by Claire Ducker

Created on: March 14, 2009

Reading the Bible for the first time is a long-term project. The Bible is not a book; it's sixty-six books! It has sixty or more authors and covers hundreds of years of history and any number of topics. Every part of the Bible relates to every other part. It is not a question, therefore, of understanding it on a first reading. It is more a matter of reading for introduction and familiarization, to find out what's there.

There are programs for reading the Bible in a year, but a novice Bible reader needs to take a lot more time than that, up to two years. Many churches use a lectionary, a schedule of Bible reading; the one most commonly used today takes three years to complete (and still leaves out parts).
Scheduled readings generally provide several selections from different parts of the Bible to be read each day. The trouble with the schedules is that they leave the reader in a dilemma if he misses a few days. Does he try to catch up, which can be very time-consuming, or just pick up again at today's date and risk missing something really important?

Many experienced Bible readers simply begin at the beginning and read through to the end. For the new reader, though, this method has several disadvantages. First, there are some long stretches of really dry reading. Second, there are other long sections that don't make a lot of sense to the unfamiliar reader; even though these texts may be of considerable literary or topical interest, it is hard to read material like this day after day. Finally, if the reader is a new Christian, he or she needs to be reading about Jesus right away, and a straight cover-to-cover perusal may take over a year to get to Jesus.

It is suggested that a first reading of the Bible make use of the virtues of both methods. The virtue of scheduled readings is that they provide selections from various parts of the Bible; if one section is somewhat tedious, another part of the day's reading may be livelier or more accessible, thus relieving the tedium. The virtue of the beginning-to-end method is that the reader is not tied to a rigid schedule and can proceed at a comfortable pace. By reading a short text from several sections a day, while proceeding sequentially, the reader can read as much or a little as desired and pick up at the last stopping place for each section.

The Bible is divided into two main sections: the Hebrew Scriptures (sometimes called the Old Testament) and the New Testament, the part about Jesus and the Church. (There is a third

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