How the Annual Torah Reading Cycle plan was adapted

The Reading Plan tab's “Adapted Torah Portion” option follows the traditional annual cycle of weekly Torah portions (parashot), each paired with its Haftarah reading and a New Testament companion passage. The Torah and Haftarah pairing, and the New Testament companion for each week, come from Chosen People Ministries' Messianic Calendar. This page explains the two things that changed between that source and what actually appears on this site.

Converting Haftarah and Torah citations to the KJV

Jewish reference calendars cite Scripture using the Hebrew (Masoretic) chapter and verse numbering, which differs from the King James Version's numbering at several well-documented points — sometimes by a few verses, sometimes by a whole chapter boundary. Since this site's Bible text is specifically the KJV, every citation from the source calendar was checked against this site's own Bible pages, and any citation that didn't line up was corrected. Seven were found:

• Yitro's Torah reading: given as Exodus 18:1–20:23, corrected to Exodus 18:1–20:26. This is the well-known “Ten Commandments” split: Hebrew verse 13 (a single long verse) becomes four separate verses, 13–16, in English translations, so every verse from Hebrew verse 14 onward runs a constant three verses ahead in English. The corrected 20:26 is also the true final verse of the KJV's chapter 20, which closes a gap that would otherwise sit between this portion and the next one (Mishpatim, starting at 21:1).
• Vayikra and Tzav's shared Leviticus boundary: given as Leviticus 1:1–5:26 and 6:1–8:36, corrected to Leviticus 1:1–6:7 and 6:8–8:36. Hebrew Leviticus 6:1–7 corresponds to KJV 5:20–26 (the same style of shift as Exodus 20 above); KJV 6:8–30 corresponds to Hebrew 6:1–23. Fixing both readings the same way keeps them contiguous with each other, both before and after the correction — one of the clearest confirmations that this was the right fix, not just a plausible-looking one.
• Terumah's Haftarah: given as 1 Kings 5:26–6:13, corrected to 1 Kings 5:12–6:13. Hebrew 1 Kings 4:21–34 is renumbered as Hebrew 5:1–14, so Hebrew chapter 5 runs 32 verses where the KJV's runs only 18.
• Tzav's alternate Haftarah: given as Malachi 3:4–24, corrected to Malachi 3:4–4:6. The Hebrew Bible prints Malachi as three chapters; what the KJV calls chapter 4 is simply the tail end of the Hebrew's chapter 3 (Hebrew 3:19 = KJV 4:1).
• Vayeilech's alternate Haftarah: given as Hosea 14:2–10, corrected to Hosea 14:1–9. Hebrew Hosea 14 has 10 verses where the KJV's has 9.
• Vayetzei's Haftarah: given as Hosea 12:13–14:10, corrected to Hosea 12:13–14:9 — the same Hosea 14 cause as above.
• Beha'alotcha's Haftarah: given as Zechariah 2:14–4:7, corrected to Zechariah 2:10–4:7. Hebrew Zechariah 2:1–4 absorbs what the KJV numbers as 1:18–21, pushing the rest of Hebrew chapter 2 four verses ahead of the KJV's; chapter 3 onward realigns normally.

Every one of the resulting 140 readings (Torah and Haftarah for all 47 weeks, plus a New Testament companion for all but one — Ha'azinu's week has none in the source calendar) was checked against this site's own KJV text to confirm the cited verses actually exist. The Torah column specifically was also checked for gaps or overlaps across the whole cycle — it runs perfectly contiguously from Genesis 1:1 through Deuteronomy 34:12, with no verse read twice and none skipped.

Separately, a few weeks in the source calendar list more than one Haftarah option: either a second sub-reading for a combined double-portion week (e.g. “Vayak'hel-Pekudei”), or an alternate reading for a special Sabbath that only falls on that portion in some years (Shabbat Shuva, HaGadol, Zachor, Shekalim, or HaChodesh). Since this plan is a fixed week-by-week sequence rather than one tied to a specific calendar year, only the first-listed reading is used in every such case, so the plan doesn't depend on which year it's read in.

Why only three columns

Unlike Bible Mark or the M'Cheyne-style plan, this plan doesn't read the whole Bible on its own: the Torah column covers Genesis through Deuteronomy completely, but the Haftarah and New Testament columns are curated companion passages chosen for their thematic connection to that week's Torah portion, not a sequential read-through — large stretches of the Prophets, Writings, and New Testament are never touched by them. An earlier version of this plan added a fourth column that filled in every chapter the other three didn't touch, so the whole Bible would be covered across the same 47 weeks. It was removed: the filler had no thematic connection to its week, and its length varied wildly from week to week depending on how much ground Haftarah and New Testament happened to already cover, which made it feel arbitrary rather than purposeful. This site's other reading plans — the standard, chronological, and M'Cheyne- style plans, and Bible Mark — already read the whole Bible on their own, so this plan is free to stay what it's meant to be: a focused companion to the Torah portion, not a vehicle for covering the rest of the canon too.

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