If you're a Christian, chances are you read from the Bible (somewhat) regularly. To help oneself make it through the entire Scriptures rather than just "Bible-dipping," many people use a reading plan of some sort. If you've found one you love, stick with it--but check out the rest of this post for some ideas in case you're ready for a change!
No pins for this post, because a Bible reading plan takes up too much space if it's written in legible font size! 😂
Why Read the Bible Outside of Church?
Short answer: "Give us this day our daily bread" part of which is Scripture meditated upon. As a pastor from my childhood once said, this reading can be very ordinary, without any mountaintop experiences, but still benefit you, because "it's our daily bread, not our daily croissant."
Ancient Literacy
As I explored in a post from The Renaissance Biologist last year, literacy rates in the ancient world were fairly low. I'll reproduce N. T. Wright's quote about literacy's relationship with Christianity here (from Paul: A Biography, pp. 425-426, emphasis mine):
"In the same way, education in the ancient world was almost entirely for the elite. Jewish boys were taught to read and write; they would, after all, need to study the Torah. But a great many ordinary pagans were either functionally illiterate or able only to read what was required for daily tasks. Some estimates put the level of literacy at between 20 and 30 percent; some of the older Greek cities and islands had a tradition of elementary education for citizens, but for many people, again especially for women and slaves, this would have been minimal. The early Christians, however, were enthusiastic about education, and particularly reading. When we ask ourselves what the 'teachers' in Paul's communities were teaching, I suspect that part of the answer was 'reading,' since if they were teaching the converts (as they surely were) the scriptures of ancient Israel, this would have involved basic skills that many of those converts had hitherto lacked."
Literacy rates today are somewhat higher in all socioeconomic and demographic groups. So, given the plethora of available printed versions of the Scriptures--or audiobook versions if you prefer--lack of access is not a valid reason not to read regularly.
Scriptural Literacy
My main source for this subsection is an excellent article from Logos (Bible software).
One important consideration when considering literacy in general is Bloom's taxonomy. Literacy is not so much remembering basic facts as understanding them, one indicator of which is being able to restate in different words whatever the ideas are that one just read about. Scriptural literacy is no different.
As with a classroom setting, Scriptural literacy requires more than just attending church ("sitting in lecture" - the most passive learning method). While narrative and expository emphases in sermons can be helpful, as well as preaching through the Scriptures annually (a case for the 1-year lectionary?), and providing resources for laity to go beneath the English translation to the Greek and Hebrew . . . more is needed.
Scriptural literacy is also a foundation for solid Bible study, as shown by the recommended areas where Christians (and people in general, due to the Bible's influence on society for the last several centuries) should know answers to key questions:
- The story of the Bible
- Central biblical and theological themes including the nature of God the Holy Trinity, Jesus, and humanity
- Authors and timing of the writing of the books of Scripture
- Prophecy's definition and importance
- Setting and historical/cultural context of the Scriptures
Lectionary Insufficiency
I love the lectionary! I have always worshiped and been a member at liturgical churches that use the lectionary (typically a 3-year rather than a 1-year) as the basis for which Scriptural texts are read or chanted during each Sunday's service, and thus selected to be preached upon each week. There is a daily lectionary that corresponds to the Sunday rotation (see the Daily Office plan below). Most liturgical church bodies use a lectionary; Baptist, Assemblies of God, and nondenominational churches tend not to. But they should.
What is the lectionary meant to do? According to Ministry Matters (a United Methodist-based resource site), Consultation on Common Texts (a US/Canada-based organization for church bodies using the Revised Common Lectionary), and USCCB (Roman Catholic) . . .
- Expose churchgoing Christians to the entirety of the canonical Scriptures, including a weekly pericope (section) from the Psalms, Old Testament, Gospels, and Epistles
- Encourage expository preaching while allowing creative pastors/priests to draw out common topics for topical series (this is what our priest does)
- Synergizes churches for worship continuity and a spirit of unity (e.g., all liturgical churches are likely to be going through Year A in 2023-4 as the lectionary starts on the first Sunday of Advent)
- Orients churchgoers to the church year
What Options for Plans Are Out There?
If your goal is to get through the entire Bible in a fixed period of time, there are several good options that take you through in a systematic way. I found the basics for most of these at Bible Gateway, which has each plan's readings pre-programmed by day. If you want even more ideas (including a printable chronological and printable historical reading plan), check out the Ligonier blog post.
Daily Office
This reading plan spans the entire calendar year and occasionally coordinates with the Revised Common Lectionary (3-year). Currently, I am going through the Morning and Evening Prayer readings (each with Psalms, an Old Testament, and a New Testament reading) using the 60-day Psalm cycle. The other option is to go through the Psalms every 30 days. Because I started before January 1, the scheduled apocryphal readings I chose to skip until they next show up in 2024.
What this plan covers: the majority of the canonical and apocryphal Scriptures, heavy on Psalms. Principal advantages of this relate to the intent of the Office--it is meant to be prayed/read in groups, to expose laity to the majority of the Scriptures every year (or every 2 years if the 1979 version is used). I like that, even if only Morning Prayer or only Evening Prayer is read, the entire New Testament is still covered annually, and readings are continuous.
What this plan doesn't cover: chapters of some canonical books (e.g., Joshua, Judges), a few entire canonical books (e.g., Chronicles). The historical rationale for this is, again, related to the intent of the Daily Office. Notably, the 2019 revision resembles the 1662 lectionary, with more Old Testament and less Apocryphal material than previous versions.
Both Testaments Each Day
This plan appears to cover the entire Bible in one year. The Old Testament has 929 chapters, translating to 2-3 per day. The New Testament has 260 chapters, translating to just under 1 chapter per day. A caution I'd recommend here is not to skip the Old Testament reading in favor of the easier-to-read New Testament reading. Early Christians didn't have any New Testament written (until ~50 AD), but they learned about Jesus Christ from the Old Testament Scriptures and the apostles' preaching.
Start-to-Finish
An old standby in my repertoire, this plan plows straight through from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. The 1189 chapters of the entire Bible work out to around 3-4 chapters per day. I wouldn't recommend it if you're just starting to familiarize yourself with the Scriptures, because it's so easy to get bogged down in the books with genealogies and repeated laws.
Chronological (Events)
This plan is historically oriented, in the order in which most scholars think the events described in the Bible occurred. One example is here; I went through this once. A caution is that some events are hard to date (e.g., when certain Psalms were written) depending on the amount of archaeological and historical evidence surrounding the biblical text.
Chronological (Writing)
This plan is also historically oriented, but in the order in which most scholars think the books were written down. Bear in mind that ancient Near Eastern cultures (in which the Old Testament is situated) used primarily oral transmission for centuries, prior to a given culture acquiring the habit of writing. BibleGateway's order is slightly discrepant with some New Testament scholars for New Testament books (i.e., some think that Galatians, not James, was the earliest written). It's interesting to see how some books were compiled by scribes, and also interesting to compare the gaps in time between the events and when they were recorded in writing.
How do I Choose a Plan?
I'd recommend three considerations as you are thinking about which plan you're most likely to stick with.
Consider Christian Maturity
In my earlier years of being a Christian, the first time I actually read completely through the Bible was in 7th grade when a confirmation teacher challenged my cohort to set a plan to read through as much as we could in that grade year. I started in Obadiah, for reasons I can't remember, and plowed straight through the text from there, circling back to Genesis once I finished Revelation.
Back then, for a number of years, my goal was to get through as much as possible, as quickly as possible (i.e., taking around a year per iteration). As I've become more familiar with the canon and background history/theology, I've been more content to slow down and allow a deeper dive at times. More of my reading is peri-scriptural, i.e., books by theologians and other scholars that explain particular doctrines, histories of thought/interpretation, etc.
As a side note, even the youngest baptized person being brought up in the faith is a Christian. Perhaps (not) coincidentally, this post's publication date falls on the commemoration date of St. Polycarp's martyrdom. The testimony for this martyrdom, particulary 9:3, indicates that he was a Christian for 84 years (i.e., baptized as an infant).
Consider Your Time
The amount of time I have these days to read from the Bible is fairly limited, due to full-time job, toddler Child, home maintenance, other reading, and occasional PRN job. So, I'm sticking with the relatively relaxed Daily Office plan to maximize scriptural coverage during times when I normally wouldn't be doing other things anyway--i.e., first waking and last before sleeping.
On the other end of the spectrum, the most aggressive I've seen is a 60-day plan, which translates to about an hour per day for the person with typical reading speed of 200-250 words per minute or a typical 6" x 9" book page if one is paying attention the whole time.
Regardless of the amount of time per day you dedicate to Bible reading, the "daily" aspect is important. In line with the principle of distributed practice, frequency matters more than daily duration for long-term retention of the material.
Consider Some Biases
This post wouldn't fit in the Philosophical Explorations category without talk on biases and epistemology! A post-Enlightenment development in thinking is that it's not possible to be 100% objective when examining a phenomenon, because everyone has a perspective that is shaped, consciously and unconsciously, by their own background. Thus, there are as many worldviews as there are people alive, which can be categorized broadly into categories.
With that background in mind, I want to provide just a few avenues for thought, based on BibleGateway itself as an example because it is the source of three of the four plans I've described above. BG is a Zondervan company, which is part of HarperCollins Christian Publishers and a member of the Evangelical CHristian Publishers Association.
The founders of Zondervan, interestingly, were nephews of William Eerdmans, a Dutch Calvinist, who founded Eerdmans Publishing. The Zondervan brothers published Kuyper's works initially. Husband and I are working through Zondervan's Basics of Biblical Greek with a small group, noting the biases of the author that are different from our own.
So, what are the biases of BibleGateway that I would note here?
- If you're not of a Calvinist bent, be aware that the website is rooted broadly in the Calvinist tradition
- The parent company has made publishing decisions, as a publisher does/should, based on a combination of likely sales and how well prospective authors' views align with its vision. Examples I'm particularly wary of include
- Hal Lindsey
- Rick Warren
- Peter Scazzero
- As scholarly theories and approaches change over time, so will the scholarship that eventually filters down to the laity. A recent example is higher criticism (mostly a bad idea) begetting critical realism (mostly a good idea).
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