A couple more suggestions and we’ll have made a good start.

Another way of reading the Bible that I find very helpful is to read it chronologically, meaning in the order of when it was written. You need to understand that the Bible isn’t a compilation of fairy tales or moral teachings put in at random. The Bible is something like 70% history. I don’t know many people who do history by skipping around from era to era and not paying any attention to when events happened. That’s not a good idea if you want to understand what happened and how things have progressed. Remember the letters in the Bible themselves are inspired, not the order the letters were put in at.

The cool thing about reading the Bible this way is that it brings the histories, prophets, and Psalms all together. For example, you can read in 1 Samuel about an event in David’s life and then go read the Psalm David wrote about the event. Or you can read about how a certain prophet came and talked to a king and then go read in the prophet’s book what he said or thought. This way of reading the Bible makes so much more sense.

Lastly, the matter of Bible translations. This is pretty important because a translation can either make the Bible easy to understand or impossible to understand. The major translations I can think of are the New International Version (NIV), King James’ Version (KJV), New King James’ Version (NKJV), New American Standard (NASB), New Revised Standard (NRS), and English Standard Version (ESV). The KJV is out because the language is way out of date and the manuscripts that were used to translate from aren’t the best. NKJV fails for the same reason. Why translate manuscripts you know aren’t right? NIV is probably the most popular, but I don’t like it because it either leaves out words or adds words or totally misses the point altogether in it’s attempt to made the Bible more readable.

The three versions that I think are most accurate are the NASB, NRSV, and the ESV. I don’t like the NASB because the translation is pretty awkward sometimes, which makes it harder to understand. My recommendation would be either the NRSV or the ESV. Both are very accurate and readable. The NRSV is what most Bible scholars use. Personally I just switched to the ESV from the NRSV because there is a better audio version available for that version.

Happy Reading!