How to Say the Books of the Bible in English (and 3 Words Worth Knowing)
All 66 books of the Bible, said out loud, plus a page most readers skip: Dictionary-Concordance.
Could you say all 66 books of the Bible out loud, in English, right now? Genesis is easy. So is John. But somewhere around Deuteronomy, or Nehemiah, or Habakkuk, most of us slow down, guess, and hope nobody asks us to read that part aloud in a group.
You know these books. You've read them, studied them, built your week around them. It's a different skill to say the word out loud, with confidence, in a language you learned second. Reading a word and voicing a word are 2 different things, and if English isn't your first language, most of your Bible vocabulary arrived through your eyes and never through your ears.
That gap stays small until:
Someone asks you to read in a study group.
A sermon lands on a word you've only ever seen on the page.
You want to pray it, not scan it.
And you realise you're not quite sure how it sounds.
Why saying the word matters as much as knowing it
Anyone reading Scripture in a second language can carry a large reading vocabulary and a small speaking one. You recognise the word instantly on the page and freeze the second you have to voice it.
That's not a lack of ability. It's a lack of practice out loud, and it's fixable one word at a time. The goal of this series is simple: to hear, read, and understand the word, one word at a time, until reading Scripture in English feels like yours and not borrowed. This is what English for Believers wants to achieve. With the names you already half-know, said properly, and then one page most readers skip.
Watch the full episode below, or on YouTube here. You can read on and say the words from the page, or press play and say them out loud with me. Either way works.
First, say the books of the Bible out loud
Part 1 is exactly that: all 66 books of the Bible, in order, said out loud in English. On screen you'll see each name with the stressed syllable in capitals, so you know which part to lean on.
GEN-esis. Deu-ter-ON-o-my. That's the whole trick to sounding sure of a word: know where the stress lands, and the rest follows.
We go through them the way they sit in Scripture, in groups:
Group | Books of the Bible |
The Law | Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy |
Historical | Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, 1 & 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther |
Poetry and wisdom | Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon |
Major prophets | Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel |
Minor prophets | Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi |
Gospels and Acts | Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts |
Paul's letters | Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon |
General letters | Hebrews, James, 1 & 2 Peter, 1, 2 & 3 John, Jude |
Prophecy | Revelation |
A few names catch almost everyone, and they're worth pausing on:
Psalms. The L is silent. Read it as if it isn't there: "Sahms." Don't let the spelling talk you out of it.
Ruth, Jude, Luke. That double vowel is there to stretch the sound. Ruth, not "ruhth." Luke, not "luhk." Long and open.
Job. This one isn't the job you apply for. It rhymes with globe. Long O.
Revelation. Singular. No S on the end. It's the book of Revelation, not Revelations. I said it wrong for years, so if you've been adding that S, you're in good company, and now we both stop.
Take these slowly. Pause the video, say the name, say it again. The goal isn't speed. It's the moment a name stops feeling borrowed in your mouth.
The most skipped pages in the book
Turn to the back of most Bibles and you'll find a dictionary-concordance. It's a reading tool, and almost nobody uses it. It defines the key words of Scripture in plain English with a pronunciation guide. It tells you the book, chapter and verse where each one appears. And it gives you the origin, the Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic or Latin story behind the word you're reading.
That last part matters more than it sounds. The language under the English is where a word's weight comes from. When you know that a word travelled out of Aramaic or Latin to reach your page, you read it differently. You slow down. You give it its due.
In the second part, I take 3 words the way the dictionary presents them: the meaning, the pronunciation, where to find them, and where they came from. 3 words that sit close together near the front of the dictionary, and could not be more different once you say them out loud.
Abba
Say it first: AB-bah. Slowly, then a little faster, until it settles: Abba.
It's the Aramaic word for father. Not father as a title, but father as a person you'd run to. In Scripture it's a personal address to God, used with reverence and intimacy at the same time, the way a child speaks to a parent they trust completely.
And it's rare. Abba appears just 3 times in the whole Bible:
Mark 14:36 · Romans 8:15 · Galatians 4:6
Open your Bible to those 3 verses and ask a simple question at each one: who is speaking, and what is happening to them as they say it? The answer changes how the word feels. For a word so small and so rare, it carries an extraordinary amount.
Abhor
Say it: ab-HOR. A heavier sound, and a heavier word.
To abhor is to detest. To hate something deeply and completely. The dictionary traces it through Hebrew and Greek words meaning to loathe, or to cast away as unclean. This isn't mild dislike. It's rejection at the root.
It appears 22 times, most often in Leviticus, Job and Amos. This is a word you'll want to meet in its context, because who is doing the abhorring, and what is being cast away, is the entire meaning. Read it cold and it's just a strong word. Read it in place and it tells you something about the heart of the passage.
One small caution while we're here. Abhor is not alter. Altar, with an A, is our next word, and it's a different thing entirely. Alter, with an E, means to change. They sound close, they're spelled close, and they trip up first-language readers too.
Altar
Say it: AWL-ter. After Abhor, it feels almost gentle.
An altar is a raised structure or table where sacrifices and offerings were made, to God, or, in pagan worship, to false gods. The Bible is full of both, which is part of why the word turns up so often.
Its origin is Latin: altare, related to altus, meaning high. If you speak Portuguese, you already know this word. Alto means high, and it comes from the same root. That's one of the quiet gifts of reading Scripture in English with a Romance language behind you. The roots keep reaching across, and words you thought were foreign turn out to be relatives.
And altar is everywhere. It appears 321 times, across more than 30 books, most often in Leviticus and Exodus. Once you start noticing how many altars are built, and where, and by whom, you're reading the story more closely than you were the week before.
The number that surprises almost everyone
Put the 3 words side by side and something strange stands out. Abba, the word many of us hear most often, in worship, in song, in prayer, appears in the Bible 3 times. Altar, a word you may rarely say out loud, appears 321 times.
We assume the words we hear most often are the ones written most often. It's almost never true. Frequency in a room and frequency on a page are 2 different things, and if English is your second language, the room is usually where you first met the word.
That's the real lesson hiding inside a vocabulary list. A word you've heard a thousand times and read 3 times is a word you've probably never actually checked. And that's exactly where a second-language reader loses accuracy, not on the hard words you look up, but on the familiar ones you never think to.
Word | Say it | Meaning | Origin | Times in the Bible | Found most in |
Abba | AB-bah | Father, spoken with reverence and intimacy | Aramaic | 3 | Mark, Romans, Galatians |
Abhor | ab-HOR | To detest; to cast away as unclean | Hebrew and Greek | 22 | Leviticus, Job, Amos |
Altar | AWL-ter | A raised structure for offerings | Latin (altare, from altus, high) | 321, across 30+ books | Leviticus, Exodus |
Every time I reach a genealogy, all those names and who came from whom, I lose the thread completely. There's a woman online who mapped the whole family tree onto a board, and I go back to that video every single time I hit a genealogy.
So if you've found a way to keep them straight, tell me. Genuinely. Leave it in the comments on the episode and help your sister in Christ. Some of the best things in this series will come from you, not from me.
Where to start this week
Don't try to master everything at once. Pick a handful of book names that always catch you, and say them out loud until they stop feeling strange. Then pick one word, Abba is a good place to begin, open the 3 verses it lives in, and say it in context.
One name, one word, said out loud. That's how a reading vocabulary quietly becomes a speaking one, and it's the whole method of this series: hear it, read it, understand it, one word at a time.
Who this series is for
This is for believers who study, serve or worship in English when it isn't their first language. International missions. Theological study. Faith-based non-profits. Global congregations where the working language is English even when the hearts in the room speak 6 others.
Whatever language you were raised in, you should be able to open Scripture in English with confidence. Not the gist of it. Every word of it. One at a time.
Follow the series
Part 1 is on YouTube now. Part 2 lands soon, and it goes deeper into the words themselves: more of them, and how often they actually appear in Scripture, which is rarely what you'd guess. It also takes on the expressions we all get wrong, the phrases people assume are biblical that aren't, and the everyday sayings that came straight out of Scripture without anyone noticing. Subscribe so you don't miss it.
Want more like this between episodes?
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