Kevin Wilson has been reflecting on the difficulties of cramming too much into introductory courses. In particular the conundrum that if you ask students to read the Bible (in an Intro to the Bible course) there is no time to read a textbook too.
Duane Smith demonstrated that this was equally an impossibility in ancient times, after having claimed that "we read most of the Hebrew Bible (in English)" he then admits: "1 and 2 Chronicles and Esther were not assigned and we only read about half of the minor prophets and just selections from Leviticus, Numbers,
Deuteronomy, Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Job. Only a few of the Psalms and parts of Proverbs were assigned." so even back in the "good old days" when men were men and everyone a speedreader with no TV to watch or Internet to play with they only actually managed to read some good chunks of the Bible, and I bet less good students (even back then) managed to scrape by reading only bits of the books actually assigned ;)

Charles Halton also chipped in, admitting: "I don’t have good resolution yet." to the problem of "the ratio of primary and secondary readings".

I do!

Do not set the Bible as required reading. If your students do not read the Bible for themselves, or at least listen to the podcasts, then they really have little interest in the subject, so leave those students to flounder!

Actually seriously, there is no way to set reading the whole Bible as required reading, so set and use only small chunks, and make talking about them so interesting that students will want to read more... as always in teaching we need to remind ourselves that "sugar catches more flies than vinegar."