous, childish, violent, and extremely inconsistent. He creates humans then smites them for seemingly minor infractions. What, a few dudes in some village in the Middle East have sex with each other and you’re going to drown the *entire planet* with water, animals included?? I’m sure the Indigenous peoples of Australia or North America (who were there at least 20,000 years before Noah supposedly existed) were surprised when their world flooded for no good reason. Oh right, that’s because it didn’t. Funny enough, the entire story of the flood myth, complete with building an Ark and ending up on top of a mountain and setting a dove free which comes back with an olive branch is NOT from the Bible originally - it’s a Mesopotamian flood myth that predates Genesis by at least a thousand years and of course is part of the Epic of Gilgamesh (complete with the dove at the end). It wasn’t all bad, though. Then there’s Exodus - there is absolutely no evidence of the Hebrews being enslaved by the Egyptians. It simply never happened. I liked some parts though - Highlights include Joseph and his Coat of Many Colors (great storytelling) and of course my favorite book of Job, where Satan and God have a bet about whether Job will still worship God even if all his riches and health are taken away. Yes, God gambles with a man’s life, for no good reason, then when Job asks why God is letting all these horrible things happen to him, God basically says “where were you when I created the heavens and the earth, and all the creatures of the land and sea?” And Job basically goes “oh, right, my bad.” Then God gives him more riches than before. The moral of the story? Who cares, that’s messed up. Bonus points for the whack stuff like Isaiah 11 or when a bunch of young boys made fun of Elisha for being bald “go up you bald head!! go up you bald head!!” and he cursed them in the name of God and two female bears came out of the woods and mauled 42 of them to death. I’m going to be reading the Koran next, so it’ll be interesting to see where the 42 virgins came from, amongst other numerical borrowings.
New Testament - more repetition. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all tell the story of Jesus, except the story is inconsistent. Matthew blazes through Jesus’ life and Mark makes some passing reference to the Nativity, while Luke jumbles things up further. The story of Jesus is surprisingly scant on detail, and many of the “facts” I grew up with are not in the Bible at all. Turns out, a lot of stuff Christians believe was developed in Medieval Europe (thank you Durant for explaining this in The Age of Faith). The rest of the New Testament is mostly inane prophesy and gibberish with frogs and dragons and horses and I give up.
Overall, I think as a book of worship, it’s in dire need of some serious editing and simplification. There’s simply no point to at least 80% of it, and I dare say anyone who would get mad at that statement has not actually read it. I think that’s the most frustrating part - it’s a dumb book, padded with tons of filler so it seems daunting, yet people will literally kill each other over it, especially those who have never actually read the damn thing. Same goes for people who argue against evolution and natural selection without ever reading On the Origin of Species or even a cursory reading of the research. I look forward to the day when humanity can outgrow such ridiculousness, hopefully without destroying ourselves or our planet in the process. I feel like taking a shower after this one.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 17, 2024
For my entire ministry, I have preached from the NIV, but after years of frustration with the most recent 2011 "re-translation" I decided maybe it was time for a change. A few trusted friends suggested the ESV. I decided before making a change, I would spend the year reading the entire ESV translation. I just completed it, reading using a chronological reading plan. I finished a few days early, and have come to the conclusion that I am going to preach from it for the foreseeable future. It is a fairly plain spoken translation (something I always appreciated from the NIV) without bending to the whims of culture. I thoroughly enjoyed this year's journey through the Bible and look forward to many more trips in the year ahead.
May 23, 2020
Normally I wouldn’t include the Bible in my reading list, but a friend and I just tackled the 30 day Bible shred and while I took 40 days instead, I definitely wanted that on my annual count haha! It was the toughest reading challenge I’ve ever done and won’t be trying any time soon, but it taught me a lot about making the Bible a priority, and was a wild ride through the narrative of the scriptures!
August 31, 2022
What can I say? How can I review God's word?
It holds the greatest, the best news of all time.
It contains the most skillfully crafted short story (The Prodigal Son), the most beautifully written biographies, the most accurate prophecies.
It gives you strength in weakness, hope in hopelessness, and love in emptiness.
The Bible deserves more than 5 stars.
It holds the greatest, the best news of all time.
It contains the most skillfully crafted short story (The Prodigal Son), the most beautifully written biographies, the most accurate prophecies.
It gives you strength in weakness, hope in hopelessness, and love in emptiness.
The Bible deserves more than 5 stars.
January 30, 2024
Did “The Shred” challenge, which is reading the Bible in a month. Great book. 5 stars. Everyone should read.
January 2, 2023
Finally completed the Bible in (just over) a year!
It’s crazy to think about how long it took me to read through it on top of the fact that this collection of writings across generations comes together in such a cohesive, comprehensive way. There are references to Christ’s coming in the Old Testament. There are references to the history of the nation of Israel and God’s providence in the New Testament. There are songs of joy and poems about sorrow and hardship in Psalms. There are calls for us to be wise and diligent as well as stand up for the marginalized in Proverbs. Many of the books are different from one another, but the common thread has been really cool to see this year. And I also see so much room for the Church (as well as myself of course) to apply the Bible’s teachings more in our lives. Often times I feel like we slip into tradition for tradition’s sake or take the grace and mercy we’re offered through Christ for granted. Reading through the entirety of the Word has helped me appreciate a) how we are created in the image of God first and foremost (designed to be in communion with Him) b) how broken we are and c) the necessity of Christ and his redemption and restoration and d) the call to action to love and serve Him and our neighbors whole-heartedly.
Of course I can’t provide a full review of all the little details, but I think those are my key takeaways. Until next time (in a few years at least!).
It’s crazy to think about how long it took me to read through it on top of the fact that this collection of writings across generations comes together in such a cohesive, comprehensive way. There are references to Christ’s coming in the Old Testament. There are references to the history of the nation of Israel and God’s providence in the New Testament. There are songs of joy and poems about sorrow and hardship in Psalms. There are calls for us to be wise and diligent as well as stand up for the marginalized in Proverbs. Many of the books are different from one another, but the common thread has been really cool to see this year. And I also see so much room for the Church (as well as myself of course) to apply the Bible’s teachings more in our lives. Often times I feel like we slip into tradition for tradition’s sake or take the grace and mercy we’re offered through Christ for granted. Reading through the entirety of the Word has helped me appreciate a) how we are created in the image of God first and foremost (designed to be in communion with Him) b) how broken we are and c) the necessity of Christ and his redemption and restoration and d) the call to action to love and serve Him and our neighbors whole-heartedly.
Of course I can’t provide a full review of all the little details, but I think those are my key takeaways. Until next time (in a few years at least!).
December 4, 2025
Have tried and failed many times to read the bible in a year, but this time I was finally able to stay consistent and pull it off!
One key takeaway from finishing each book, specifically ones in the Old Testament was just how I’m still pretty clueless on a lot of things happening and how much more I need to learn to better understand the Bible and the story as a whole.
Looking forward to digging deeper with my future reads and hopefully I’ll be able to gain better understanding little by little.
One key takeaway from finishing each book, specifically ones in the Old Testament was just how I’m still pretty clueless on a lot of things happening and how much more I need to learn to better understand the Bible and the story as a whole.
Looking forward to digging deeper with my future reads and hopefully I’ll be able to gain better understanding little by little.
August 11, 2025
10/10 would read again. This book reached out of the cover, slapped me in the face with truth, and then gave me a hug. The plot? Absolutely wild, talking donkeys, water turning into wine, seas parting like my hair in middle school. The main character? This guy Jesus, total legend. Walks on water like it’s no big deal, heals people for free (no co-pay), and even comes back from the dead like, “Miss me?” Side characters are a mixed bag, some heroes, some total villains, and at least one dude who betrays the main character for the price of a Chipotle burrito. Would recommend if you like epic battles, moral plot twists, and eternal life.
December 15, 2025
My first time reading the Bible in a year chronologically, and my first time doing so in the ESV. It was a life changing year as I studied God’s word with more intensity. I regret nothing and have gained much.
I read significantly less other materials in 2025 because of this, and I’m about to go for round 2, this time with three friends in tow, in 2026!
I read significantly less other materials in 2025 because of this, and I’m about to go for round 2, this time with three friends in tow, in 2026!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 194 reviews