Reading the entire Bible is a little like climbing a mountain. 800,000 words long, it takes three days of nonstop reading to finish. There are treacherous passages which are studded with hundreds upon hundreds of names like "Ahishahar" and "Biziothiah." Making it all the way through takes hard work.
So, what are you going to do when you finally reach the summit? Are you going to plant your flag on Rev 22.21 and proclaim, "I conquered the Bible"? I hope not. Rather, when you look across the landscape of God's redemptive plan through history, you will, I hope, never look at God, the Church, or yourself in the same way again.
These two goals—conquering versus sightseeing—call for two different ways of reading through the Bible. The conqueror reads simply to finish; the sightseer reads to understand and grow. In the following sections we will take a closer look at these two approaches.
Next: choosing a Bible and other resources
David Chiang dchiang@cis.upenn.edu
Modified 15 Jun 2001