My 2026 Bible Plan
The Intertextual Tanakh & Bibliotheca
I start each new year reading straight through the Bible. It’s a practice I first tried in 2020 and was amazed at the experience. There’s something really powerful about reading the Bible in its entirety within a relatively short period of time. I decided to make it a practice and it’s something I hope to do each year in January & February for the rest of my life.
I read a different translation of the Bible each year. Here are the versions I’ve read so far:
2020 - Christian Standard Bible
2023 - Bibliotheca (The American Literary Version)
2024 - Robert Alter (Hebrew Bible) / David Bentley Hart (New Testament)
2025 - King James Version
For 2026, I’m going to revisit the Bibliotheca version for The Latter Prophets, The Writings, The Apocrypha, and The New Testament. For The Tanakh (The Five Books of Moses and The Former Prophets), I’m going to use a version and translation sent to me by Russ Roberts. It’s called The Intertextual Tanakh and it is in both English and Hebrew. Genesis starts at the back of the book. I’m really looking forward to this version and the commentary. I’ll start with that big red book on January 1st, 2026.
The Plan
This will be my fifth time reading straight through the Bible. Each time, I’ve finished within a two month timeframe. I always start on January 1st and try to finish by the end of February. It’s the only book I read during those two months. I then start back reading The Immortal Books on March 1st and continue until Summer Break in July.
To finish in two months, I need to be reading for an hour or two each day. I try to get the majority of this reading done early in the morning before my family wakes up. Coffee definitely helps. Then, I carry the Bible around with me and read it whenever I have an extra few minutes. It all adds up.
I also have a number of tools handy while I’m reading the Bible. I highlighted those in an article last year:
I’ll be sharing about the experience during January and February, so if you have a knack for kicking off 2026 reading straight through the Bible, I’d love for you to join me!
You’re very ambitious. I’m willing to go deeper with my reading, but not that deep. 😂
Was inspired by you doing this previous years, and decided to do it myself this year with the Penguin Classics version (revised KJV with the Apocrypha). This is also a good version for me as an Anglican ☺️ I have previously only read Lutheran Norwegian bibles as that's what's normally available where I live, but I can't wait to also see how the language of the English bible really affected English literature. ☺️