Bible Stories FAQ

I noticed a gap in the global market of Bible story books. 100% of Bible story books are written to children. Once a child has read those, and they're ready for a big boy or big girl Bible, the leap is huge and the barrier to entry is high. Same for adults who are new to the faith: the barrier to reading the Bible is high once they get to the exodus and have to plow through 50 chapters of law, or once they get past Acts and are confronted by very theological letters. This approach of sticking to the stories makes it easier for everyone, children and adults alike. I originally started this in 2014 for my kids, but found out the fun way it took longer than my kids needed. It's too late for my kids (they'd graduated beyond the need for a transition Bible story resource well before I finished the first draft in 2023) but hopefully just right for you.

I used a lot of translations to make this, and I offer even more, based on whatever API.Bible has available for free. I'm working on getting copright permission for more translations that are easier (more enjoyable) to read.

These are logical story breaks. In keeping with a theme, I am ignoring chapter breaks to determine stories and ignoring book breaks to determine my own chapters, or grouping of stories. The Bible contains one cohesive story and my section (chapter) breaks help organize that story just the same as an original author breaks their story up. The original Bible is just fine on its own and doesn't need my help, but this is another way to approach the Bible as a novice and hopefully take more away (understand more, remember more, obey more) than if we just read it the old fashioned way.

There is a lot packed in the Gospels. The gospel writers weren't necessariliy trying to record everything strictly chronologoical and they didn't give excessive clues on timing, so it's really challenging to determine chronological order of every account in the four harmonic Gospels, so I limited my scope to some highlights. Others have done exhaustive work on that goal and it is not my intent to reproduce (it's specifically called the "harmony of the Gospels," if you want to look it up.) Since I can't be clear on when everything in the Gospels happened, I didn't try, and only included highlights. After reading all the stories (Genesis through Revelation) then go back and read all four Gospels straight through, from Matthew 1:1 to John 21:25. They're certainly worth it, but I couldn't just break with my theme for the Gospels when you've got numerous other ways to simply read them straight through, and the purpose of my website is specifically to help you read just the stories in order and there are a few speaches, prayers, and geneaologies in there anyway.

History is clearly important to God. Why else would He have provided so much of it in His word? A complete account is given from Creation to crucifixion and even a little beyond. Every immaginable detail was not recorded for us but most people think the 1000 pages of Biblical text is excessively long already, so we can't have it both ways (we can't have every detail and keep it less than excessively long.) To reinforce that the Bible is a real record of history, the timelines and maps show that all the time and space are accounted for. There are no gaps, there was no need to fudge anything, and God was not trying to be ambigous to cover up anything. God made His message really really clear (Deuteronomy 30:11-13, Habakkuk 2:2) and the maps and timelines (a) help reinforce that point and (b) give us strategic perspective since we didn't live through those times nor do most of us on the planet live anywhere near there.

First, it's a spectrum, not a rainbow. But even if we dismiss the difference as trivial, there are three reasons:

• My pages are very black and white and having the full spectrum at the top gives it some color.
• It's an excuse to advertise a Bible verse. If you hover over the image (on a laptop or desktop, or touch and hold on a mobile) you'll see the alt text for the image is: “Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around Him. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord” Ezekiel 1:28a. (The image is only one pixel high, so it's admittedly tricky to hover over or touch directly.)
• On the story pages, I very much wanted the verse reference to be at the top of the page at all times, to distinguish the reading of the Bible from the reading of any other text on your digital device. Beyond that, it's just a geeky feature.

As a technicality, the rainbow was explicitly given to us by God in Genesis 9:12-16 as a visible symbol of His love. It's also described twice in Revelation 4:3 and 10:1 (not to mention Ezekiel 1:28 again). The adoption of the rainbow by recent "pride" coalitions is sacrilegious.

Yes, because (a) the Bible says so and (b) the evidence is overwhelming. I wrote a whole FAQ article on the subject titled Genesis is Scientifically Superior, here.

To help a first time reader have a little perspective from a veteran reader to make the stories a little more rich.

The purpose of these stories is to read God's word, not mine. So I gave myself 500 characters (not 500 words) to type a brief application and another 500 characters to do some connect the dots. The 500 characters is a self imposed technical limitation in the database, so I never excuse myself to run long. Being limited to 500 characters means I won't cover every possible application nor all imaginable connections. It's just a little to get us started, and sometimes I have to be very selective on what I have room to say.

I did not attend seminary and have no doctorate, I just have a master's in information technology management and more importantly, am a veteran Christian with a strong Biblical worldview. This website is no theological treatese, it's just an attempt to get people into God's word.

Maybe someday, but part of the fun of reading this online is the ability to touch a verse and have it pop up, reducing both the onscreen (on page) text and the time we would conventionally need to look up all those verses. In other words, it's just more fun online, so I have little incentive to print.

In a paper Bible it's really clear when you get to the last verse in a chapter, because you can usually measure in millimeters how far away the next verse is and easily see the next verse is the beginning of the next chapter. Not so in a digital Bible where the editor has gone out of his way to ignore chapter breaks to make the story breaks make maximum sense. So to clue you in to when a story goes to the end of the chapter, I use the omega symbol rather than simply listing the final verse number. But why bother doing that, you ask? Only becuase it shows more intentionality, more attention to detail.

○ indicates a not-yet-read story. ● has been read.
⋅ ∶ ∴ ∷ indicate relative story length. ⋅ is shorter, ∷ is longer.
‹ indicates a pretext. ‹‹ indicates two pretexts, etc.
- indicates either an application or a connect the dots.
-- indicates both an application and connect the dots.
› indicates a post text. ›› indicates two post texts, etc.
⌖ indicates one or more map links.

To minimize nonessential barriers to entry (to minimize distractions on your first visit) I hide all my customization options until you've read the first story (GE 1). Marking that first story as read "unlocks" the customization options.

The most practical time to read the Bible, if we plan to read it 7 days a week, is either first thing when we wake up or last thing before bed. At these times, looking at a white background with black text is like looking into a flashlight (not fun). 9/10 smartphones I've ever owned have had Super AMOLED screens, and I design all my content to be used with these. (Super AMOLED screens actually put zero energy into a black pixel, making them the deepest black achievable.) Additionally, we use black ink on white paper because white is the natural state of paper and black is the highest contrast. Black is the natural state of any computer/​phone/​tablet display, and white is highest contrast. Making text white and the background black makes the text literally glow, rather than making the background glow and then making us read between the glow. In other words, it's just easier on the eyes (less eye strain). But if you want to flip the color theme, I do give you the option.

So you can go on tangents and not lose where you were.

This way you don't need a login account and can stay completely anonymous. In addition to the customizations at the top of the stories menu, more are available on my customization page (here) including font face, font color, line height, side margin width, etc.

Note, this is my personal website and may change at any time at my discretion, and future improvements may subtly change how the stories are defined (which would affect the cookies used). If you chose to use the progress marks on the left, consider printing (even just a PDF) of the page to capture a log of your progress, because the date you read each story is saved in the cookie and visible when you print the list of all the stories, and when you hover a pointer over any filled circle (example: ●). For your privacy I do not read the cookies you create (that is, I personally. Obviously the webpage reads the cookie settings to tailor your user experience) and I have no backup, they are purely for your convenience.

All my cookies fall into the GDPR category of "strictly necessary," and I have no marketing nor tracking cookies. All my cookie names begin with "pref_" or "story_". Any others you may see are added without my consent by my hosting company or are otherwise out of my control. Each of my cookies last 999 days (about 2 years 8 months) or until you clear your cookies. The cookies are device-browser specific, so different browsers will allow you to track different progress on the same device, and your progress cannot be automatically shared across devices (you can always manually keep your read progress in sync across any number of devices.)

Your use of this page is both voluntary and free, there is no warranty of any kind. The only tracking done is a hit log for very basic anonymous analysis, and I have never sold, given, nor traded anything relating to my website (that isn't already publicly available) especially your data (what very little I have). As users of a website, without going out of our way to get specialized software, cookies (in their functional form) cannot be cut, copied, pasted, edited, modified, saved, archived, nor exported. They can only be deleted. All cookies used by my website are only created on demand and can be deleted when desired through a combination of here and here.