The Bible in 11 Months
Passages to Read
Doug Jacoby put together a program for the leadership of the London
Church of Christ to read the Bible all the way through in one year. He
provided a list of books for January through November, leaving December
as a catch-up month.
I am taking this list of books and dividing it into daily studies to
facilitate pacing myself through reading the Bible in 1996. I hope
others can benefit as well. I'm trying to follow principles Doug gave
at a talk at the Boston Park Plaza in November 1995:
- Read whole books, but not books in order starting at Genesis.
- Maintain a balance between the OT and NT.
- Rotate translations (one translation per year?). A Bible Gateway
on the Internet can facilitate this, although I personally use
a regular paper-and-ink Bible.
- Find gold in every book (Psalm
119:127).
- Take notes.
- Teach your friends. Teach twice and you'll probably never
forget.
Scriptures to remember
With each day's study, I want to take away one useful scripture whose
reference I can remember. The idea is not to memorize the scriptures
word-for-word (more than 300 of them!) in any particular translation,
but just to remember the gist of the words and the specific reference,
so that I can turn there without having to hunt around.
For each month, I will put together a quiz on these scriptures. It will
consist of fifteen questions each worth seven points. The scoring is
meant to measure how quickly you could find a verse.
- four points for getting the book right OR two points for getting
the book half right (e.g. 2 Peter vs. 1 Peter)
- two points for getting the chapter right
- one point for getting the verse right
If the scripture is 2 Peter 1:20-21 you get full credit for 2 Peter
1:21, because you do know exactly where to find the verse. You get six
points for guessing 2 Peter 1:10-11, because if you look there it won't
take you long to find the correct verse. You get five points for
guessing 1 Peter 1:21 or 2 Peter 2:20-21, because you can flip to the
other book or through chapters. You get four points if you just get the
book right; you can hunt through the book until you find it. You get
three points if you gess something like 2 John 1:20-21; there's a chance
you'll realize your mistake and find the right book. You get two points
if you get the book have right and have to flip through two books to
find the scripture. If all you get both the book and chapter wrong you
have little chance of finding it and just get one point out of seven.
Bruce Lewis <brlewis@mit.edu>
Last modified: Wed Nov 20 12:30:59 EST 1996