Bible Coloring Pages

These Bible coloring pages are story pages: each one is a single moment from a single story, drawn so that a child who has heard it can say which one it is before picking up a crayon.

The Old Testament comes first. The Garden of Eden with a river running through it, and Adam naming the animals with a lion at his side and an eagle landing in the trees. Noah's ark afloat with its passengers crowding the rail, the animals walking up the gangplank two by two, and the dove flying back to the window with the olive branch. Baby Moses in his basket among the bulrushes with his sister watching from the bank, the burning bush with his sandals left on the ground, the crowd walking through the parted sea, the stone tablets held up on the mountain, manna gathered at dawn and water pouring from the rock.

Then the rest of the Old Testament. Jacob asleep under the ladder of angels, Joseph in his coat with his brothers scowling around him and his dream of the bowing sheaves, priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant, trumpets sounding around the walls of Jericho, Ruth gleaning, young Samuel sitting up in bed in the temple at night, David and Goliath, David again as a shepherd boy with his harp, Elijah fed by ravens, and Jonah beside the great fish.

The New Testament opens with the nativity: the manger with the ox and the donkey, the shepherds under the star, the wise men on their camels. After it come the stories Jesus told and the things he did: the sower, the Good Shepherd carrying the lost sheep, the boy with the loaves and fish and the crowd fed on the hillside, Zacchaeus in his tree, the Good Samaritan, the house on the rock and the house on the sand, and the disciples hauling in a net bulging with fish.

A term of Sunday school, one story a week

The pages follow the order of the Bible closely enough to run a whole year from them. Start in the garden in September, reach the flood by October, spend late autumn with Moses in the desert, arrive at the stable in December, and give the spring to the parables. A child who colors one scene a week ends the year with the outline of the whole book in a folder.

It works because each page shows the moment everyone remembers rather than a crowd of details. Nobody needs a caption to recognize a boy with a sling in front of a giant. That leaves the teacher free to tell the story while the coloring happens, which is what keeps a room of six year olds quiet for twenty minutes.

Big shapes for the youngest in the room

Some scenes are almost nothing but open space: the two blank tablets above the mountain, the dove at the window, the burning bush, water splashing from the rock. A four year old with chunky crayons can fill one without going over the line more than once or twice. Quick to color above the grid keeps these, starting with:

• Two stone tablets held up on Mount Sinai
• The dove returning to the ark with an olive branch
• The parable of the sower scattering seed

The blank tablets are worth a word. They are drawn empty on purpose, so an older child can write the commandments on them by hand, or just the first one, or their own name.

Crowd scenes that fill an afternoon

Other pages are full to the edges. The walls of Jericho are built block by block, the Red Sea curls into hundreds of small waves, and the hillside where the crowd is fed has a face in every corner. These suit an older child, a teenager or an adult who wants a page to last. Lots of detail keeps them:

• The Good Shepherd carrying the lost sheep
• Trumpeters marching around the walls of Jericho
• Feeding the five thousand on the hillside

What colors did these stories really have?

Most people in these stories wore undyed wool and linen: cream, oatmeal, brown and the gray of unwashed fleece. Color cost money. Blue and purple came from shellfish dye and belonged to the rich and to the temple, so a robe colored violet says something about who is wearing it.

That is why Joseph's coat stood out. The Hebrew words behind "coat of many colors" are not certain, and some scholars read them as a long robe with sleeves, the kind of garment worn by someone who did not do field work. Either way, it marked him as the favorite, which is the whole point of the scene. Color it as brightly as you like and leave his brothers in plain browns, and the page tells the story without a word.

A few other details reward a look at the text. The Ark of the Covenant was overlaid with gold, inside and out, with two cherubim of gold on the lid. Goliath wore bronze: helmet, scale armor and leg guards. Manna, according to Exodus, was white, like coriander seed. And the tree Zacchaeus climbed was a sycamore fig, a Middle Eastern tree with broad leaves and small figs, nothing like the pale-barked sycamores of an American park.

The wise men are a good question to put to a class. The gospel counts their gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh, but never the men themselves. Three is a tradition built on the gifts, and a child who hears that tends to remember it.

A timeline on the classroom wall

Pinned in order along a wall, the pages become a timeline of the Bible, and children like finding their own page in it. Leave a strip of paper under each one for the name of the story, written by the child who colored it.

The nativity pages can be cut out and stood behind a strip of card to make a flat crèche for the windowsill in December, next to a few Christmas coloring pages. Punched and tied with ribbon, a stack of finished stories makes a small picture Bible for a younger brother or sister. And the parable pages are good for a question on the back: which house would you rather live in, and why?

For the symbols rather than the stories, the cross coloring pages hold crosses from a plain shape a toddler can finish to celtic knotwork, and the Easter coloring pages carry the lamb and the lilies. Children who love the ark scenes usually want more animals afterwards: the lion coloring pages for Daniel's fans, and the farm coloring pages for the sheep and lambs of every shepherd story.

A week's lesson in one print

Press Add to pack under each drawing you want, from any collection, and the whole selection prints as one PDF. It stays in your browser while you move around the site, so a week's lesson and a spare page for early finishers go out together.

Every sheet is a free printable PDF at 300 dpi, with no watermark, no account and no email. They are A4: print at actual size on A4, or choose "fit to page" on US Letter. The printing guide covers paper and settings, and the license covers home, church, school and club use.