The Utility of Bible Study

Every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, - 2 Timothy 3:16

If you are a Christian, or have any interest in Christianity, even purely academic, you will need to read the Bible.

It is far from an impossible task, but it is also not a trivial one. The Bible is a bit under 50% larger than the entire Lord of the Rings, plus the Hobbit. At least if I ask someone to read The Lord of the Rings, it has the decency to be visibly 4 books. "The Bible" sounds like one book.

It is not. It is many books, bound together. "Reading the Bible" is more like reading an entire rather large series.

It takes a bit of planning to do it. If you have the motivation to simply start at the beginning and proceed to the end, that's fine, but it isn't necessarily the best way.

The way I recommend is to follow a plan that not only breaks it up into a daily plan for a year, but also breaks the readings up into four separate streams. You can see such a plan linked here.

If you have not read the Bible, it is very unlikely that you know what is in it. It is far from just a list of commands or just a big list of who had what son.

However, it does have those things in it, and when you hit them on one stream it is very helpful to have the other streams to break those up.

I'm also going to do this for you: When you hit a big set of who had what son, or a big list of how many people there were in what army, or the boundary of what land belongs to which ancient Israeli tribe, or things like that, I give you permission to skip over them. They are there for a reason and there are many interesting nuggets to be gleaned from them, but I invite you to go ahead and consider that more advanced study.

It isn't necessary to understand everything on the first reading. It isn't even possible, so don't worry about the impossible. However a basic knowledge of what is in there will do you good and is extremely helpful for any future study.

I also strongly recommend that you pair this reading with the Bible Project videos I mentioned before (Old Testament, New Testament). There's a video for each book, and sometimes, parts of a book. When you start a new book, watch the video for it. Maybe review it again as you leave a book. This is won't completely open up everything that is going on, but it will help keep you oriented in the denser parts of the Bible. It is virtually guaranteed that you will get lost if you just plow through. Don't feel bad about reviewing them more than once for some of the denser books.

Finally, just keep at it. The plan has calendar days on it. If you are the sort who will find that sort of guide useful then don't let me distract you from it, but I also recommend just making steady progress. If you miss a day and you want to catch up, I won't stop you. But I honestly recommend just ignoring the day indications. Don't let a "backlog" build up. Just take it one day at a time.

Like I said, if you have not read it at all, you will be surprised by what it actually has in it. Most people's ideas casually picked up from culture are either completely incorrect, or very incomplete.