Your word is a lamp to my feet,
and a light for my path.
Short answer
Start small and start with a Gospel. Read a whole passage at a time, notice who is speaking and to whom, and come back the next day. Scripture itself encourages steady, attentive reading, and it expects that readers will sometimes need help to understand.
The short answer
Begin with one of the Gospels, read a passage at a time rather than a verse at a time, and come back to it regularly. You do not need to start at page one, and you do not need to understand everything at once. Scripture itself encourages this kind of steady reading and assumes that readers will sometimes need help.
Why read it
Your word is a lamp to my feet,
and a light for my path.
Every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, that each person who belongs to God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
John explains why his Gospel was written: “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31). Paul says the older Scriptures were written “for our learning,” so that we “might have hope” (Romans 15:4).
Where to begin
The Bible is a library, not a single book, and it does not have to be read in order. Many readers start in one of these places:
- A Gospel. The Gospels tell the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the center of the Christian faith. Mark is the shortest and moves quickly (Mark 1); Luke says he wrote his account “in order” so that his reader could know “the certainty” of what he had been taught (Luke 1:3–4).
- The Psalms. A collection of 150 prayers and songs for every mood, from praise to complaint. Reading one a day is a good habit.
- Genesis. The beginnings: creation, the first sin, and the stories of Abraham, Jacob and Joseph (Genesis 1).
After a Gospel, many people read Acts, which Luke wrote as a sequel (Acts 1:1), or a short letter such as Philippians. Readers who try to go straight through from Genesis often stall in the laws of Leviticus; it is fine to come back to those later.
Read in context
A single verse can mean something quite different once you read the chapter around it. Before deciding what a passage means, ask a few simple questions: Who is speaking, and to whom? What kind of writing is this: a story, a poem, a law, a letter, a prophecy? What comes just before and after? Even Scripture admits that some passages are hard: Peter says of Paul’s letters that “there are some things that are hard to understand” (2 Peter 3:16).
It is fine to need help
Philip ran to him, and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet, and said, “Do you understand what you are reading?” He said, “How can I, unless someone explains it to me?” He begged Philip to come up and sit with him.
An official from Ethiopia, reading Isaiah on the road, asks for someone to explain it.
When Ezra read the law to the people of Jerusalem, the Levites read it “distinctly” and “gave the sense, so that they understood the reading” (Nehemiah 8:8). A parish or church Bible study, a pastor or priest, good study notes, or a friend reading alongside you can all play that role.
Traditions frame this differently. Catholics read Scripture within the teaching and worship of the Church and hear much of it in the readings at Mass. Protestant traditions emphasize that every believer can read and understand the Bible’s central message, while also valuing preaching and study together. Orthodox Christians, like Catholics, read Scripture within the Church’s tradition and liturgy.
Read slowly, and pray
The psalmist prays, “Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things out of Your law” (Psalm 119:18). Mary kept what she heard, “pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). Many Catholics practice lectio divina, a slow, prayerful reading of a short passage; many Protestants keep a similar habit of daily devotional reading. James adds the last step: “be doers of the word, and not only hearers” (James 1:22).
Which Bible?
A Catholic Bible has 73 books and most Protestant Bibles have 66; the difference is in the Old Testament (see Why do Catholic Bibles have more books?). Any reliable modern translation is a good place to start. This site uses the World English Bible, Catholic Edition, and you can read any chapter in the Bible reader.