Many people desire to read the Bible from cover to cover. Often they’ll start out at the beginning of a new year in Genesis. The story lines through the first books in the Bible have the ability to hold the reader’s attention. All the great stories of ; Creation, the Fall, Noah and the Flood, Abraham offering Isaac, and many more are found in Genesis. Exodus will often carry the reader through February with the powerful story of God delivering his people from slavery in Egypt, but sometime in the book of Numbers or Leviticus a person will often lose momentum and usually give up because they’ve lost interest. I believe the excitement is often lost because the story line (narrative) gets more difficult to follow. So I thought that reading through the Bible in Chorological Order (as the events happened in history) would help hold my attention. So last January I set out on this journey and was able to finish up yesterday (14 months). There are several Chorological versions on the market. I choose the one below because it was easy to read (NIV) and because there were no charts and graphics. In other words; there were no distractions, just the text, the story.
A Chronological Bible was never intended to replace the Bible that we carry. It’s not intended to be an official form, since it moves parts of the scripture to appear in the place where it happens. For instance after David sins with Bathsheba and comes to a point of repentance; Psalm 51, David’s prayer of brokenness to God, is inserted following the story. Also the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke , and John are combined for one flowing story of the life of Jesus. Again, this is not an attempt to edit the Bible, but help readers stream the story together. I enjoyed reading it very much and at times enjoyed Dr. Smith’s commentary to give context to the passages. Other times I felt his brief commentary was a restatement of exactly what I was reading in the Bible text itself. My goal here is to let you know about this tool in the event you’d like to read through the entire Bible. It will not read its self, but you will be richly blessed as your read through this work beginning to end.
