Educated by tutors and at Starke's University School in Montgomery, Jones was a voracious reader who tackled everything from Tom Swift and Tarzan to Walter Scott and Foxe's Book of Martyrs.
After graduating from Bob Jones College in 1931, when he was nineteen, Jones earned a master's degree in history at the University of Pittsburgh (1933) and did further graduate work at the University of Chicago Divinity School and Northwestern University.