Comparison of Book Orders

By Ryan Eaton
Posted Tuesday, Simeon 22, 13000

We've reordered the books of the Bible by matching them to chapters in the book of Isaiah. The resulting book order (which we like calling Isaiah's book order) is quite different from the traditional book order everyone learned in Sunday school (or college). So I've created a table to show the similarities and differences.

A side by side comparison shows:

• 88% of the books change position
• 84% of the books have a different book before or after them
• 50% of the books have a different book before and after them
• 50% of the books are in a swath (2 or more books in a row)
• The aggregate difference in order is somewhere north of 50%

To aid parsing of the table I've used color. The "Position" column in the center has a few cells with a light red background. Those cells mark books that retain the exact same position in both book orders. Colors in the "Isaiah" and "Traditional" columns mark book swaths used in both orders.

I'll leave it to the rest of the site to do the heavy lifting for why Isaiah's book order is better than the alternatives, but suffice it to say the change in order means a change in what can be understood from Scripture and the rules for how we get there. So look around and consider what's possible when you shift to a book order based on Scripture instead of tradition.