Bible Reading Methodologies
Last year, I wrote about the One Year Bible as a way to have a disciplined Bible reading plan to cover the Old and New Testaments in one year. It’s a great plan, and I have used it at various times over the years. The advantage of using the actual One Year Bible book is that the readings are broken down for you by date (no need for bookmarks and schedules). There are four streams in each day’s reading: Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms (which covers them twice over the course of a year), and Proverbs (which is typically a very short reading). Depending on one’s pace of reading, you can reasonably do the One Year Bible in about 20 minutes a day. And, as I wrote in the link above, the Bible App makes it possible to do the OYB on your phone or other device, and you can choose different Bible versions - some of which (including the ESV) have a narrator. So you can do your daily readings - which are already selected for you - and read, listen, or both.
The above wonderful CCLE presentation by the Rev. Roger Mullet - which I highly recommend - introduced me to a reading plan that I had never heard of before: the Professor Grant Horner plan. Instead of four streams tied to the particular calendar day, Horner has ten streams of one chapter each. And over the course of time, the readings will vary - since the streams are of different lengths. This leads to unique meditations on texts that are not normally read together. And once you have read these ten chapters together, you won’t read those exact ten together again. This is different from the OYB in which the matched readings are always the same from year to year. And anyone that reads Scripture in tandem with other Scripture can attest, the consistency of the Word of God is stunning. As Pastor Mullet put it: “It’s almost like the same guy wrote the whole book.”
So I decided to take up the Horner Plan. It is slightly a bigger time commitment - but I think the payoff is well worth it. I rolled with it for a few weeks, and was very pleased with it. And you can find it all laid out on the Bible App - again, with your choice of version and narration.
Using Horner, you will complete the whole text of the Bible in 250 days - instead of 365. But over the course of a year, you will have read:
The Gospels - four times in the year
The Pentateuch - about twice
The Main Epistles (Rom, 1 & 2 Cor, Gal, Eph, Phil, Col, and Heb) - about 4.7 times
The Other Epistles (1 & 2 Thess, 1 & 2 Tim, Titus, Phlm, Jas, 1 & 2 Pet, 1-3 John, Jude, and Rev) - about 5.6 times
The Wisdom Literature (Job, Eccl, and Song) - six times
Psalms - about 2.4 times
Proverbs - twelve times
OT History (Josh, Judg, Ruth, 1 & 2 Sam, 1 & 2 Kgs, 1 & 2 Chron, Ezra, Neh, Est) - about 1.5 times
The Prophets - about 1.5 times
Acts - thirteen times
I don’t know why Professor Horner chose this order, but I followed it, and, as I said, found it edifying.
But as I was going through it, I wanted to experiment a bit to try a kind of “Lutheran use” modification. This is the plan that I have come up with for now, and have been at it for a few weeks now. I like it even better than Horner:
Keep the Gospels - four times in the year
Keep the Pentateuch - about 1.9 times
Keep the Wisdom Literature, including the Proverbs - almost four times
Create a new list called Evangelical Epistles (Rom, Gal, Eph) - thirteen times
Remove Rom, Gal, and Eph from Main Epistles, increasing the remainder to about 7.3 times
Other NT Epistles (add Acts) - almost four times
Keep Psalms - about 2.4 times
Keep OT History - about 1.5 times
Keep the Prophets - about 1.5 times
Add the Apocrypha - about twice.
This drills down on Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians - reading them thirteen times a year, keeping the Gospels at four times, reading the main epistles 7.3 times, and the rest of the epistles roughly four times. This still keeps the time needed to cover the whole Bible at about 250 days.
One disadvantage has been to lose the automated reading plan on the Bible App. I bought this ESV that includes the Apocrypha, and use Post-It flags for the ten streams. I sometimes still use the narration on the Bible App (except for the ESV Apocrypha) - it just has to be entered manually chapter by chapter.
As far as the order of reading, I modified it devotionally to mirror the Divine Service of the Word:
Introit:
Psalms
Old Testament:
Pentateuch
OT History
Wisdom
Prophets
Gradual:
Apocrypha
Epistle:
Evangelical Epistles
Main Epistles
Other Epistles
Gospel:
Gospels
Once again, this is working great for me. I’ll be interested to see how it goes in the long term.