Any Christian pastor or minister worth their salt is going to tell those they are preaching to that they should read the Bible. Bible reading is considered to be one of the foundational teachings, mostly because it is through the Bible that we come to gain an understanding of who God is, what His character is like and what salvation is. Granted, we can hear that from others; but when we read it in the Bible, the Holy Spirit, in his office as our teacher, is able to help us gain understanding from what we are reading.
There are also many different “reading plans,” either reading regular portions as a start to the day or reading the Bible throughout the year. Reading it through in a year might sound like a daunting task, but those plans are actually based on the average reader only spending 10 minutes per day.
Yet even with all this encouragement, it seems that very few people actually read the Bible through. Oh, we might read certain parts, like the gospels. We might even read them over and over again. But that’s not reading the Bible through, including all the genealogies and books of prophecy. We might even start out with the intent to read the Bible from cover to cover; but it doesn’t take long for most of us to become dissuaded.
Why is this so?
I have several Bibles here in my office, which range from 1,121 to 1,735 pages, not counting the concordances, study notes, maps and other study aids at the end of the biblical text. Some of those Bibles have more pages due to print size or due to the quantity of in-text notes that are taking up page space. A King James translation of the Bible contains 783,137 words, with the other translations all falling somewhere near that as well. While some translations are wordier than others, they all contain the same scriptures.
In comparison to that, I also have several of Tom Clancy’s novels here in my office. The paperback version of his book “Executive Orders” is 1,358 pages long, putting it right in the middle of that same range. If people can take the time to read a lengthy novel like that, it doesn’t seem all that unreasonable for them to read the Bible.
So, if we were to sit down to read the Bible, cover to cover, just how long would that take?
If you look that question up online, you’ll get a variety of answers, ranging from less than 24 hours all the way up to five times that much. With such a range, how are we to know which one is true? Should we just take the average?
Let’s take a moment to figure this out.
As I said above, there are 783,137 words in the King James version of the Bible. Given that, it seems fairly easy to calculate the number of hours, if we knew how fast people can read. But that’s a bit of a problem as well, as people don’t all read at the same speed. I’ve seen reading rates for adults quoted as being anywhere from 100 to 350 words per minute; but I’ll have to say that 100 words per minute is really slow, considering that 3rd graders are expected to read that fast.
To put a little context to that, a typed letter-sized page (8-1/2”x 11”, with 1” margins) is generally said to contain roughly 500 words. That can climb up to as much as 550 or even 600, if the writer of that page doesn’t break their text down into paragraphs. An average paperback book will contain somewhere between 325 and 350 words, meaning that someone on the fast end of being an average reader can read roughly one page of a paperback book per hour.
But does that apply to the Bible? Only somewhat, as the average page of Bible text is more than a paperback book and less than a letter-sized page. So, let’s work with the overall number of words.
If we take the length of the King James Bible, in words, and divide it by 250 words per minute, which is still a bit on the slow side of average, we get a total reading time of 52.21 hours.
783,137 ÷ 350 = total number of minutes ÷ 60 = total hours
Putting that a couple of other ways, if you were to:
- Read the Bible 1 hour per day, it should take about 52 days to finish it
- Read the Bible 30 minutes per day, it should take about 104 days to finish it
- Read the Bible 15 minutes per day, it should take about 208 days to finish it, still much less than a year
- If you wanted to read the Bible in a year, it would only take 8.6 minutes per day
With that being the case, why don’t we?
Those same pastors I mentioned above will tell you that getting people to read their Bibles is harder than just about anything else, except possibly getting them to pray. The truth is that there are a lot of people who don’t like reading the Bible and for that reason, there are a lot of people who just don’t do it. Some use the excuse in their own minds that it is too much to read; but as we’ve just seen that’s not a very honest answer.
It seems that most people enjoy reading the parts of the Bible which can be considered to be the “story” of the Bible. That’s the history books of the Old Testament, the Gospels and the book of Acts. Those books are easy to read, with a storyline that’s easy to follow. But once we get past those and into the books of prophecy, the law or even the epistles, it takes more time to read and even more time to understand what it is that we’re reading. The average reader gets bogged down and often quits before they get too far.
The thing is, since these parts of the Bible aren’t written as a story, we have to slow down and take the necessary time to really understand what they are saying to us. Perhaps that’s why the Bible itself never really tells us to “read the Bible.” Rather, we are told to study it:
Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. – 2 Timothy 2:15 KJV
But aren’t reading and studying the same thing? Sadly, they are not, although many people don’t see the distinction between the two. We are told to read our textbooks in school and also told that reading those textbooks is studying. But while reading is part of studying, it is by no means the total of what studying is. Studying goes much deeper than merely reading.
For something to qualify as studying, the person doing it must invest enough time, attention and effort into it to acquire knowledge. That doesn’t necessarily happen when we’re reading. We can read something, allowing our eyes to pass over the page and even sound out the words, but that doesn’t mean that we’re actually paying attention to what we’re reading or that we’re getting anything out of it. We might as well be reading in a foreign language that we haven’t studied for all the knowledge we gain.
Studying the scriptures requires asking ourselves questions and seeking the answer to those questions. That might require looking in other parts of the Bible, using other references or even seeking out what more learned people have written about what we are reading. It might also require us to make charts, graphics, timelines and maps, in an effort to really understand the context of what we are studying and how it fits into the larger whole of the Bible and of world history.
Some of the questions we might ask ourselves include:
- Who was this originally spoken to?
- How does the culture of the original audience impact our understanding of this verse?
- What is the context for this verse?
- Where is this in history?
- What else was going on at or around the time that this verse was written?
- Are there other possible meanings for the words used in the original language, than the ones written in our Bibles?
- Does this verse come out differently in any way, in other translations of the Bible?
- Is this verse to be taken literally or symbolically? If it is symbolic, what is the meaning of the symbolism?
Such questions and actions are time-consuming, adding a lot to the time it takes to just read the Bible. It may be possible to read the Bible in a little over 52 hours, but there is no way we can study it in that time. Studying the Bible is a lifelong activity, which none of us can ever fully complete, as there is always something more to study.
The real question is: What is our reason for reading or studying? If it is to gain some sort of celestial brownie points for having read the Bible, then by all means read it as fast as you can and as many times as you can. But if the purpose is to truly gain in understanding, then we must invest the necessary time to study and not merely read.
When we are studying, speed is not the goal, depth is. I’ve spent entire evenings studying one single verse, trying to gain the most possible understanding I could. Some time later, I might even return to that verse, gaining further insight into it.
When it comes to studying the Bible, the more we know, the more we can learn. That’s part of the beauty of studying it. A verse, passage, prophecy or story that we study one time, to the point where we pull all the understanding we can out of it, may reveal further riches to us upon returning to it some years later. That’s because other biblical knowledge we’ve gained in the mean time will impact our understanding of that original verse, allowing us to dig deeper than we did before.
All this is not to say that it is not valuable to read the Bible through sometime. Reading it through can provide an overview, helping us to understand the context of things that we study. Just remember that the Bible is not actually written in chronological order. The books of the prophets mostly happened during the time of the kings of Israel and Judah, not after them; but a few were afterwards. Nehemiah and Ezra happen after the time of most of the prophets. The books of Kings and Chronicles are parallel accounts, showing the same story from the viewpoints of the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. These things can cause confusion, so be aware of that, seeking references that will help to put things in their proper historic context.
Then read. It is a good idea to start each reading session with a recap of the end of the previous day’s reading, as the chapter and verse references we have in the Bible weren’t there in the original script. Going back a few verses can help put things in context, allowing us to bridge one day’s reading with the next and helping us to avoid losing some understanding.