Frequently Asked Questions

This page contains answers to frequently asked questions.

Why Isaiah?

Ultimately this is a hard question to answer. Why exactly is Isaiah the book that sets the order for all the other books, I don't really know. But some interesting observations have been made about Isaiah that provide clues about it's importance to the rest of the Bible.

What Bible commentators say

Various Bible commentators have called Isaiah a miniature Bible. The one paragraph introduction to the book of Isaiah in the Reference Edition of the New King James Version, published by Thomas Nelson, begins by saying "Isaiah is like a miniature Bible." Our conclusion is the same, that Isaiah is a miniature Bible, but with supporting data that shows how each book in the Bible matches a chapter in Isaiah.

The authorship debate

The authorship of Isaiah debate also points to the idea that Isaiah is somehow like a miniature Bible. To summarize the debate, one side says the prophet Isaiah wrote the whole book and provides scripture from John 12 in support of this idea while the other side says there's a dramatic tone change from Isaiah 40 to the end of the book and therefore the book of Isaiah must be the work of at least two different authors with vastly different outlooks.

Aside from the question of how many people wrote the book of Isaiah, the observation that there's a radical tone change starting at Isaiah 40 reinforces the idea that Isaiah is a miniature Bible. In the scheme of the whole Bible there's a radical tone change when you arrive at the New Testament. It makes sense, if Isaiah is mimicking the Bible, that a tone change would occur starting at chapter 40 to mark the language and tone change of the Bible starting at book 40.

The Dead Sea Scrolls discovery

Another witness of Isaiah's relationship to the rest of the Bible comes from the Dead Sea Scrolls discovery in the middle of the 20th century. Of the 200 biblical manuscripts that came out of the caves at Qumran, only the Isaiah scroll was completely intact.

With the discovery of the Qumran Isaiah, scholars have been able to compare it's differences with the next oldest copies of the Hebrew scriptures, which are more than a thousand years newer. While this sort of textual comparison is important it does explain why Isaiah was preserved in tact instead of say, Jeremiah.

It's my belief that Isaiah is a scriptural witness to the canon and it's arrangement. That's why every single division (what later became chapters) of Isaiah was preserved and why it was not necessary for other books to survive in full. By preserving Isaiah God left us a modern day witness to the whole Bible.

Is this "new revelation?"

A long time acquaintance asked me if rearranging the books of the Bible based on Isaiah is "new revelation." I think I answered poorly at the time. I've never forgotten the question, though, and want to pen my thoughts here.

The short answer seems to be yes and no. Yes, the idea to match the books of the Bible to the chapters of Isaiah to discover the Bible's book order is "new" as far as I know. But, no, in the classic sense of "revelation" being scripture this is definitely not new revelation.

One thing that is clear is our high regard for scripture. The idea to use Isaiah to order the books is based on elevating scripture above tradition. If we didn't have an extremely high regard for scripture we would settle for the book order history hands us instead of saying, wait, it looks like scripture itself shows us a better way.

Are chapter numbers reliable for establishing book order?

The beauty of studying book order is we need not reconstruct history to determine whether the chapter divisions of Isaiah reliably match the books of the Bible. Instead we simply try with what history has given us and if it works it works regardless of what kind of path the Bible may have traveled to come to us in it's modern form. So while the use and placement of chapter numbers has some history which is somewhat interesting, the question of whether we can rely on the divisions of Isaiah to organize the books of the Bible is answered by simply trying.

When we investigate the content in each chapter in the book of Isaiah it is clear that each chapter contains a "unique identifier" that causes it to match one book in the Bible. In other words content like "God said" or "water" or something common is not a good basis for matching chapter and book, but things like "Leviathan" or "naked prophets" which only occur once or twice in the Bible are "unique identifiers."

An audit on our work in Isaiah requires some knowledge of the Bible, but nothing beyond what a High school or ambitious Jr. High student can do with a concordance. After all, how many haircuts are there in the Bible to match the Isaiah 7 haircut? I can think of one or two off the top of my head (no pun intended). Okay three, Samson, Paul and Ezekiel. But Samson's haircut is cleary the famous one. Just use a concordance to determine how many times something exists and you will have a good sense of whether it's unique.

The book order is also robust because each chapter and book match have multiple correspondences. In many cases whole chapters in Isaiah are absorbed in corresponding stories in the matching book, though often in ways different than assumed.

The chapters in Isaiah also run in sequence such that the first chapter matches the first book, the second chapter the second book and so on for 66 chapters. One correlation between a chapter and book would be random, but when every chapter and book uniquely match it suggests design rather than coincidence. If this is the right answer it suggests the addition of chapter numbers to the text of Isaiah long after Isaiah was written was not random either. Perhaps God not only caused the writing of scripture, but oversees it's preservation.

Is the Book Order Bible a chronological Bible?

This is actually a hard question to answer. The short answer is the new book order does not turn the Bible into a "Chronological Bible" as you might buy somewhere.

I really don't have a full answer to this question yet. I'll make a few observations that may help, but we'll have to wait to fully understand the relationship between the new book order and the subject of time.

One of the pecularities of Isaiah's book order is it pays no heed to the dates given at the start of many of the prophets, particularly the minor prophets. Isaiah does not order them in their stated chronological order. That was actually one of the veils we had to push through in the process of understanding how the books match the chapters of Isaiah.

Now, why this is is not exactly clear to me. But two possibilities come to mind. First, it may be that nothing about setting the books in order relates to the subject of time so the fact that the dating for the prophets is "out of order" simply does not matter to the "book order."

The other thing that could be going on relates to the cross reference system that's slowly emerging throughout the Bible as a result of reordering the books. It's clear now even if not well documented that the same 66 book pattern in Isaiah is present throughout the Bible and links virtually the whole Bible together like we've never seen. What can't be seen yet is whether this system will link the time references in the Bible in such a way that we end up with a Chronological Bible embedded in the cross reference system. If that happens, which would be amazing, then the answer to question is yes, this is a Chronological Bible, but not like you've seen before. There's a website dedicated to documenting this cross reference system (www.bibledots.org).

I'm certainly eager to understand this area more, but it's taking time. No pun intended. In the meantime I wholly recommend another website that deals extensively with the chronology of the Bible (www.bibletime.com).

Why are there numbers in front of the book names?

The addition of numbers to the books reinforces a sense of order. If there's no order to the books then of course you wouldn't number them sequentially, but with the books in order it makes perfect sense to number them. It gives the canon a sense of completeness and definition.

From a practical standpoint numbering the books of the Bible completes the numbering system that began with chapters and verses. Genesis 1:1 can more easily be rendered 1.1:1. The numeric address lends itself to jotting notes, citing scripture in academic papers and writing software.

Book numbers are also easy to remember since our brains naturally work well with numbers. If you have ever memorized a shopping list by first memorizing how many items are in the list then you understand the inherent value of numbering the books of the Bible to the task of remembering what's in the Bible. 66 may seem like a long list until you realize you probably know that many people at school or work.

The most important reason, though, for numbering the books is we gain the ability to notate the places in the Bible where the books replay by simply inserting each book's number. By placing a circled number or "dot" in the text the reader is referred to the book with context for what they are reading.

Why is the book of James now Jacob?

The reason we've used Jacob as the book name instead of James is based on a simple word study in the Aramaic and Greek manuscripts. Looking through the sources you will see many occurrences of Jacob (or Yakub to get the pronunciation right), but you won't find a single occurrence of the word James. Turns out Jesus never had a brother or disciple named James, their names were Jacob.

Jacob is a well known person in the Old Testament. He is the grandson of Abraham and father of the twelve boys from which the twelve tribes of Israel came. In fact Jacob's name was changed to Israel by God.

1 Genesis 32:28
28And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.

Now when translators changed the New Testament occurrences of the word Jacob to James they took away the possibility of Bible readers connecting the various Jacobs. This problem is most clear in the opening line of Jacob.

55 Jacob 1:1
641245626218 1James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting.

Sound familiar? The writer is Jacob and he's addressing his twelve kids out in the world somewhere, which sets the context for the rest of the book, but this simple correlation is obscured by the fact that Jacob has been replaced with James and the book is titled James instead of Jacob. The reader could miss the fact the author assumes you know something about Jacob and his kids from Genesis and will use that information to unpack his writing.

So why were the occurrences of Jacob in the New Testament changed to James? I'm not entirely sure how to confirm this, it may be a rumor, but I've heard the switch from Jacob to James happened with the production of the King James Bible at the beginning of the 17th century.

Jesus' brother Jacob was a respected leader in the early church. His leadership is reflected in Acts 15 and the book of Jacob. Perhaps the King wanted his new edition of the Bible to project what type of leader he was going to be so he turned Jacob into James. I don't know.

What I do know is that once everyone was familiar with James in the English Bible the tradition stuck. Even the 20th century Bible translations, supposedly concerned about accuracy, didn't fix this simple problem. Chances are they were too woried about what people would think, which is ironic.

We changed the book name to Jacob to be consistent with scripture.