Book Review and Giveaway – Day by Day Chronological Bible

I am really excited to share this new publication with you. Crossway is releasing a Chronological Bible in the Christian Standard Bible translation. If you haven’t heard of a ‘chronological Bible,’ it’s a Bible formatted in the historical order of events, rather than the classic order of the canon—Genesis, Exodus…Revelation.

Here is a description of this imitation leather bound book which retails for around $40:

In this plan, the books, chapters, and verses of the Bible are thoughtfully arranged so readers can track the story of Scripture, day-by-day, from beginning to end, understanding the flow of events and how the grand narrative of Scripture applies to everyday life. Unlike other chronological Bibles, this arrangement is not date specific (e.g. “January 1”), so the reading plan can begin at any point in the calendar year.

Features Include: 52 weeks of readings (six readings per week) in chronological order, Scripture presented in three main acts (God’s Plan for All People; God’s Covenant People; God’s New Covenant People) and seventeen total scenes, an introduction for each act and scene to orient the reader to its importance in the grand story, single-column text with plenty of space for taking notes, concordance, smyth-sewn binding, presentation page, and full-color maps.

The CSB Day-by-Day Chronological Bible features the highly readable, highly reliable text of the Christian Standard Bible® (CSB). The CSB stays as literal as possible to the Bible’s original meaning without sacrificing clarity, making it easier to engage with Scripture’s life-transforming message and to share it with others.

I have a copy of this Bible for review. Here are my impressions:

1. The book is weighty, but not too heavy. The pages are very light. At first they seemed too light, but after turning the pages I saw that they were plenty strong for daily use.
2. It has a soft tough to it and lays flat when opened for easy reading.
3. The maps in the back are FANTASTIC. Very colorful and descriptive.
4. The print is small with wide margins. I suppose this is really good for people who like to write in the margins of their Bibles.
5. Each “day” comes with wisdom from George Guthrie, and is set apart with an aesthetic blue. The advice is simple, just a few directives about what to look for in today’s reading and an instruction as to how to pray or some practical wisdom or exhortation. For example, for Week 36, Day 2 (Ezekiel 21-24), the wisdom is a bit of a summary of the severity of God’s judgement and the exhortation is for the reader to give out the gospel to others.

This really is a beautiful volume and would make a perfect gift.

If there is one thing I didn’t love, it was that the book is divided into 3 acts or 17 scenes. I just didn’t really get the point of that. But maybe for some folks that would be helpful. Ultimately, I don’t know how much of a market there is for a day by day chronological Bible. It seems like it would be a hard-sell as it is less useful than a “normal” Bible because we are used to how it is indexed. That is, it isn’t very hard to take a traditional Bible and read it chronologically with a plan handy, but it would be hard to use a chronological Bible any other way.

For the faithful TAU reader, we have a contest where you can win one of these Bibles. To enter the contest, you need to either tweet or post on Facebook the following text with a link to this post (http://thingsabove.us/book-review-and-giveaway-day-by-day-chronological-bible) and leave a comment on this page with a link to your tweet or Facebook post to help us find it, please? Be sure you don’t have me blocked on social media or I won’t see your entries. You may enter as many times as you wish—just make sure you don’t delete your tweets or posts. Note: I must be able to find these two hashtags to distinguish entries from other contests (#ThingsAboveUs #csbBibleL3).

The winner will be selected Jan 25 or 26.

Here is the text you must post to have a chance to win.

“I entered to win a free Day by Day Chronological Christian Standard Bible and you can too. #csbBibleL3 #ThingsAboveUs”

Product category: Bible
Title: Day-by-day Chronological Bible
Campaign focus: release date
Release date: January 2019
Publisher: Lifeway Christian Resources
Bible Translation: CSB