CSB Single-Column Compact Bible, Brown Leathertouch

I have purchased and reviewed a number of compact Bible options this year and this has quickly become my personal favourite and a go to Bible to grab. At 5” wide by 7.5” long by 1.5” thick it feels just right in terms of size and weight in my hand. The brown Leathertouch material has a warmth, softness, and flexibility to it that also seems equally durable and scratch resistant. The material also helps it lay flat fairly well regardless of where you are in the Bible. I’ve come to really like the single column layout of this Bible also as it definitely makes the type size seem larger and easier to read than similar sized fonts in dual column Bibles. In my pics I show a comparison of this Bible and the Thomas Nelson NKJV Compact which features an 8.5pt font that doesn’t seem any larger than this Bible’s 8.25pt by comparison. I appreciate that this Bible doesn’t skimp on features like two ribbons, gilded pages, a decent concordance and full colour maps as part of maintaining a lower price point. This is my second compact Bible published by Holman and I’m really impressed with the quality of their products overall. Bible translations are often a matter of personal preference I don’t mention, but I’ve come to enjoy reading the CSB translation as it is a nice middle of the spectrum translation that is easier to read without straying too far into dynamic equivalence, thought for thought territory. Overall this is a fantastic compact Bible option that I look forward to using for years to come.

I am extremely choosy when it comes to bible quality. And this bible has extremely impressed me. For me, it fits my hand nicely. The cover is beautiful, as is the gold effect page edging. It has no red print words of Christ thankfully. The type is clear, the text is very neat. It is a very appealing bible to read. Minimal page bleed through. This is a very beautiful bible which punches well above its modest pricing. It has a partial cardboard cover to protect the pages, so i use this as my car copy. I highly recommend.

Holman got this right with the dimension, text format and cover at low pricing. This bible has a small but dark font, making it very readable yet petite in size. The single column format with no reference and the sufficient margin space in the gutter as well, help with an immersive reading experience. The cover is tough and will not scratch easily. The isbn number is not printed on the back cover which is wonderful. There are also 11 pages of note-taking paper after the concordance. Although the bible is slightly less than 1.5 inch thick, it is very hand-sized to carry around. It looks like a little notebook on the desktop that invites me to flip it open! I love to hold it while reading cos it fits well in my hands. Wish this comes in premium quality versions. (I added red art gilding on the page edges which contrast the white of the paper even more.) Highly recommended if you like the CSB which is a concise translation that ranks high on its clarity.

La biblia es sencilla, cómoda, fácil de transportar pero sin sentirse muy pequeña, y como es una biblia de una sola columna se siente más natural la lectura, además la letra es legible para casi todas las personas. Perfecta para uso diario y estudio.

The pages are opaque and the writing is dark and bold, making this the easiest Bible to read in compact form that I've ever seen, and I've looked at tons (with my ADHD I really have to take care to have uncluttered pages and few distractions like ghosting, lines, and references. Every note that is incuded adds a huge amount of translational clarity and it seems they only added what they could really justify). Black letter, single column, high quality moves-like-leather cover, and portable size (fits easily in my car center console) makes all of the expensive, nicely bound, high GSM paper Bibles I was researching into seem totally unnecessary to get to the end point of an easily readable and portable bible. I have always been a multiple bible person, and owned a ton because none was ever just right, but since getting this I've stopped reaching for others. The CSB translation was something I researched extensively, and used 2 textual "tests" against it, which it was the *only* modern bible to pass both. They are as follows: Test 1 - Psalm 23:4 - reveals the translation's priority between adherence to tradition or textual accuracy. Something I heard recommended by a bible scholar, the verse traditionally is translated by the KJV to include "as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death" which was a slight mistranslation, where the text actually says "the darkest valley". Most Bible translations are using the older manuscripts and know this, but how they translate it is a good way to tell if the Bible translation is really prioritizing being accurate to the text or prioritizing keeping tradition involved (for example, the esv claims to be word for word literal, but translates this first as the valley of the shadow of death only including the darkest valley in footnotes) Both have their place, but since my church uses the ESV, I am more familiar with tradition and as this Bible is for personal study, I'd rather get closer to the actual meeting of the text. Many modern translations like the NLT get this right but more traditional or poetic translations get this wrong. Test 2 - 2 Thessalonians 1:9 - this is a great text to evaluate how much a translator's doctrinal bias could be being applied to the text. This is a verse that I have read extensively in interlinear Bibles in the Greek. I am no Greek scholar, but it is consistently featured in interlinear Bibles as someone having "eternal destruction/punishment *from* the face of God", which can be a bit vague and has given rise to some doctrinal differences, especially between orthodoxy and the West. Many Bible translations I've noticed have added words to the text that are not there, changing the phrase to something like "punishment coming from the presence of God" or usually "punishment away from the presence of God". I understand in this sense the original is a bit vague, but there isn't necessarily a good reason to believe that the punishment in this verse is "punishment *away* from the presence/face of god" (western/eternal conscious torment) or "punishment *coming* from the face/presence of God (eastern Orthodox)", it just simply says it is from the face of God. I am all for adding clarity to obsolete expressions of speech or translational difficulties between languages, but this verse to me is an example of where people can introduce their own theology onto the text to smooth out what they perceive is being something that feels too vague, but if the word of god was written that way, I would rather just personally take it to God in prayer. More traditional translations like the KJV, nkjv, and youngs literal translation get this right, but a real mess of this can be made in more modern translations, especially more dynamic ones, where it can sometimes read something like "forever separated from the Lord" NLT or "shut out from the presence of the Lord" NIV. Overall, between the translation, the execution, and especially the price, this is the best Bible on the market and I'll be giving this as a gift to new convert friends in the future.