Have you ever wanted to read through the entire Bible? If you’ve ever decided—perhaps as a New Year’s resolution—that you’re going to read all the way through the Bible, you’ve probably learned two things the hard way: 1) the Bible is very long, and 2) parts of the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, can be a real challenge to read straight through.

All the same, there are few things more spiritually rewarding than reading through Scripture in its entirety. And we at the Bible Gateway want to help. So we’ve added new tools to help you read through the entire Bible in a year: our new Bible reading plans. Starting on January 1, 2009, you can start reading through the Bible, one short daily reading at a time. You can read your daily reading online here at the Bible Gateway, or receive the daily readings via RSS or iCal.

There are four different ways you can read through the Bible—choose the one that works best for you! These plans are graciously provided by BibleYear.com:

• Old/New Testament: each day features a reading from both the Old and the New Testaments, so you read through both Testaments together.
• Chronological: reads through the Bible in the order that its events occurred historically. For example, Job lived sometime after the beginning of creation (Genesis 1) but before Abraham was born (Genesis 12). As a result, the Book of Job is integrated into the Book of Genesis.
• Beginning: starts at the very beginning of the Bible and reads straight through to the end.
• Historical: reads through the books of the Bible in the order in which they were written historically, according to the estimated dates of their writing.

To get your daily reading, visit the daily reading page each day starting on New Year’s Day, where your Bible reading for the day will be displayed. You might want to bookmark that page for easy reference (right click on this link and choose “Add to favorites/bookmarks”). You can also receive your reading via RSS or iCal.

We hope you find the new reading plans useful—and we hope you’ll use them to make your way through the Bible in 2009, whether you’ve read through it many times before or have never done so!