Review: The One Year Bible, from Tyndale House Publishers

Many people start off the New Year with a goal of reading through the Bible in a year. There are many different Bible reading plans out there which can help with this. If you want to use a simple Bible reading plan/checklist, simply do a Google search for "Bible reading plan" and you'll come up with numerous ones to choose from. Other people simple read a set number of chapters or pages in the Bible each day and get through the Bible in a year that way.

Anyway you choose to read through the Bible is great; the main thing is to do it!

This past year I have chosen to use the One Year Bible from Tyndale House Publishers as my way to read through the Bible in a year.

Here are the basics of how it works:

Each day's reading is broken into four parts: Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs. You typically read a couple of chapters from the Old Testament, roughly a chapter from the New Testament, a Psalm or a portion of a Psalm, and a few verses from Proverbs. There are both good and bad things about this arrangement.

First, here is the good:

It doesn't get any easier than this! As long as you know what date it is, you just open up the Bible to that date, and you know exactly what you need to read for the day. At times when I've used a checklist or chart, I've lost the little piece of paper and then not known for sure what I needed to read till I managed to either find my checklist or replaced it. Sometimes even something little like that can get me off track in my reading.

Reading from four different places in the Bible each day helps when it comes to reading through some of the more difficult parts of the Bible. I tend to get bogged down less in tough books like Ezekiel, when I am also reading in the New Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs. I never have a day when nothing stands out to me in my reading since there is such variety in the reading for the day. That variety makes it much easier to successfully read through the Bible in a year.

Now for the bad:

Some people find it confusing to read the Bible in a "disjointed" manner like this and prefer to read straight through a book of the Bible rather than reading smaller portions each day from four different places in the Bible. If this describes you, the One Year Bible from Tyndale House Publishers is not for you.

Also, some people like to read the Bible Monday - Friday or some other schedule which includes missing at least a day here and there. The One Year Bible from Tyndale is set up to be read 365 days of the year, without fail. Of course, you can catch up on your reading if you have missed some days, but the Bible is not really arranged in such a way that is conducive to that. Other Bible reading plans may offer you more flexibility than the One Year Bible.

Finally, the One Year Bible does not work well as your only Bible. So if you only want to own one Bible that you use exclusively, The One Year Bible is not a good choice. This is because since the Bible is broken up into daily readings, rather than simply starting in Genesis and ending in Revelation, it is not so easy to look up a specific verse in the One Year Bible. It can be done, but it isn't easy, with the One Year Bible. Because of that, the One Year Bible isn't very easy to use, for example, in church or for other study.

All in all, I would highly recommend the One Year Bible for anyone who has the discipline to read the Bible daily and wants a simple way to do it.