The Horner Bible Reading System: Another Variation

I’ve often blogged about the Horner Bible Reading Plan and modifications to it. At the core is a genre-based reading system in which one reads one or two chapters from each of several lists each day.  Such a plan usually includes anywhere from 6 to 12 lists, and each list has a certain number of Bible books; each list represents a different genre, such as the Pentateuch, history, prophets, literature, gospel, NT epistles, and so forth.  In this way one is always reading a small portion from each of the different parts of the Bible.  The Horner Ten List plan is the most well-known one, announced a few years ago by Professor Grant Horner.  In such a plan, for the first day one reads the first one or two chapters from list 1, then one or two chapters from list 2, and so forth through all the lists. The next day, read the next chapters for each list, and so on until you reach the end of the list.

For most genre plans, the lists are of different lengths, so that one list will be finished while still reading through the other lists. When you finish the end of one list, you start back at the beginning of that same list. The result is an infinite possibility of different reading “combinations” each day, that you’re never reading the exact same set of Bible chapters from day to day.  Currently I follow an 8-list, 12-13 chapters genre plan, the result of various modifications made to the original Horner 10 List Plan, which I began in early 2009.

In early 2011 I created and read through a “90 day genre reading” plan to complete the Bible in 90 days: not the usual 90 day plan of going straight through from Genesis to Revelation, but a set of 9 lists for the different genres.

The genre plan is easy to follow and modify, and it’s fun to come up with different reading lists.  On the facebook genre Bible reading group, a few others are reading with the 90 day genre plan — and coming up with their own modifications to that, such as to have fewer lists (six total) and more chapters, in some cases three chapters at a time.

Now for another 8 list plan idea, one I plan to switch over to in the next few weeks.  (Here is the link to the plan.) This one incorporates the Jewish Old Testament book sequence (this site shows the Jewish book sequence), which differs from the Christian canon, for a few different reading lists.  Note that the Pentateuch and gospel lists remain unchanged, and List 8, NT books, is the same as that list in the 90 day plan.  Like the 90 day plan, this one is more balanced between Old and New Testaments, for only three chapters per day (two lists) in the NT.  The Psalms list is similar to the one for the current 8 lists, except that I removed “Song of Solomon” and put it with List 6, per the Jewish OT book sequence.  As seen in the PDF, I tweaked the actual readings for a few days, to compensate for lengthier or shorter chapters within the lists, as well as to minimize the frequency of list realignment. (List realignment occurs when, after multiple times through the various lists, two of the lists are “synced” back to the same days as in the first time through.  This reading plan will have its first realignment — lists 2 and 5 — after almost 2 3/4 years of doing this plan.  Other lists would take over 7 years to realign to the original lists.)

List 1: Pentateuch — 1 or 2 chapters per day, 109 days
List 2: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Ezekiel (from “The Prophets”): 2 chapters per day, 98 days
List 3: Isaiah, Jeremiah, the Twelve (minor prophets; from “The Prophets” list): 2 chapters per day, 94 days
List 4: Psalms 2 chapters per day, Ecclesiastes 1 chapter per day: 87 days
List 5: Proverbs, Job, Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations, 1 chapter per day: 90 days
List 6: Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles, 1 chapter per day: 106 days
List 7: Gospels, 1 chapter per day: 89 days
List 8: NT Acts through Revelation, 2 chapters per day: 88 days

The PDF reading list