My Wife and I have attempted to read the OT as a couple since we got married. We haven’t made it yet and it’s been 4 years.

Daniel,
Reading the OT as a couple is a bold undertaking and I wish you luck with it. I remember reading the OT as a family when I was a teenager. We were all bored out of our minds with the chapters in the Pentateuch that simply enumerate the names families in each tribe and their members

“The children of Gad after their families: of Zephon, the family of the Zephonites: of Haggi, the family of the Haggites: of Shuni, the family of the Shunites…”

Maybe my wife and I will try it someday, but I think we’ll stick to the BoM and the NT for now.

Just about reading the OT as a couple being “a bold undertaking” … I think there is something to that as well. My impression is that any individual or couple that takes the time to get through the Old Testament will find it fairly easy afterwards to read through the other books of scripture.

I’ll let you know when we make it. It will be awhile. Baby steps, baby steps …

My husband and I have tried more than once to study the scriptures together, and it’s never been particularly successful. It went about as well as studying a foreign language together. We just learn in very different ways. So now we talk about what we’ve each been reading about in the scriptures, and I read fiction out loud to my husband instead. Works for us. We do read the scriptures as a family though, and have started the OT, my favorite book of scripture.

I think there is something wrong with the way we teach the Old Testament in our church. Too many people seem to walk away with the conclusion that it is a boring or tedious book. Underlying the way we teach the OT, in a number of ways, we must be somehow communicating that the OT is too difficult or too tedious, or unnecessary to bother with.

In a sense, at this point, we might very well be talking about individual study rather than couple study … I’m not sure how many couples have or would take the time to sit down with commentaries and go through them thoroughly. Just the same …

For Genesis, I can’t wait to get my hands on these.

However, I don’t think most people find Genesis boring. The problems seems to come up more with other chapters or books that deal with seemingly esoteric matters. But I believe if the right commentaries or teachers are found for these chapters/books, they could really come alive.

I’ve enjoyed the Old Testament when reading it by myself, because I move quickly over parts that I know can be skipped over. Attempting to go over the Old Testament in a group, or a couple, gets really boring for me. I find I study the Old Testament better on my own.

Bill and I have never been able to do this, primarily because he hates to read and I hate to be read too. He’s read the Book of Mormon once in his life, that was last year. I’ve read it to him several times in the mornings when we were trying scripture study as a family, but I don’t think we’ve ever approached real study.

I just do it on my own.

My husband and I have always struggled with reading the scriptures daily. I’m the well-read, smart one who practically memorized the Bible as a Catholic child (due in part to copying pages out of it as punishment). He’s the four-year Seminary graduate who promptly went inactive and has never had much interest in studies. It’s always amazed me how difficult it is for me to wrap my brain around the Book of Mormon and how he seems to know and understand every word of it. I’m at least grateful for a strong testimony of the Book of Mormon received through personal revelation that just because I “don’t get it,” it doesn’t mean it’s not true.

Todd, we just finished Genesis and are now in Exodus. Genesis is pretty coherent and clear. But I’m guessing we’ll hit some gnarly stuff at some point and the idea of pulling out another translation at that point, not a bad idea at all.

It appears Ben has made some suggestions as to which ones to use. I’ll have to give those translations a look-see.

My father, father of eight children (all by one wife—I’m number 6), offered his children back in the late 1950′s about a penny a page (when that was worth much more than it is today) to read the scriptures. I believe the amounts were $13.00 for the Bible, $5.00 for the Book of Mormon, $3.00 for the Doctrine & Covenants, and $2.00 for the Pearl of Great Price. Since the Pearl of Great Price offered the greatest value (Amount of Money per pager), I finished reading that first.

The Book of Mormon I read as a teenager over a period of time. I finished reading it on the way to the airport, so I could collect to give my sister money to buy me something in Europe.

The Bible, I first read completely near the end of my mission. I received a letter from that same sister (4th oldest sister and sibling) when she informed me that she was reading the Bible and was almost finished.

Her news was a shock to me. I always thought of myself as being smarter than any/all of my siblings. And I equated spiritual knowledge as being part of that equation. So, I got on the ball and finished reading the Bible before the end of my mission.

It is interesting that I was able to do that. Before my mission, I had a learning disability. I was unable to finish almost any book. My disability was so bad, I paid my mother to read many of my books for me in high school, and then tell me what they said, because, try as I might, I often and always fell asleep when I read.

Perhaps learning French (my mission was in France) somehow helped me get over that.

After my mission, I wanted to get into scripture study in a big way. But working and college occupied much of my time for the next 3-1/2 years, as I garnered two bachelor degrees.

In the same year I graduated (1979), I found my wife and married her. I read the scriptures some, but did not make any significant headway in getting immersed in them until a certain ward member was called to be the gospel doctrine teacher.

This fellow had served a mission. He was on his second marriage. And I knew that at least once he had been on probation with the Church. My opinion of his moral character, therefore, wasn’t very high. (My pride has been both a source of my progress and problems). But this brother was giving lessons in which I was learning ever more about the Old Testament from him, and starting to get concerned that he may be getting ahead of me in scriptural knowledge.

So, I did what any prideful person should. I humbled myself a little. And I began to work and work and read and read to improve and increase my grip on the handle of knowledge of the scriptures, particularly of the Old Testament.

One of the keys I found for myself was the concept of having a chronological framework to hang my knowledge on.

By that, I had a basic understanding of OT history from the creation down until Solomon was king over Israel. But, after that, everything seemed muddied to me.

So, I worked at learning what happened after that, and, it made the difference. I learned about how Israel divided itself into two nations (the Northern nation of Israel, and the Southern nation of Judah). And, each were ruled by kings. “Israel” from the time of Jeroboam down to Hoshea had 19 kings. All of them got a “thumbs down” rating in the Bible. None of them were righteous. The kingdom essentially ended around 721 B.C., after an approximate 210 year time, when the very fierce Assyrian army killed most of them, and carried the rest off into exile. Within a few years, however, most of the Israelites escaped from the Assyrians, and headed North. They became “lost” to history.

The Kingdom of Judah last more than a century longer, when the Babylonians conquered it (for the third time within a few decades) around 587 B.C., and carried a total of less than 5000 “Jews” (in total) between the three times it laid siege (again, 3 times) to Jerusalem and its environs.

Seventy years later, under the Persian King Cyrus, a portion of the Jews returned to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple.

I have read the Bible just a few times in my lifetime. Sadly, I found out last year, when I told my sister that she was the impetus for me to read the Bible all the way through the first time, that she has not read all the way through since.

On December 30, 2007, we finished reading the Bible all the way through. It took us about 4-1/2 years, reading most every Sunday, usually in the evening, for from 1/2 hour up to an hour or so, depending on how awake we could keep most everybody, to finish the Old Testament. The two youngest of our nine children learned how to read, as they read with us in the Bible. Our youngest, now 8, went from being completely illiterate at the first of First Grade, to being one of the best readers and students by the end of her First Grade year.

The New Testament took us another year-and-a-half to read all the way through. We found, with our larger family, that having everyone read one verse at a time worked best in keeping everyone as close to awake as possible.

But I was and am the driving force in getting and keeping my family on task in doing this. I have often stopped in the middle of reading, sometimes at the end, to explain things. I quiz my family on different things, to see if they understand, and to help them to understand.

All of my children have a reputation for wherever they go as being scriptural scholars. I am often referred to as a “Scriptorian”. Though I know that I know relatively little about so much in the scriptures.

When I read through the Old Testament the second time, I looked for anything and everything I could to make it interesting to me. To give me something to tell someone else. I found names of TV action heroes, though mispelled, in what I read. I tried to find, and did, much humor. Uz and Buz are great sources, among many others, for humor and making up funny little stories about to tell others—even if that was just my wife.

I also found a “He Man” (Heman) and Sherah – cartoon heroes from the mid-80′s on TV, in my OT reading. I worked hard at finding things to keep my interest, to keep me awake, to keep me reading.

I follow the concept of “burning it in (my) brain” and “soldering it solid” with important things. I will, at times, memorize generations of patriarchs (from Adam to Noah). Or I will memorize the sons of Jacob (Israel), and have my children do also—often, but not always, for “filthy lucre”. Inflation has taken its toll. I have to pay quarters and dollars for what cost my Dad pennies, to get and give my children incentives to memorize things, or to tell me something of what we just read.

Elder Sterling W. Sill’s quote from Proverbs in a Stake Conference when I was but a boy has always stuck with me—

“With all thy getting, get understanding”.

And then quoting “somebody”, he added, “And, with all thy getting, GET GOING!”

President Kimball’s admonition has also helped. He read the Bible from front to finish after Sister Susanna Young Gates in stake conference told those in attendance to do it. President Kimball said, “If I can read the Bible by the light of a coal oil lamp, you can read it by the light of an electric bulb”. I have. You can too, IF YOU WILL!

And, I find that reading the scriptures is like an English professor in college taught us about writing a good paper. You don’t write a good paper. You rewrite it!

So it is with the scriptures. It is not just a “once and you are done.” No, understanding and implementing the commandments, principles and lessons contained in the scriptures is a lifetime (and I will add, very exhilarating) pursuit.

It is prophesied that the world will one day have what is contained in the Brass Plates to read. But how can we expect to receive that, when we essentially eschew and evade reading the portion of the Brass Plates we already have—the Old Testament!?!

Read it and REAP!