Where to start reading the Bible (and what to read next)

The short answer

Start with one of the four Gospels. Mark is the quickest way into the story of Jesus, 16 chapters and about an hour of reading in all. John, 21 chapters and about 80 minutes, is the one to choose if you want to know what that story means. After your first Gospel, read Acts, then a short letter such as Philippians, then Genesis for the story from the beginning. A chapter or two a day is plenty, and there is no need to start at Genesis 1.

In this guide

1. Where to start reading the Bible, by what you want
2. Can you start reading the Bible at Genesis 1?
3. Should you read the Old Testament or the New Testament first?
4. What to read after your first Gospel
5. Your first 30 days: a simple route
6. How much to read at a time
7. Where to start if you’re Catholic or Orthodox
8. If you stop partway
9. Questions people ask
10. Sources

The Bible is less one book than a library: 66 books in a Protestant Bible and 73 in a Catholic one, written over many centuries. That makes where to start reading the Bible a real question, and sources as different as a Catholic diocese and Billy Graham’s published answers give much the same reply. If you have never read much of it, you are in large company: in a 2016 Lifeway Research survey, 53 percent of Americans said they had read relatively little of the Bible, including the 1 in 10 who had read none of it. What follows gives each good first book its length and reading time, by our own count, and a route for the month after.

• 16 chaptersMark, about an hour of reading
• 21 chaptersJohn, about 80 minutes
• 37chapters in Mark and John together
• 5 mina day reads both in a month

Where to start reading the Bible, by what you want

For most first-time readers the best place to start is a Gospel, one of the four accounts of the life of Jesus, and which one depends on what you want from it. Each of these four first books can be read straight through in a few sittings:

Reading times are for silent reading at 238 words a minute, the adult average in a 2019 review of reading-rate research, over our own word count of the World English Bible, a modern public-domain translation. At a relaxed pace, add about a fifth.

Mark, for the story at speed

Mark is the shortest Gospel: 16 chapters and about 14,300 words, an hour of reading, which is one evening. It has no birth story. Jesus is baptized in the ninth verse and preaching by the fourteenth, and the pace hardly drops after that: by our count the word “immediately” appears 42 times in Mark in the World English Bible, against 19 in Matthew and 18 in Luke, which are both longer books. Most scholars since the late 19th century have accepted that Mark was written before Matthew and Luke and that both drew on it, so you would be starting with the account they built on.

John, for what it means

John tells fewer events and stays with each one longer: a conversation at night with Nicodemus in chapter 3, a woman drawing water at a well in chapter 4, and Jesus’ last evening with his disciples across chapters 13 to 17. It is 21 chapters, about 80 minutes in all, and near its end it says plainly why it was written:

Therefore Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are 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 20:30–31, World English Bible

Billy Graham’s published answer on where to begin starts here: John first, then Acts, then the letters of John and Philippians, then Romans.

Luke, for the fullest account

Luke is the longest Gospel by word count, 24 chapters and about an hour and three quarters, and it holds much of what people already know: the shepherds at Jesus’ birth in chapter 2, the good Samaritan in chapter 10 and the prodigal son in chapter 15. It also has a sequel. Luke writes “to you in order, most excellent Theophilus” (Luke 1:3), and Acts opens: “The first book I wrote, Theophilus, concerned all that Jesus began both to do and to teach” (Acts 1:1). Read Luke and then Acts and you have one story in two volumes, from Bethlehem to Paul in Rome: 52 chapters, about 3 hours 20 minutes.

Matthew, which comes first in the New Testament, is just as good a start. It opens with a genealogy of 17 verses before the story begins and holds the Sermon on the Mount in chapters 5 to 7. Our guide to which Gospel to read first puts all four side by side.

Genesis, for the story from the beginning

Genesis is 50 chapters, about two and a half hours: creation, the flood, Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph and his brothers. It is almost all story, with a few genealogies, and it is a good first book if you want to know where the rest of the Bible is coming from. What comes after it is the subject of the next section.

Can you start reading the Bible at Genesis 1?

Yes. Genesis 1 is where a start-to-finish reading begins, and it helps to know the shape of what follows. Genesis and the first half of Exodus are mostly story. Then much of the second half of Exodus describes the tabernacle, the tent where Israel worshiped, and its making in close detail (chapters 25 to 31 and 35 to 40), Leviticus gives 27 chapters to sacrifices, priests, purity and the calendar of festivals, and Numbers opens with a census.

So a reading from the front meets its first long stretch of law early: by chapter 91 of the Protestant Bible’s 1,189 you are in Leviticus. It reads more easily slowly, or with a psalm or a chapter of a Gospel beside it each day, which is how plans that read the Old and New Testaments together work. Our guide to reading the Bible cover to cover goes through what each book holds, so the slower stretches arrive as no surprise.

Should you read the Old Testament or the New Testament first?

Either order works, but most advice for beginners starts in the New Testament, for two reasons: it is about Jesus from its first page, and it is much shorter.

The Old Testament is 78% of the Protestant Bible’s chapters. Begin with the New and you can finish a whole testament in about three months at three chapters a day, which is a satisfying first goal. The case for the Old Testament first is that the New assumes it throughout: Jesus quotes it, and words like covenant, Passover and kingdom arrive already full of meaning. A middle way is a little of each every day. Our guide to the best order to read the Bible compares the main routes through the whole thing.

What to read after your first Gospel

The usual next step is Acts, and after it a short letter or Genesis. Billy Graham’s answer and the Diocese of Brooklyn’s guide both put Acts next and then part ways: Graham goes on to the letters of John, Philippians and Romans before the rest of the New Testament and then the Old, while the diocese reads all four Gospels and Acts, then Genesis and Exodus, then returns to Romans and reads on to Revelation.

• Acts. Luke’s sequel, 28 chapters and about an hour and forty minutes: the first Christians, from Pentecost to Paul under guard in Rome.
• A short letter. Philippians, James and 1 John are four or five chapters each and take about ten minutes, so each is a letter finished in one sitting.
• A second Gospel. After Mark, John reads like a different portrait of the same person. After John, Mark or Luke fills in many of the events John leaves out.
• Genesis, then Exodus. The story from the beginning, with a Gospel already behind you.
• Psalms and Proverbs, alongside. The diocese calls them “pretty good spots” for a change of pace. A psalm averages under 300 words, a little over a minute, so the 150 of them suit dipping into rather than reading straight through. Proverbs has 31 chapters, one for each day of a long month.

If a finished book would help early on, each of these takes a quarter of an hour or less:

Your first 30 days: a simple route

Read Mark, then John. That is 37 chapters and about 2 hours 20 minutes of reading in all, or about five minutes a day across a month, with two days to spare.

The first two weeks read eight chapters in seven days, so one day in each takes two. Weeks 3 and 4 take two chapters on three or four of their days. The longest single chapters are Mark 14, the night of the arrest, at about six and a half minutes, and John 6 at about six. Use the spare days to catch up, or to read Philippians. If a week runs long, the next one simply starts later; there is nothing to make up.

For a route past the first month, through the rest of the New Testament or the whole Bible, the Bible reading plan for beginners sets it out day by day.

How much to read at a time

A chapter at a time is a good unit to start with: long enough to hold one scene or one argument, short enough for a busy day. An average chapter in the Protestant Bible is about 630 words, under three minutes of silent reading, though Gospel chapters run longer, about 3¾ minutes each in Mark and John. Ten minutes covers three or four chapters.

Five minutes a day is a real pace, too. Kept up, it reads the New Testament in about six months and the whole Protestant Bible in a little over two years.

Which Bible to read it in

Any complete modern translation you find readable will do, and the Bible you already own, on paper or in an app, is a fine place to begin. If a sentence will not come clear, reading it in a second translation often helps. If your Bible prints section headings, they show where one story ends and the next begins, which makes a chapter easier to take in.

Where to start if you’re Catholic or Orthodox

In the same place. The four Gospels and Acts are the same in every Christian canon. The Protestant Bible (66 books), the Catholic Bible (73), the Orthodox Bible (78 by our count, though Orthodox Bibles vary) and the Bible of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (80 by our count) all hold the same 27 New Testament books, and the differences between them lie mainly in the Old Testament. The Diocese of Brooklyn, a Catholic diocese, begins its guide for people starting out, like the advice above, with the four Gospels and Acts.

For Catholic readers there is one more reason to start with Mark this season. The Sunday Gospel at Mass follows a three-year cycle, and Year B, which begins on the first Sunday of Advent, November 29, 2026, and runs until Advent 2027, is the year of Mark. Read it now and the Sunday readings will keep returning to a book you know.

When you reach the Old Testament, the wider canons hold books a Protestant Bible does not, among them Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach and 1 and 2 Maccabees. Catholics call them deuterocanonical, and Protestants usually call them the Apocrypha. The Catholic Bible reading plan covers all 73 books at any pace.

If you stop partway

Pick up where you left off. The next chapter is still the next chapter, and there is no need to go back to Mark 1 or to make up the days in between. People stop for all kinds of reasons, a busy month, an illness, a book that went slowly, and what you read before still counts. Our guide to starting again after a long break has more on finding a way back in.

Open a Bible to the first page of Mark, read one chapter, and you have started.

Questions people ask

Should I start reading the Bible with John or Genesis?

Either works. John puts Jesus at the center from the first page and takes about 80 minutes to read, in 21 chapters. Genesis gives you the story from the beginning in 50 chapters, about two and a half hours, but a reading that carries on from it reaches the law of Exodus and Leviticus soon after. Much beginner advice suggests a Gospel first and Genesis after it.

Is it okay to read the Bible out of order?

Yes. The Bible is a collection of books, 66 in a Protestant Bible and 73 in a Catholic one, and almost every one of them can be read on its own. Many reading plans mix them, taking a little of the Old and New Testaments each day. Keep a note of which books you have finished and you will always know what is left.

How long does it take to read the Gospel of Mark?

About an hour. Mark has 16 chapters and about 14,300 words in a modern translation, which takes 60 minutes at the average adult silent reading speed of 238 words a minute, or about 70 minutes at a relaxed pace. A chapter a day finishes it in 16 days, and two a day in eight.

Where should a new Christian start reading the Bible?

Most advice to new Christians starts with a Gospel, followed by Acts. Billy Graham's published answer suggests John, then Acts, then the letters of John and Philippians, then Romans, before the rest of the New Testament and the Old. A chapter or two a day is a comfortable amount to begin with.

Where should I start reading the Bible to understand it?

With a book that tells a story, such as Mark, Luke or Genesis, read straight through rather than a verse at a time. A whole book shows you what each passage belongs to. Read a chapter, ask what happened in it, and move on. Much of the Old Testament looks back to Genesis and Exodus, so those two make the rest easier to follow.

Sources

1. Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 109, 104047.
2. World English Bible, verse-per-line edition (public domain), eBible.org
3. King James Version, verse-per-line edition (public domain), eBible.org
4. Lifeway Research (2017), Americans Are Fond of the Bible, Don't Actually Read It
5. Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Where should I begin in my Bible reading?
6. Diocese of Brooklyn, Where to start reading the Bible
7. Markan priority, Wikipedia
8. Lectionary, Wikipedia