Surfing the Inner N8

Last night Carolyn and I completed our journey through the NIV One Year Chronological Bible (except in our case it turned out to be the One-and-a-Half Year Chronological Bible).

This Bible contains the complete text of the NIV, but it arranges events chronologically.  Much of the Bible does not go in order like a timeline.  Sometimes books will overlap one another in history.  Other times, like with the prophets, they jump back and forth through the centuries.  In this Bible the editors attempt to arrange the Scriptures in historical order.  Whenever a new book is introduced or it skips from one book to another, there’s a little editorial note of explanation, often including a date that the events occurred.

Reading through the chronological Bible really helped to see how biblical history unfolded.  For example, it was interesting to read Paul’s letters dropped into the portions of Acts which describe his ministry at the time he wrote them.  It was also neat to read the Gospels pieced together in order.  In the Old Testament, I was fascinated at reading the Psalms as they appeared through the life of David and other writers.  And it was especially helpful to read the books of the prophets inserted into their historical context!

We began reading this Bible around October 2006.  While we read it most days, it didn’t happen everyday due to things like meetings, night classes, one of us being out of town, and stuff like that.  Each day when we read, we divided the reading in half and took turns reading it out loud.

It was great to read the whole Bible out loud like that with my wife.  It prompted some great discussion, and I loved hearing her insights and questions about what we read.  She has such a unique sense of humor which helped me see some passages from a new perspective.  It was such a priceless experience!  Definitely something I’d like to do again someday, but probably with a different version of the Bible, just to change things up a bit.