ESV Study Bible, Personal Size (TruTone, Brown) by Crossway

(Wheaton: Crossway, 2020), 2720

The ESV Study Bible is perhaps one of the most popular study Bibles available. I have heard about it a lot over the years, and here I'll share some first impressions as a Catholic after spending some time with it.

The Personal Size edition is a great size and quite portable. The layout is excellent, with single column biblical text, double column footnotes, and cross references in the gutter. The ESV Study Bible is great at giving you visual context in the notes while reading the biblical text, including excellent color maps, tables, and illustrations. The maps are especially well-executed, with annotations specific to the passage at hand, and these are quite helpful in the Old Testament. The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible would benefit from incorporating some of these design elements from the ESV Study Bible, including its more compact size (this is on my Bible Wishlist).

There is so much content in the ESV Study Bible. I am still digesting it slowly and it would be unfair to summarize in a short write-up. This is an Evangelical study Bible, as described in the introduction: "The doctrinal perspective of the ESV Study Bible is that of classic evangelical orthodoxy, in the historic stream of the Reformation." My interest in this perspective is informed by Evangelicals and Catholics Together. I view the ESV Study Bible as a helpful reference, especially for the historical explanations, behind faithful Catholic resources such as the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible and the Navarre Bible.1 For more on the theological and doctrinal content of the ESV (and other) study bibles, I have found the videos by DiscipleDojo to be helpful and even-handed.

To give on example, though, a passage I always look at first to get a sense of the commentary is the Bread of Life Discourse in John 6. Here are the relevant notes from the ESV Study Bible:

6:53 Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood cannot be intended literally, for no one ever did that. As Jesus has done frequently in this Gospel, he is speaking in terms of physical items in this world to teach about spiritual realities. Here, to "eat" Jesus' flesh has the spiritual meaning of trusting or believing in him, especially in his death for the sins of mankind. (See also v. 35, where Jesus speaks of coming to him as satisfying "hunger" and believing in him as satisfying "thirst.") Similarly, to "drink his blood" means to trust in his atoning death, which is represented by the shedding of his blood. Although Jesus is not speaking specifically about the Lord's Supper here, there is a parallel theme, because the receiving of eternal life through being united with "the Son of Man" is represented in the Lord's Supper (where Jesus' followers symbolically eat his flesh and drink his blood; cf. 1 Cor. 11:23-32). This is anticipated in OT feasts (see 1 Cor. 5:7) and consummated in the marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev. 19:9).

and

6:60 It was a hard saying because they wrongly interpreted Jesus' statements literally (see note on v. 53).

The notes on John are from the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and the doctrinal inclination is apparent.

Interesting also is the discussion of the Deuterocanonical Books (aka Apocrypha). The ESV Bible of course omits this part of the Bible, but it provides a useful essay by Roger T. Beckwith (DD University of Oxford), which acknowledges the chronology and the fact that "the Reformers dismissed the Apocrypha from the canonical OT" (2613), and not the other way around as is often unfairly claimed.[^2]

[^2] cf. Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger

I think the advice given by the editors of the ESV Study Bible in the introduction is useful for readers of all backgrounds—The emphasis is always first on the biblical text itself:

"We should always begin by reading the Bible's actual words, seeking with our hearts and our minds to understand these words and apply them to our lives. Then, after starting with the words of the Bible itself, we can turn to the study notes and many other study Bible resources for information about the background of the text, for the meaning of puzzling words or phrases, and for connections to other parts of the Bible. Finally, we should return again to the Bible itself, reading it with a new and deeper understanding, asking God to speak through his Word to our lives and to draw us near to himself" (9).

Topic: The Bible

Source

Created: 2025-11-18-Tue
Updated: 2026-02-03-Tue

  1. cf. 2025-05-30-Providentissimus Deus: "It is most unbecoming to pass by, in ignorance or contempt, the excellent work which Catholics have left in abundance, and to have recourse to the works of non-Catholics - and to seek in them, to the detriment of sound doctrine and often to the peril of faith, the explanation of passages on which Catholics long ago have successfully employed their talent and their labour. For although the studies of non-Catholics, used with prudence, may sometimes be of use to the Catholic student, he should, nevertheless, bear well in mind—as the Fathers also teach in numerous passages—that the sense of Holy Scripture can nowhere be found incorrupt outside of the Church, and cannot be expected to be found in writers who, being without the true faith, only gnaw the bark of the Sacred Scripture, and never attain its pith." ↩