1. People need to learn to read in meaningful sections; and in order to do this they must get rid of the numbers. As useful as those number are for finding things, they are absolute distractions when it comes to informed reading. Not only are they all too often put in the wrong place, but they give people the idea that God had something to do with giving us a Bible in “verses”! And as long as people have numbers, they will read “a chapter a day looking for a verse for the day,” which in turn will keep them basically illiterate about Scripture as a whole. Fortunately, there will soon be such a Bible on the market, published by the International Bible Society, which attempts to format the Bible so as to be in keeping with almost everything else people read. But whatever else, in order to read well, one must get rid of the numbers.
2. People need to learn to read Scripture aloud. Silent reading, which works well in libraries, thank you, does not work well if people are trying to read with understanding and memory. Silent reading is a modern invention, whose advantage is reading more quickly—and please continue to read the newspaper and Time silently! Everyone in antiquity read—and prayed—aloud; this was simply the norm. The advantages of reading aloud are two: First, it slows one down enough so as to catch all the words, and often the nuances; second, three of your senses are involved not just one, which makes for better memory.
3. Most people will need to read with some kind of guide, such as our HOW TO READ THE BIBLE BOOK BY BOOK. Whatever else, the guide should be a guide, not a commentary or study Bible that explains too much and gives the reader someone else’s opinion as to the meaning of what is being read. The guide should guide the reading, not comment on the meaning.
From Reading Isaiah as Christian Scripture blog / Feb 16, 2001
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