My cousin, blogging at The Cruciform Life, writes about reading the Bible two different ways:

In his lecture (which is well worth listening to), Keller describes two ways of reading the Bible. When we read the Bible diachronically, we read the text “along the chronos…along the timeline of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, in which case the Gospel (read diachronically) is: Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration.” We might also read the Bible synchroncially that is “across the grain…you can look at it topically: what does the Bible say about God?…about sin?”…etc. If you read the Bible in this way, says Keller, “the Gospel is: God, Sin, Christ, Faith, not works.” Keller argues that “you’ve got to read the Bible both ways.”

I recently found a second confirmation of this “both/and” view in Paul David Tripp’s new book A Quest for More: Living for something bigger than you. . . .

How do you read the Bible? I keep wanting to read it through from cover to cover, and I keep failing to discipline myself to do it. Most recently, I’ve picked a book to read through, sometimes repeating parts of it. But I recognize that I need the discipline of regular Bible reading, regardless my approach.

Because the book is the thing. A summary of it doesn’t cut it.

By way of Frank Wilson, here are a couple posts from Patrick Kurp of Anecdotal Evidence. First, he reads mostly poetry and non-fiction lately, in part because he can’t hack bad modern fiction. Second, he describes a “theology of language.”

Jared lists reasons why we don’t read the Bible.