Reading the bible in one year

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Does anyone have a suitable schedule for reading the entire Bible in one year? I realize this request is challenging since our Bibles include the deuterocanonical books- no online schedules I could find include these.

I'm interested mainly in the OT as our daily readings from the calendar should take us through the NT (except for Revelations) in the course of a year.

If it is easier to email me rather than posting such a schedule (formatting problems?) please feel free to do so.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Michael Stickles]

Fr. Raphael,

I found a couple of online copies of one-year Bible reading schedules which do include Deuterocanonical (DC) books.

This one has three daily readings: Gospels, Psalms/Proverbs, and OT/DC/OtherNT:
http://journal.cowpi.com/docs/bible_reading_schedule
The DC selections include Baruch, Wisdom, Sirach, Tobit, Judith, and 1/2 Maccabees.

This one has five daily readings: OT, Psalms, Proverbs, DC, and NT (it is in Microsoft Word format; Google has a cached HTML version (http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:qVolCXelkUkJ:eserve1.epizone.net/assets/AssetsContent.aspx%3Fid%3D657%26DRM%3Dp69ogj2diy67 b0f46spt+read+(bible+OR+scriptures)+(apocrypha+OR+ deuterocanonical)+year+schedule&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us) also if you don't have Word):
http://eserve1.epizone.net/assets/AssetsContent.aspx?id=657&DRM=p69ogj2diy67b0f46spt
The DC selections include Baruch, Wisdom, Sirach, Tobit, Judith, 1/2/3/4 Maccabees, Letter of Jeremiah, Additions to Daniel, 1/2 Esdras, Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151, and the Greek version of Esther.

In Christ,
Mike

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Fr. Raphael,

I found a couple of online copies of one-year Bible reading schedules which do include Deuterocanonical (DC) books.

This one has three daily readings: Gospels, Psalms/Proverbs, and OT/DC/OtherNT:
http://journal.cowpi.com/docs/bible_reading_schedule
The DC selections include Baruch, Wisdom, Sirach, Tobit, Judith, and 1/2 Maccabees.

This one has five daily readings: OT, Psalms, Proverbs, DC, and NT (it is in Microsoft Word format; Google has a cached HTML version (http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:qVolCXelkUkJ:eserve1.epizone.net/assets/AssetsContent.aspx%3Fid%3D657%26DRM%3Dp69ogj2diy67 b0f46spt+read+(bible+OR+scriptures)+(apocrypha+OR+ deuterocanonical)+year+schedule&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us) also if you don't have Word):
http://eserve1.epizone.net/assets/AssetsContent.aspx?id=657&DRM=p69ogj2diy67b0f46spt
The DC selections include Baruch, Wisdom, Sirach, Tobit, Judith, 1/2/3/4 Maccabees, Letter of Jeremiah, Additions to Daniel, 1/2 Esdras, Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151, and the Greek version of Esther.

In Christ,
Mike


Thanks very much Mike, the schedule from the first link works well.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Effie Ganatsios]

I also want to thank you, Mike.

Effie

[Anthony]

When I was received into the Church I was given the following suggestion, which may or may not be helpful to others but here it is anyway: to follow in general the seasonal pattern of the Church's lectionary, but reading the books from beginning to end (I believe a bit like the Roman Catholic "lectio continua" - which will probably provoke a negative reaction to start with, but anyway). If I don't finish a book when it is time to move on to the next one, then I bookmark it, and start again from the same place next year. That way, sooner or later, everything gets read (at least that's the theory). At the same time it is being read, as far as possible, "with the Church".

Unfortunately I don't know much about the lectionary, so I have a few questions (as usual). I was told that Mark is read in Lent, John from Pascha to Pentecost, then Matthew until the Sunday of the Cross, then Luke. Similarly Acts is read from Pascha to Pentecost, then the Epistles, ending up with Hebrews in Lent. (First question: what is the order of the Epistles in the Orthodox NT? I have a Russian Bible which puts the Catholic Epistles before the Paulines, but this was published by the UBS so I'm not sure.)

For the OT, I believe in Lent we have Genesis, Isaias and Proverbs, and then Exodus, Jeremiah (or is it Ezekiel?) and Job in Holy Week. I really haven't a clue what happens in the rest of the year - could somebody fill me in here? (I am excluding the Psalms which, in a sense, look after themselves.)

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Unfortunately I don't know much about the lectionary, so I have a few questions (as usual). I was told that Mark is read in Lent, John from Pascha to Pentecost, then Matthew until the Sunday of the Cross, then Luke. Similarly Acts is read from Pascha to Pentecost, then the Epistles, ending up with Hebrews in Lent. (First question: what is the order of the Epistles in the Orthodox NT? I have a Russian Bible which puts the Catholic Epistles before the Paulines, but this was published by the UBS so I'm not sure.)
For the OT, I believe in Lent we have Genesis, Isaias and Proverbs, and then Exodus, Jeremiah (or is it Ezekiel?) and Job in Holy Week. I really haven't a clue what happens in the rest of the year - could somebody fill me in here? (I am excluding the Psalms which, in a sense, look after themselves.)

I think the best thing by far is to follow a standard Orthodox wall calendar as put out by most jurisdictions. These have the daily Epistle & Gospel readings. Many calendars also have the OT readings for Great Lent.

In any case the lectionary readings for the NT begin at Pascha with the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel of St John. After Pentecost we begin reading from St Matthew which continues until the 'Lucan jump' (this would be the Sunday after the leavetaking of the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross) at which time we begin reading from St Luke.

Note that we begin to read St Mark on Mondays - Fridays from the 11th Week thru the week before the Sunday which precedes the Exaltation of the Cross. St Mark is also read on weekdays once we get past Theophany up until Meatfare week. In a sense then St Mark fills up the time in between the 11th Week & the Exaltation and in between Theophany & Meatfare. Since this differs each year according to the varying date of Pascha, the St Mark readings also can vary each year. I'm not sure but during years when Pascha is very late-ie there are more weeks to 'fill up' before Meatfare- I think St Mark is even repeated during the weekdays.

All through this time the Epistles would be read in order as they appear in our western Bibles even though as you say Slavonic & Russian bibles have these in quite a different order.

One last point is that I am speaking of the lectionary as found on the 'Old' Calendar. Since we all celebrate Pascha on the same day most readings I think should be the same. But differences in the Menaion would mean that Sunday readings may vary. Also not all follow the Lucan jump....as I say get a decent wall calendar!

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Anthony]

Thank you, Father, I see I was some way out as usual. One further question, if I may: does the lectionary (in its full form) include the so-called deuterocanonical books (apart from specific passages for feasts)? Also I am not sure if it includes Revelation. Are there any particular times when these are traditionally read?

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Thank you, Father, I see I was some way out as usual. One further question, if I may: does the lectionary (in its full form) include the so-called deuterocanonical books (apart from specific passages for feasts)? Also I am not sure if it includes Revelation. Are there any particular times when these are traditionally read?

The deuterocanonical books do not appear on the daily lectionary schedule outside of Great Lent. This is either because the daily reading of the OT has dropped out of usage over time or never was there in the first place. Although since our typikon is a synthesis of orders of service of different regions perhaps the way our services come to us is more complex than we often think.

Revelations--- you've got me there---I had heard a number of years ago of a monastic tradition of reading Revelations. But at what service and what time of the year I can't recall.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Father David Moser]

I can't really speak to reading the OT in a systematic manner. The last time I actually read the OT straight through was as an undergraduate when I was studying Biblical Literature.

However, I hope that I can contribute some thought to reading the NT. For those who wish to aggressively read the NT through in a systematic way, there is system of the cell rule of Optina. It is really quite simple - begin with the Gospel of Matthew and read each day one chapter going through all the Gospels. At the end of the Gospel of John, you start over with Matthew again. Concurrently, beginning with the book of Acts read 2 chapters of the acts and epistles going almost all the way through to the end of the Apocalypse of St John. Towards the end of the Apocalypse, read one chapter instead of two so that the reading of the epistles and the reading of the Gospels come out even. I think there are only about 7 readings or so in which only one chapter from the epistles would be read. An mildly ambitious person could make a chart (I did- and I am pretty mild when it comes to ambition) and portion out the "one chapter" reading days so that they are distributed throughout the process to coincide with longer chapters. The total number of reading segments is 89 (the total of the chapters of the 4 Gospels) so assuming that one segment is read each day, the whole NT is read in about 3 months (and so it would be read and reread 4x/yr - or the other 9 months of the year could be devoted to OT reading) should you choose.

Fr David Moser

[Effie Ganatsios]

Unfortunately I don't know much about the lectionary, so I have a few questions (as usual). I.)

Anthony, it helps if you have a Menologion installed on your computer. This gives the readings for each day. It also gives you the saints for that day and the relevant Troparion and Kontakion.

http://www.liturgica.com/html/growOMnlgn.jsp?hostname=litur....

And also there are sites such as Dynamis that analyse part of the reading for that day.

http://www.dynamispublications.org/aug2007.html

Effie

[Michael Stickles]

Anthony, it helps if you have a Menologion installed on your computer. This gives the readings for each day. It also gives you the saints for that day and the relevant Troparion and Kontakion.

http://www.liturgica.com/html/growOMnlgn.jsp?hostname=litur....


That looked interesting, so I thought I'd download a copy, but the link only goes to downloads of version 1.1 for Windows 95 (and Windows 3.1 -- does anyone still run that?). Computers running Vista might have trouble with those (for that matter, lots of 95 software wouldn't run right on my old XP computer). A quick search dug up version 2.0 which runs on Windows 95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP (hopefully Vista too :-):

http://saintjohnwonderworker.org/menologion.htm

Their list of new stuff for this version:

Menologion now displays Bible Readings for each day of the year.
There is a new Bible Search mode in which selected bible verses can be displayed.
It is now possible to save personalized versions of the daily Troparia and Kontakia readings and of the daily Bible Readings. You can add the Troparion and Kontakion for a particular saint, and have the program remember and display it. You can also make and keep notes for bible study.
The Information display bar below the date now includes fast days and fast free periods.
An optional supplemental Icon library is available which contains many new Icon images, so that there can be at least one different Icon displayed for each day of the year, and on some days, two or more.
New Office 97 / Office 2000 style docking / floating toolbars.
Program options are now saved in the registry instead of an initialization file.There's a Menologion 3.0 in the works ( http://www.orthodox.cn/software/ ), but it's still in Alpha. The description I saw said it will display daily readings from the Lives of Saints (as translated into English from the original Russian by Fr Stephen Janos), and display user choice of Bible versions for daily lectionary reading, including the ability to import Bible modules from http://unbound.biola.edu.

Thanks for pointing it out, Effie. I'd never heard of Menologion before, and I'm looking forward to running it.

In Christ,
Mike

[Kris]

Revelations--- you've got me there---I had heard a number of years ago of a monastic tradition of reading Revelations. But at what service and what time of the year I can't recall.


I know there is a practice in the Coptic Church to read the entire Apocalypse of St. John during Holy Saturday night. I assume this is to compensate for the book not being read at any other time during the year. However, I'm not sure when this practice was introduced or whether its unique to the Coptic Church.

[Eric Waltemate D.C., L.Ac]

Does anyone have a suitable schedule for reading the entire Bible in one year? I realize this request is challenging since our Bibles include the deuterocanonical books- no online schedules I could find include these.

I'm interested mainly in the OT as our daily readings from the calendar should take us through the NT (except for Revelations) in the course of a year.

If it is easier to email me rather than posting such a schedule (formatting problems?) please feel free to do so.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

Blahoslovy! (Father Bless!)

I read 5 chapters per day and got through the Bible in 9 months (co-incidentally it was during the whole time that my 3rd child was gestating.)

I read 2 OT chapters, a Psalm, a Gospel Chapter, and an Epistle Chapter.

When I ran out of Gospel Chapters, I read 2 Epistle Chapters. When I ran out of Psalms, I went to the Wisdom Books. When I ran out of NT writings I added the Prophets.

In the end, I read 5 Chapters of the Maccabees for about a week, I think.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Thank you for the suggestion! May God bless.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Effie Ganatsios]

Mike, sorry I took so long to answer. I just read your message. I have Windows vista and the download works fine. The version I downloaded is the same as the one on my old computer so it doesn't have all the new features. It works OK though.

Effie

[Julian K.]

Fr. Raphael,

I found a couple of online copies of one-year Bible reading schedules which do include Deuterocanonical (DC) books.

This one has three daily readings: Gospels, Psalms/Proverbs, and OT/DC/OtherNT:
http://journal.cowpi.com/docs/bible_reading_schedule
The DC selections include Baruch, Wisdom, Sirach, Tobit, Judith, and 1/2 Maccabees.

This one has five daily readings: OT, Psalms, Proverbs, DC, and NT (it is in Microsoft Word format; Google has a cached HTML version (http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:qVolCXelkUkJ:eserve1.epizone.net/assets/AssetsContent.aspx%3Fid%3D657%26DRM%3Dp69ogj2diy67 b0f46spt+read+%28bible+OR+scriptures%29+%28apocryp ha+OR+deuterocanonical%29+year+schedule&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us) also if you don't have Word):
http://eserve1.epizone.net/assets/AssetsContent.aspx?id=657&DRM=p69ogj2diy67b0f46spt
The DC selections include Baruch, Wisdom, Sirach, Tobit, Judith, 1/2/3/4 Maccabees, Letter of Jeremiah, Additions to Daniel, 1/2 Esdras, Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151, and the Greek version of Esther.

In Christ,
Mike

The two lists look pretty well. I have a question, though: is there any specific reason behind this particular distribution of the daily readings from the Bible?

Julian

[Michael Stickles]

The two lists look pretty well. I have a question, though: is there any specific reason behind this particular distribution of the daily readings from the Bible?

Not that I'm aware of. You'd probably have to check with the folks that set 'em up.

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear Julian, Mike, Eric and others,

As another option 'in the pot', the new complete Orthodox Study Bible (out last month) includes at the back a through-the-bible-in-one-year reading plan that is designed around tying in the readings as much as possible to what is being read in Church at similar points in the year. It is not identical to the Church's lectionary (the Church doesn't actually read the whole bible systematically through in the services each year); but it is designed to have the readings throughout the year correspond where possible to fixed readings in the services, and thematically elsewhere.

For those taking on new reading plans or practices, this is something useful to consider, as it ties in one's home reading to the life of the worshipping community.

XB, Dcn Matthew

[Julian K.]

Dear Julian, Mike, Eric and others,

As another option 'in the pot', the new complete Orthodox Study Bible (out last month) includes at the back a through-the-bible-in-one-year reading plan that is designed around tying in the readings as much as possible to what is being read in Church at similar points in the year. It is not identical to the Church's lectionary (the Church doesn't actually read the whole bible systematically through in the services each year); but it is designed to have the readings throughout the year correspond where possible to fixed readings in the services, and thematically elsewhere.

For those taking on new reading plans or practices, this is something useful to consider, as it ties in one's home reading to the life of the worshipping community.

XB, Dcn Matthew

Dear Matthew,

Thanks so much for this! The OSB reading plan is very good, indeed! In fact, you have greatly anticipated another question that I was going to raise, namely how we can best keep our "private" reading of the Bible rooted in the life of the Church. As Fr. Schmemann beautifully puts it, "outside of the mind of the Church, outside of the divine-human life of the Church, [the Scripture] can neither be heard nor truly interpreted" (Al. Schmemann, The Eucharist, 1987, p. 79).

In Christ,
Julian

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Dear Julian, Mike, Eric and others,

As another option 'in the pot', the new complete Orthodox Study Bible (out last month) includes at the back a through-the-bible-in-one-year reading plan that is designed around tying in the readings as much as possible to what is being read in Church at similar points in the year. It is not identical to the Church's lectionary (the Church doesn't actually read the whole bible systematically through in the services each year); but it is designed to have the readings throughout the year correspond where possible to fixed readings in the services, and thematically elsewhere.

For those taking on new reading plans or practices, this is something useful to consider, as it ties in one's home reading to the life of the worshipping community.

XB, Dcn Matthew

But in the new edition of the OSB that I have the Lectionary at the back is identical to the cycle of readings for the year.

It contains a list only of the Epistle and Gospel reading for each day the same as is found on standard church Calendars & wall calendars.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Justin Farr]

But in the new edition of the OSB that I have the Lectionary at the back is identical to the cycle of readings for the year.

It contains a list only of the Epistle and Gospel reading for each day the same as is found on standard church Calendars & wall calendars.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

Fr.,

I found the same, until I read the text at the beginning of the lectionary directing me to www.thomasnelson.com/orthodoxreadingplan . :)

I am finding it to be very helpful.

[Stuart Dunn]

That looked interesting, so I thought I'd download a copy, but the link only goes to downloads of version 1.1 for Windows 95 (and Windows 3.1 -- does anyone still run that?). Computers running Vista might have trouble with those (for that matter, lots of 95 software wouldn't run right on my old XP computer). A quick search dug up version 2.0 which runs on Windows 95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP (hopefully Vista too :-):

http://saintjohnwonderworker.org/menologion.htm


Their list of new stuff for this version:

Menologion now displays Bible Readings for each day of the year.
There is a new Bible Search mode in which selected bible verses can be displayed.
It is now possible to save personalized versions of the daily Troparia and Kontakia readings and of the daily Bible Readings. You can add the Troparion and Kontakion for a particular saint, and have the program remember and display it. You can also make and keep notes for bible study.
The Information display bar below the date now includes fast days and fast free periods.
An optional supplemental Icon library is available which contains many new Icon images, so that there can be at least one different Icon displayed for each day of the year, and on some days, two or more.
New Office 97 / Office 2000 style docking / floating toolbars.
Program options are now saved in the registry instead of an initialization file.
There's a Menologion 3.0 in the works ( http://www.orthodox.cn/software/ ), but it's still in Alpha. The description I saw said it will display daily readings from the Lives of Saints (as translated into English from the original Russian by Fr Stephen Janos), and display user choice of Bible versions for daily lectionary reading, including the ability to import Bible modules from http://unbound.biola.edu.

Thanks for pointing it out, Effie. I'd never heard of Menologion before, and I'm looking forward to running it.

In Christ,
Mike

Allow me to introduce you to version 3.0 :) I got to beta test it, several months ago. It's a great little program with a lot of great features added since 2.0.

http://www.orthodox.cn/software/menologion3_en.htm