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Archive for January, 2009

How Evenly Distributed Is Your Daily Bible Reading Plan?

Thursday, January 1st, 2009

A perfectly evenly distributed Bible reading plan would have you read about 85 verses each day to get through the Bible in a year. The Bible doesn’t break up into nice, logical 85-verse sections, however, and reading-plan designers have to decide when to vary from a strict 85-verse-a-day schedule. For example, they’ll often have you read complete chapters in a day, which differ in length.

Here are the distribution patterns for a number of the ESV Bible reading plans. (I picked these plans only because the ESV API lets you calculate this data pretty easily.)

Tight Distribution

These two plans tend to have you read roughly the same number of verses every day.

Every Day in the Bible

Chronological Bible

Medium Distribution

These three plans are somewhat more inconsistent.

Outreach Bible

Daily Reading Bible

Through the Bible

Loose Distribution

These two plans significantly vary the number of verses you read each day. (At the extreme, on April 29, the Literary / ESV Study Bible plan has you reading over 200 verses.) However, as I understand it, the idea behind the Literary Study Bible reading plan is to have you read literary units each day, so this variation could be by design.

M’Cheyne

Literary Study Bible and ESV Study Bible