Estimated read time: 8 minutes

Let's start with a not-so-guilty pleasure: who doesn't love end-of-year 'best of' book lists?

Getting to see which books you've read, discovering new books that you may have missed, and taking the temperature of the publishing world. Finding out what people are reading and what they love the most is a yearly pleasure.

Bibles are, however, a very different kind of book. Judging what makes a Bible one of the best of the year is less about the text, which rarely changes more than a publisher tweaking a couple of words, but more about the ways in which a Bible's features and design can develop and deepen your relationship with scripture.

This year's list is all about the Bibles that help you get the most from God's word. They've been arranged first by types of Bibles (Study Bibles, Journaling Bibles, Compact Bibles, etc), and then the best new Bibles for each of the top translations.

So, without much further ado, here are the Eden picks for the Best Bibles of the year 2025.

The Best Study Bible of 2025

It's easy to point to any number of study editions of the Bible that are filled with in-depth notes, cultural insights and scriptural exegesis and declare them the best of the year. But what sets this Personal Size NLT Life Application Study Bible apart is the way it can be read.

A good Life Application Bible changes how you live. Not just at home, but out in the world. It makes sense that such a Bible should be able to travel with you and offer guidance wherever you are.

Having a Life Application Bible in a personal-size paperback edition means that this Bible can live up to its full potential. You can apply it to life wherever life takes you.

Buy the NLT Life Application Personal Size Study Bible here ▸

The Best Journaling Bible of 2025

Many people think of Journaling Bibles as a recent trend in Bible publishing. But did you know the practice of filling a Bible's margins with illustrations and flourishes is actually centuries old?

Marginalia, the addition of notes, marks and creative expressions, is most known as a medieval tradition. Because Bibles were copied by hand and a single one could be worth as much as a house, owing to the time and labour to create one, they were seen as an investment, and so the margins of them were often used to pass down readers' understandings of the text.

Jump to 2025, and our pick of the best journaling Bible of the year acknowledges this tradition: The NIV Illuminated Bible.

Taking its style from the elegant Illuminated Manuscripts of the 13th Century onwards, the NIV Illuminated Bible contains intricate line drawings to colour and space for your own reflections. It's a meaningful way of keeping the tradition of creative reflection alive in the 21st Century.

Buy the NIV Illuminated Bible here ▸

The Best Compact Bible of 2025

There is often an assumption that compact Bibles must sacrifice any sense of the expansive nature of scripture. The goal is to shrink down the Bible and make it fit into life, into bags, pockets and other such small places.

So, it is with delight that the best compact Bible of the year goes to the Prairie Theme NLT Bible by Hosanna Revival.

The design of this BIble feels like stopping and finding a moment of peace beneath a wide sky. It's soothing, rich and filled with space and light. It's no secret that Hosanna Revival have found a unique voice in Bible design. This Compact NLT shows that even in small spaces of quiet reflection, a great and expansive beauty can still be found.

Buy the Prairie Theme NLT Bible here ▸

The Best Children's Bible of 2025

Chosen by Laura, our Children's Resources specialist

A beautifully illustrated children's Bible exploring the majesty of God's kingship. Written by Bob Hartman and illustrated by Catalina Echeverri, this storybook Bible engages children as they discover what it means to live as God's people in his Kingdom.

Buy The Kingdom and the King Storybook Bible here ▸

The Best NIV Bible of 2025

Every other pick of the best Bibles in this list has something to do with the features or design that have been added. However, the best NIV Bible for 2025 is here for the exact opposite reason. The best NIV has been chosen precisely because it doesn't feature any additional features or extras.

In fact, it doesn't even include chapter or verse numbers.

The NIV Lectio Bible has been designed as a kind of antidote to modern digital culture. It simplifies the experience of reading the Bible down to the very core of scripture - the text and nothing more.

In a time where every part of the world is clamouring for your attention (a digital ecosystem better known as 'the attention economy'), being focused and quiet becomes a revolutionary act.

The Bible has always been a revolutionary text, challenging the priorities of a culture and society focused on human wants and ambitions. The NIV Lectio Bible helps you form a new practice of reading, of listening to the 'gentle whisper'* that is God's voice in the Bible.

*1 Kings 19:12

Buy The NIV Lectio Bible here ▸

The Best NLT Bible of 2025

How do you make a Bible stand out? Most editions draw from the same range of materials and styles, usually Imitation Leather, Hardback, Leather or Paperback. So when something different arrives, it immediately gets noticed.

As mentioned earlier, Hosanna Revival have been responsible for the boom in beautiful Bibles. Their iconic use of imagery stands out, but with the NLT Lisbon Theme Bible, they have ventured into new territory by wrapping it in an embroidered cover design.

The line 'A thing of beauty is a joy forever' is often quoted when something beautiful is in sight. But for Hoasanna Revival, the beauty is the point. By making Bibles beautiful, they are making daily reading and holding a pleasure. The NLT Lisbon Noteaking Bible brings a fresh approach to how a beautiful Bible can look.

Buy The NLT Lisbon Theme Bible here ▸

The Best ESV Bible of 2025

We don't read the Bible like a novel, but maybe in focusing so much on the meaning of individual chapters and verses, we are missing out on the bigger picture of Scripture?

The One Story Bible is our pick of the ESV Bible of the year because, much like the NIV Lectio Bible, it offers a chance to refocus on the Bible. The commentary from Greg Gilbert shows the threads that run through the entire Bible, underlining the gestalt nature of god's word.

Gestalt: the whole seen as being greater than the sum of its parts

Ideal as much for newer believers looking to make sense of the Bible as it as long-time Christians seeking harmony between different voices in the Bible, The One Story Bible makes for compelling and encouraging reading.

Buy The One Story Bible here ▸

The Best KJV Bible of 2025

Much has been said about the influence of the Bible, specifically the King James Bible, on culture. Yet, how often is that influence shown?

The pick for the best KJV Bible of 2025 is a slight bending of the rules as The Art of Scripture doesn't contain the whole Bible, but rather is composed of fragments and excerpts from the KJV text. But what those selections of text sit next to should be of keen interest to anyone wanting to see the influence of the Bible on the world of art.

You see, The Art of Scripture places the text alongside 100 paintings from The National Gallery. These include works by Caravaggio, Velázquez, Rembrandt and dozens more. In this pairing, you can see how the stories and messages of the Bible sparked the creation of images that move and inspire people to this very day.

Buy The Art of Scripture here ▸

The Best CSB Bible of 2025

Inadvertently, a lot of what has informed this list has been new ways of reading and understanding the Bible. The pick for the best CSB Bible of 2025 is no different.

The CSB Connecting Scripture New Testament is a kind of companion piece to ESV's The One Story Bible. They both take a step back to see the broader links and themes that run through the breadth of the Bible. It's also, much like the KJV pick, not a full Bible. In this case, it's just the New Testament...

...except it uses a unique cross-referencing system and study notes to pick apart the allusions and references to the Old Testament that are present throughout the New. It feels like you are reading both Testaments at once.

To my mind, it's almost like using the old blue and red glasses that accompanied 3D movies in the 1950s. By overlaying the two Testaments, what you get is a deeper understanding of the Bible as a whole.

Buy the CSB Connecting Scripture Bible here ▸

The Best Bible of 2025

The pick of the best Bible of 2025 is one that has been developed for roughly only 10% of the population.

Where every other Bible in this list has been made for anyone with an interest to pick up and read, this one isn't for 90% of Christians in the UK.

Why would the Best Bible of the year not be applicable to most people reading this?

That's because it's a Bible which meets a long-known but little-met need. It opens the doors of scripture to a wider crowd, who, until now, struggled to connect with the Bible. Often, they felt excluded by the small text and thin pages that rendered the writing indecipherable.

The Best Bible of 2025 is the Good News Dyslexia Friendly Boxset.

This box set was chosen because it's the Bible that will make the biggest difference in someone's life. It opens the door for anyone with dyslexia to have access to the complete Bible in a format that they can read with comfort and confidence.

In the mission to make the Bible accessible to all, this set is a big step forward, which is why the Good News Dyslexia Friendly Box Set is the Bible of the Year for 2025.

Buy the Good News Dyslexia Friendly Box Set here ▸

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Not sure which Bible is right for you? You can learn more in our complete, free 97-page ebook, 'How to Choose Your Bible'.