The bestselling book of all time is the Bible. There are estimated to be well over five billion copies worldwide, and there are approximate seven billion people alive today. Considering you’re reading this from a country with internet access, you’ve almost certainly encountered the Bible in your life. Even if you don’t have a physical copy of it yourself, you may have it on your phone, and anyone can access it online in any translation and in almost every language.

Translations (Versions)

You’ll see these marked as KJV, NIV, ESV, AMP, etc.

So the Bible was written in different languages. The Old Testament was in Hebrew and the New Testament used multiple languages, but Greek was a big one there. Historically, there was a long time in the middle ages that the Bible was in Latin and only the highly educated leaders of the Catholic church could read it, but thanks to men like Martin Luther translated it out of Latin so the common people could read it too.

Now we have all kinds of versions. These all say the same things, but they use different words. For example, the King James Version (KJV) is older and closer to Shakespeare’s English and says “Thou” and “Thy” a lot more. Then you have the New International Version (NIV) which is generally recommended for someone’s first time through the Bible. There are versions like the Message (MSG) that water it down a little bit more and sound conversational, but there are also versions like the English Standard Version (ESV) that use words that are more closely related to the original Greek or Hebrew words that were used. I usually use the New King James Version (NKJV) because it has the authenticity of the KJV while being easier to read. This is almost all your own preference though, most of them are good.

Sections

There is one major division in the Bible. That division separates the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament is mostly about history and God’s character. Then within the Old and New Testaments there are books. For the most part, the Old Testament is made of the old Hebrew books of the law, books of history, wisdom, and prophecy. There are books like Genesis, 1st and 2nd Samuel, and all kinds of others in the Old Testament that tell histories. Books like Leviticus focus on the laws that the Hebrews had to follow before Jesus came and aren’t irrelevant per se, but don’t get freaked out and think you need to follow all of those.

The New Testament is what is largely relevant to Christians today and it’s usually the best place to start reading. There’s no part of the Bible that shouldn’t be read, but for the sake of the reader’s understanding and so that what they read is relevant to them, it’s usually best to start in the New Testament, especially the Gospels. The Gospels are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These books tell the history of Jesus. These four books are where we can go to actually learn how He lived, spoke, and did things. Most of the rest of the New Testament is made up of letters that people wrote to churches or individual Christians at the time. They usually provide teaching and insight. The problems they went through then are still problems we go through today, so these are helpful to read just for everyday life to know how to handle certain situations.

Why read it?

So why even read the Bible? It’s not a requirement for salvation. You don’t need to check a box and say you read the Bible a certain amount of times to get in to Heaven. There are many reasons to read the Bible, though. It can help you understand who God is and what your purpose is here. The whole premise behind the Bible is that God loves us. We’re His kids. He wants us to do what’s right, not to follow arbitrary rules and miss out on what’s fun, but because honestly we on our own have no idea what to do. Generally, people aren’t very good at life on their own. We all make mistakes (and always will) and we get overwhelmed and don’t always know what to do. We can use the Bible in times like this, though. There’s going to be scripture that’s relevant to anything you’re going through and it can help you to feel better and have perspective. It gives us guidelines of what will benefit us and what will hurt us, as well as the reasons why, but it also gives us instruction on how to handle difficult situations and it’s encouraging, no matter how bad your life can get.