Where to Start Reading the Bible If You Never Really Have

Most men who mean to read the Bible start at page one, get through Genesis on momentum, slow down somewhere in Exodus, and stop dead in Leviticus. Usually around the regulations for skin conditions.

Then it sits on the shelf, and the next attempt is harder than the first, because now there is a history of not finishing.

The problem is not discipline. It is that the Bible is not a book — it is a library of sixty-six, written across roughly a millennium and a half, in several languages and about five genres. Reading it front to back is like starting a library at the shelf nearest the door.

Start with a gospel, not with Genesis

If you read one thing, read one of the four accounts of Jesus. Everything else in the collection points either forward or back to that, so it is the part that makes the rest legible.

Mark is the one to start with. It is the shortest, it moves fast, and it was plausibly written for people who were not raised on any of this. You can read the whole thing in about ninety minutes — one sitting on a quiet evening, or a chapter a day for a fortnight.

John is the alternative, and worth knowing how it differs. It is slower and more reflective, more concerned with who Jesus is than with the sequence of what he did. Many people find it the more moving of the two. Mark is the better first read; John is often the better second.

Avoid starting with Matthew, which opens on a genealogy, or Luke, which is the longest. Neither is harder to understand — they are just harder to begin.

Then Acts, then a letter

Once you have read a gospel, Acts is the natural next step. It is written by the same author as Luke and continues the story: what the people who had followed Jesus actually did afterwards. It reads like history, because it is.

After that, pick one short letter and read it slowly. Philippians is four chapters, written from custody, and unusually warm for a document produced in those circumstances. James is blunt and practical, and reads like advice from someone with no patience for religious talk that changes nothing.

That sequence — a gospel, Acts, a letter — is maybe six weeks at a chapter a day, and by the end you will have a working sense of the whole rather than a detailed knowledge of the first two books.

What about the Old Testament

You will want it eventually, and it is worth going in with a map.

Psalms is the obvious entry — a hundred and fifty poems covering roughly every emotional state a man can be in, including several that are not respectable. Psalm 88 ends in darkness with no resolution and was kept in the collection anyway. If you have ever assumed you had to tidy yourself up before praying, that psalm is the correction.

Proverbs is thirty-one chapters of practical wisdom, which conveniently means one a day for a month. It is about work, money, speech, temper and company — the concerns of an ordinary adult life.

Genesis is genuinely worth reading. Just not first, and not as an endurance test.

How much to take on

Less than you think. The failure mode is not laziness; it is ambition.

A chapter a day is a real pace and finishes a gospel inside a month. Fifteen minutes is a real quiet time. A man who reads three chapters daily for nine days and then stops for a year has read less than a man who reads one chapter four times a week indefinitely.

The other thing worth knowing: it is normal not to get much from a lot of it, especially early. Reading Scripture is a skill, and skills are slow at the start. The first weeks are for building the habit and the vocabulary, not for insight.

Which translation

Both translations on this site — King James and English Standard — are in the app, and the honest answer is that the best one is the one you will actually read.

The ESV is modern English with a fairly literal approach to the underlying text. For a first read, that is what most people want.

The KJV is four hundred years old and has shaped more of English than any other book. It is more beautiful and more work. Many men keep it for the Psalms and read something modern for everything else, which is a perfectly reasonable arrangement.

If you are stuck between them, read the same passage in each and pick the one you did not have to reread.

The part nobody mentions

You will hit passages that are strange, harsh or plainly difficult — a genocide, a law that makes no sense, a psalm that asks God to do something appalling to someone’s children.

Do not skip them and do not pretend they are fine. Note them, keep going, and come back when you have more of the picture. Every serious reader of this book has a list of passages they are still working on. Having one is a sign you are reading honestly rather than devotionally.

A first month, concretely

If you want it laid out:

• Week 1–2: Mark, one chapter a day. Sixteen chapters.
• Week 3: Philippians, slowly. Four chapters — read each twice.
• Week 4: Psalms 1, 23, 27, 51, 88, 103, 121, 139. In any order.

That is one month, about fifteen minutes a day, and at the end of it you will have read a complete account of Jesus, a whole letter, and enough of the Psalms to know they are not all cheerful.

It is a better start than four months in Leviticus.