Where should I start reading the Bible?
Short answer
Start with a Gospel, not with Genesis. Mark is the shortest and most direct; Luke was written precisely for someone who wants order and certainty about what happened. Then go to Acts, which continues the story, and to Psalms and Proverbs, which read well in small doses. Reading cover to cover usually stops in Leviticus.
- Written by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 4 min read
The advice to begin at page one is the most intuitive and the one that strands the most readers halfway. Genesis and Exodus hold attention; then comes Leviticus, with chapters of sacrificial rules and ritual purity written for one people at one moment. It is not a bad book: it is a book that demands context nobody has in their third week of reading.
The Gospels solve that because they tell a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, and because it is from Jesus that the rest of the New Testament, and much of the Christian reading of the Old, is organised. Mark has sixteen chapters and the pace of a narrative; it opens straight into John the Baptist and wastes no time. Luke is longer and more explanatory, and the author himself declares, in the first lines, that he wrote in an orderly manner so the reader would know the truthfulness of what he had been taught — which is literally the need of someone starting out.
After the first Gospel, Acts is the natural sequel: it is the same author as Luke, telling what happened to that group afterwards. And from there the whole New Testament starts to make sense, because the letters were written to the communities Acts describes being born.
Two things help more than the choice of book. The first is to accept what the text says about itself: in Acts, a man reading Isaiah answers that he cannot understand without someone to explain, and in Nehemiah the public reading is done distinctly and plainly so that the people would understand it. Reading in company, with a footnote or with someone who explains, is not weakness — it is the method the Bible itself records. The second is to prefer consistency to volume: fifteen minutes a day gets further than three hours on a Sunday.
If the intention is to read the whole Bible, that still holds — it just does not have to be in the order the books are bound. The order of the contents page is editorial, grouped by kind of literature, and it is neither chronological nor instructional.
What the passages say
1The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
The first line of the shortest Gospel, and it already announces what the book is about. Mark does not open with a genealogy or a theological prologue: he starts with the preaching and keeps that pace to the end, which makes him the easiest way in.
1Since, indeed, many have attempted to set in order a narrative of the things that have been completed among us,
2just as they have been handed on to those of us who from the beginning saw the same and were ministers of the word,
3so it seemed good to me also, having diligently followed everything from the beginning, to write to you, in an orderly manner, most excellent Theophilus,
4so that you might know the truthfulness of those words by which you have been instructed.
The only author’s preface in the whole Bible, and it describes exactly the reader this question has: someone who has already heard about the subject and wants to know whether it is so. Luke states that he followed everything from the beginning and wrote in order, with that aim.
30Jesus also accomplished many other signs in the sight of his disciples. These have not been written in this book.
31But these things have been written, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and so that, in believing, you may have life in his name.
The author of John says why he selected what he selected, and admits leaving a great deal out. It is a useful warning for a beginner: a Gospel is not a complete biography, it is a selection with a declared purpose.
30And Philip, hurrying, heard him reading from the prophet Isaiah, and he said, “Do you think that you understand what you are reading?”
31And he said, “But how can I, unless someone will have revealed it to me?” And he asked Philip to climb up and sit with him.
The scene where someone reads the Bible without understanding and says so out loud. The text’s answer is not a reprimand, it is company — Philip sits down beside him and explains. It is the passage that licenses a beginning reader to ask for help.
8And they read from the book of the law of God, distinctly and plainly, so as to be understood. And when it was read, they did understand.
Public reading done distinctly and plainly so that the people would grasp it — and the verse notes that, once read, they did understand. It records that the need for mediation between text and reader is ancient, and not a problem belonging to readers today.
16All Scripture, having been divinely inspired, is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in justice,
17so that the man of God may be perfect, having been trained for every good work.
The sentence that describes what Scripture is for, and it lists four uses — teaching, reproof, correction, instruction. None of them is information; all of them are formation. That changes what you expect from a reading session that did not move you.
105Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my paths.
The image the text uses for its own reach: enough light for the next step, not a floodlight over the whole road. It is a realistic expectation for someone starting out who wants to understand everything at once. (This is the psalm numbered 119 in most Bibles; the edition here follows the older numbering.)