Re: [asa] Bible reading advice?

Hi Christine

I pretty much agree with Michael Roberts. One way to get the mix Michael
suggests is to get a one-year Bible, which has an Old Testament Selection, a
New Testament Selection, a reading from Psalms and one from Proverbs for
each day, and takes you through the whole Bible in a year. The last one I
bought came with a CDROM with a pdf file for each day with that day's
reading. Each day's selection has a file name like <month><day>.pdf, so I
eventually wrote a java application that constructs the filename for the
current date or any other date and opens it when the user clicks a button.
If you use one of those schedules that has you read the Bible in sequence,
OT first, then the New, I find some of the OT readings can get rather
tedious. Reading some OT and some NT every day breaks up the monotony.
I tend to use commentaries pretty sparingly, although I have nothing against
them. Hope this helps.

On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 10:37 PM, Christine Smith <
christine_mb_smith@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> This is perhaps not directly relevant to ASA's usual topic of discussion,
> so please feel free to reply off-line...
>
> I am looking for advice and tips on the best way to read the Bible the
> whole way through. I've probably read ~50% of the Bible in shorter spurts
> just from spontaneously selecting different chapters or books and reading
> those at various times, but that of course isn't a particularly coherent
> approach. I tried once to read it the whole way through, one chapter each
> night, but ended up stopping about 1/3 of the way into the OT because of
> some personal issues that disrupted my routine. I'd like to try again, but
> would appreciate any advice/tips you would offer from your own experiences
> that will help me get the most out of it (and keep me disciplined in it!!)
> Specifically, I'm wondering...
>
> 1) Should I try to keep a journal/diary as I read, to reflect on what's
> being said and my reactions/questions to it?
> 2) Should I stop every time I don't recognize a cultural term, geographic
> location, etc. to look it up and try to find out its relevance to the
> passage, or would it be better the first time through to just try to get the
> basic grasp of each passage rather than engaging the nitty-gritty details of
> it?
> 3) How should I section off my reading? Is it better to do a chapter a
> night? A book a night? One complete story/section (i.e. Noah's flood) each
> night? Are those "Read the Bible in 365 days" type of set-ups you can find
> in the store worthwhile?
> 4) Are there any particular things you did to enrich your experience? For
> example, prayer before and/or after? Listen to music? Read along with family
> members and then discuss? Go to a park?
> 5) Is it helpful to read a commentary or book on the passages that you're
> engaging as you go along (i.e. reading a commentary on Genesis as you read
> Genesis) to get someone else's perspectives and insights, or does that
> hinder your ability to read it in an unbiased manner? If you'd recommend
> concurrently reading a commentary or Biblical studies series, what would you
> recommend?
>
> Thanks ahead of time for your thoughts!
> In Christ,
> Christine
>
> "For we walk by faith, not by sight" ~II Corinthians 5:7
>
> Help save the life of a homeless animal--visit www.azrescue.org to find
> out how.
>
> Recycling a single aluminum can conserves enough energy to power your TV
> for 3 hours--Reduce, Reuse, Recycle! Learn more at www.cleanup.org
>
> To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
> "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
>

-- 
William E (Bill) Hamilton Jr., Ph.D.
Member American Scientific Affiliation
Austin, TX
248 821 8156
To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.