Two separate problems get tangled together here, and they are worth pulling apart.

Getting the text is easy. It is free, complete, and available in essentially every language you might want.

Getting it without anyone knowing is the part that needs thought — and for a substantial number of people reading this, it is the only part that actually matters.

Read the safety section first

If you share a device, if your family has access to your accounts, or if you live somewhere that this carries risk, do this before anything else. Please read the Safe Place Pledge in full; what follows is a summary.

An installed app is the most visible option. It appears in the device's app list, in app-store purchase history, and frequently in a shared family account that syncs across devices. It is the most common way people are discovered. If your device is shared or monitored, do not start here.

A private browser window is usually better. It leaves nothing in the history when closed. Combined with a VPN, it also keeps the request itself from being visible on the household or national network.

Audio is often the least exposed of all. Complete audio Bibles exist in most major languages. Listened to through headphones, an audio file leaves no page to be found open and no book to be discovered in a drawer — and for readers who are not fully literate in their own written language, it is simply better.

Be careful with downloads. A file saved to a shared device or a family cloud folder is a file someone else may open. If you download, know exactly where it is going.

Where the text is

All of these are free, require no payment, and hold no obligation.

Wordproject (wordproject.org) offers text and audio in a very large number of languages, including Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Turkish, Indonesian and Bengali, readable directly in a browser without an account.

Bible.is, from Faith Comes By Hearing, specialises in audio Scripture in over a thousand languages, including many with no written tradition.

YouVersion / Bible.com carries a very large translation library and can be read in a browser rather than installed — which is the safer route on a shared device.

For Farsi and Persian speakers, Elam Ministries has published Persian Scripture for many years, including a modern translation prepared specifically for contemporary Iranian readers.

For Arabic speakers, the Van Dyck translation is the most widely known and is available everywhere; modern Arabic versions exist and are easier for many readers.

The Jesus Film Project (jesusfilm.org) offers a film of Luke's Gospel dubbed into well over a thousand languages, freely. For anyone who finds reading difficult, or who wants to begin with something less demanding than a text, this is a genuinely good entry point.

What to read first

Not Genesis. People who start at the beginning and read forward almost always stop somewhere in the third book, and conclude that the failure was theirs.

Start with a Gospel — the accounts of Jesus himself.

Luke is the most orderly, opens by explaining that it is the result of an investigation into sources, and gives the fullest account of the birth, including material about Mary that will be familiar.

John is the most direct about who Jesus claimed to be, and is the usual recommendation for anyone whose central question is whether he was a prophet or something more.

Mark is the shortest and fastest, and can be read in a single sitting.

Then, if you continue, Acts — what the followers did next — and the letters.

What you may notice

Two things come up repeatedly in accounts from readers with your background.

The first is how much is already familiar. Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Mary, John the Baptist, Jesus. You are not entering a foreign story; you are reading a version of one you already partly know, with the differences visible.

The second is more specific. A great many people who came to the text after a dream describe the moment of finding the words they had already heard — follow me, I am the way — printed on the page of a book they had never opened. That experience recurs across accounts from people with no connection to one another, and it is discussed further in what the man in the white robe means.

On the objection you will hear

Someone may tell you that the text has been corrupted and is not worth reading. It is the most common single reason Muslims are told not to open the Gospels, and it deserves a real answer rather than a dismissal.

We give it one in is the Bible corrupted, and take up the related question of the Injil in what happened to the Gospel. Both are written to be checked rather than believed.

Common questions

Is it wrong for a Muslim to read the Bible?

The Quran itself affirms the Tawrat and the Injil as revealed and instructs the People of the Book to judge by what is in them. Prohibitions on reading come from later custom and community pressure, not from the Quranic text.

Do I have to buy one?

No. Everything listed here is free. If anyone asks you for money for a Bible, go elsewhere.

Can you send me one?

Please do not have anything posted to an address where receiving it would put you at risk — an unexpected parcel is a common way people are exposed. If you want to talk through the options, write to us without giving your name.