Bible stories in chronological order, from Genesis to Revelation

The Bible’s story runs through twelve eras: beginnings, the patriarchs, the Exodus, the conquest, the judges, the united kingdom, the divided kingdom and its prophets, the exile, the return, the life of Jesus, the early church, and the vision of the end. Learn the twelve and every story finds its place.

The Holy Bible coloring book walks the same road in order, from Creation through the Exodus and the kingdom of David and Solomon to the Nativity, the Sermon on the Mount and the empty tomb, with a Scripture passage beside every scene.

The Bible is a library, arranged by kind of book rather than by date. First come law and history, then poetry and wisdom, then the prophets; in the New Testament, the Gospels, then Acts, the letters and Revelation. So Job, Psalms and the prophets sit after Esther, though they were spoken or written during earlier eras.

That means a prophet often belongs inside a story you read hundreds of pages earlier. Jonah preaches during the reigns told in 2 Kings, and Jeremiah lives through the fall of Jerusalem that closes it.

Even inside the Gospels, the four writers arrange some events by theme. Reading in story order doesn’t replace the canonical order; it gives you the frame so the rest of the library makes sense.

The story opens in Genesis 1 to 11 with the oldest scenes: God creates the world in six days and rests on the seventh, Adam and Eve leave the garden, Cain kills Abel, Noah survives the flood, and humanity scatters from the tower of Babel. These chapters explain where everything else comes from.

Each story ends in a break and a mercy. Adam and Eve are sent out but clothed; Cain is exiled but marked for protection; the flood ends with a rainbow and a promise.

Creation opens the Holy Bible coloring book: light, land, sea and life, a scene you can spend a whole evening on. Start with blues and greens, then save gold for the light.

From Genesis 12, the story narrows to one family. God calls Abraham to leave Ur and promises him a land and countless descendants. His son Isaac fathers twin rivals, Jacob and Esau. Jacob’s twelve sons become the tribes of Israel, and the youngest but one, Joseph, is sold into Egypt.

Joseph’s story is the Bible’s first great novel. A slave becomes Pharaoh’s governor, a famine brings his brothers to his door, and he forgives them: you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.

Many readers place the book of Job in this era too, among herds and tents, before any law of Moses.

Generations later, Jacob’s descendants are slaves in Egypt. Moses, raised in Pharaoh’s palace, meets God in a burning bush and leads Israel out after ten plagues. The sea parts, the law is given on Mount Sinai, and forty years in the desert end with Joshua leading the people across the Jordan and around the walls of Jericho.

The Exodus is the story Israel tells about itself every Passover. It is also the frame for Holy Week: Jesus dies at the feast that remembers this night.

Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy sit inside this era. Read them as the camp’s rulebook and speeches, not as a detour, and they stop being a wall.

The Exodus is one of the great scenes of the Holy Bible coloring book: Moses, the parted sea and the tablets of the law on Sinai.

After Joshua, Israel has no king, and leaders called judges rise in each crisis: Deborah, Gideon, Samson. The book of Ruth is set in the same years. Then the prophet Samuel anoints Saul, then the shepherd David, who kills Goliath and takes Jerusalem. His son Solomon builds the Temple there.

This is the Bible at its most human. David is a poet and a warrior, a friend and an adulterer, and the Psalms attached to his name sit inside these chapters.

Under David and Solomon the twelve tribes stand united for the only time. The Holy Bible coloring book gives the kingdom of Israel its own scenes, with the Temple rising in Jerusalem.

After Solomon the kingdom splits in two. Israel in the north falls to Assyria in 722 BC; Judah in the south falls to Babylon in 587 BC, and Jerusalem and the Temple burn. The prophets, from Elijah to Isaiah and Jeremiah, speak through these centuries. In 539 BC Persia lets the exiles go home.

In Babylon, Daniel refuses to stop praying and spends a night with the lions. Back in Jerusalem, Ezra restores the law and Nehemiah rebuilds the walls in fifty-two days.

Esther belongs to the same Persian years, in the palace at Susa. With Malachi, the last prophet, the Old Testament story falls quiet for about four hundred years.

The New Testament story begins in Bethlehem. Jesus is born, grows up in Nazareth, is baptized in the Jordan, calls twelve disciples, teaches and heals across Galilee, and enters Jerusalem for a final Passover, where he is crucified. On the third day the tomb is found empty.

Two of our guides take this era scene by scene: the Christmas story in chronological order and the life of Jesus in chronological order, scene by scene.

The Holy Bible coloring book gives you the Nativity, the Sermon on the Mount and the Resurrection. For the whole life in more detail, the Jesus Christ book spends 30+ scenes on it, and the Nativity book on Christmas alone.

Fifty days after Easter, at Pentecost, the disciples receive the Holy Spirit and Peter preaches to the crowds. Acts follows the church from Jerusalem to Rome: Stephen is stoned, Saul becomes Paul on the road to Damascus, and his journeys carry the faith across the Mediterranean. Revelation closes with John’s vision of a new heaven and a new earth.

Paul’s letters belong inside Acts. Read 1 Thessalonians beside his visit to Thessalonica in Acts 17, and Romans just before he reaches Rome, and the letters turn into mail from real places.

Revelation is written to seven churches in Asia Minor, probably near the end of the first century. Its images echo Genesis on purpose: a tree of life, a river, a garden city. The story ends where it began.

Take one era a week for twelve weeks. Read the key stories from the table, not every chapter, then color one scene from that era before you move on. Twelve weeks, twelve pages, and you will hold the whole Bible story in order, the frame every later reading hangs on.

Begin on a Sunday and finish the week with the page. The coloring gives the story somewhere to land, so you remember where David sits and where the exile falls.

Lent is a good season for it; our Lent ideas for adults lay out a week-by-week plan you can pair with these eras. Comparing books first? Here are the best Bible coloring books for adults that tell the story rather than letter a verse.

Twelve eras hold the whole Bible. Put the stories in order, and the books that seemed scattered start to read like one long story, from a garden at the start to a garden city at the end.

Start with the Holy Bible book for the whole sweep, then go deeper into the Gospels with the life of Jesus and the Nativity.