Tag: Bible reading

My Bible reading velocity has increased since I started keeping track of my reading on February 9, 2006. I initially kept track on this blog, but switched to a private Google Docs spreadsheet after July 2, 2019. I did a search on this and it looks like the only time I wrote another post like this was in 2019. I have read through the King James Version (KJV), New King James Version (NKJV), English Standard Version (ESV), New American Standard Bible (NASB), and New International Version (NIV) Bibles. Lorena and I are currently reading aloud through the Reina-Valera, 1909 (RV) Spanish Version of the New Testament over the Internet with Grandma Conchita in Mexico. I am currently, in a read through the New Living Translation (NLT) version of the New Testament and hope to do a full read through that version when I finish.

When I first started, it was a pretty big effort just to get through a chapter per day. It took me 1,363 days to read through the Bible in my first pass. The last time, I read all the way through the Bible starting in late December of 2022, it took me 120 days. I really feel like I have missed something if I miss a day of reading. I am pretty sure I could count the days I missed on one hand since when I started reading 17 years ago. I am pretty sure I would benefit greatly by slowing down and reading more carefully, but I want to do that as an additional reading as opposed to replacing what I am doing now.

So far, I have been through the whole Bible ten times. I am on my 38th pass through the New Testament if you include the times I read through the whole Bible. This whole effort, if you want to call it that, has been an incredible gift to me.

I was pretty bad at consistently reading my Bible up until shortly before we moved from Oregon to North Carolina in 2006 when I started keeping track of my reading (here) on one of my blog pages. I started out with a plan to read a chapter a day until I had read through the entire Bible three times, with a couple of extra readings of the New Testament after each complete pass through the whole Bible for a total of nine individual reads. Here are some notes on how it has gone:

• The first time I read through the whole Bible, it took me 1363 days or 3 years, 8 months, and 25 days.
• My last pass through the whole Bible took me 584 days or 1 year, 7 months, and 6 days.
• My first pass through just the New Testament took me 11 months and 9 days.
• My most recent pass through the New Testament which I completed today took 127 days or 4 months and 5 days.

I really have only missed a handful of days in this entire time where I did not read and have made up for all the days I have missed to the best of my recollection. The thing that is most interesting to me is that I am not really reading any faster now than I did previously, I am just taking more time. In addition, I am enjoying it more and more every time and find myself “reading ahead” on a fairly regular basis, especially on Sundays.

I have one more read through the new Testament to finish the original plan, then I need to make a new plan. I want to do some topical studies, but I also want to read some other version. My current thinking is that I will do a read through the NASB and the RSV using the same plan as before (one read of the Old Testament and three reads of the New Testament), then switch over to some topical studies. In the meantime, Lorena and I want to read through the Reina Valera (1960) translation together using that same trajectory.