Bible Book Order

Frequently Asked Questions

This page contains answers to frequently asked questions. Read down the page to learn answers to frequently asked questions or click a specific question at the top of the page to read its answer.

• Why Isaiah?
• Is this "new revelation?"
• Are chapter numbers reliable for establishing book order?
• Is the Book Order Bible a Chronological Bible?
• Why are there numbers in front of the book names?
• Why is the book of James now Jacob?

---

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 about Isaiah

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." This observation is not too far from the conclusion of the book order project, that in addition to Isaiah being a miniature Bible, each chapter in Isaiah matches a specific book of the Bible.

The authorship debate over Isaiah

Another interesting witness to Isaiah's similarity to the Bible at large is the long standing debate over authorship. The traditional camp says the prophet Isaiah wrote the whole book while the newer critical camp says contemporaries of Isaiah probably wrote from Isaiah 40 to the end of the book.

The primary reason for the idea that someone else wrote the second half of Isaiah is the radical change of tone beginning at Isaiah 40. Where the first half of the book has plenty of doom and gloom the second half holds out hope and looks to a bright future. Regardless of who the Holy Spirit employed to write or edit the book, the dramatic tone change at Isaiah 40 parallels the tone change between the testaments. Book 40 is, after all, the start of the New Testament and an important shift in the Bible's overall story.

All Bible traditions trust Isaiah

Other than the Samaritan tradition that treats only the first five books of the Bible as canon, all Bible-based faith communities, like Judaism and Christianity, consider Isaiah canonical. It makes sense, if you're God, to define the arrangement and number of canonical books in a book that is canonical for a large religious cross section.

The Dead Sea Scrolls discovery points to Isaiah

Another witness to Isaiah's importance to the rest of the Bible is the Dead Sea Scrolls discovery in the middle of the 20th century. Of the 200 biblical manuscripts that came out of the caves only Isaiah was completely intact. Later this "Great Isaiah Scroll" became the model for the central display in the Shrine of the Book museum in Israel. Everyone realizes the Isaiah scroll shows how carefully the ancient text was transmitted to modern times, but Isaiah also defines the canon and its book order, unlike other books of the Bible, which is why Isaiah survived fully intact.

---

Is this "new revelation?"

A longtime acquaintance asked me if rearranging the books of the Bible based on Isaiah is "new revelation." At the time I wasn't quite sure what was meant by the question and perhaps even gave a poor answer. I've never forgotten the question and want to address it more completely here.

I remember from my freshman introduction to Theology Proper in Bible College that there are two types of "revelation" from a theological or doctrinal standpoint. The first is called "special revelation" and refers to the scriptures because they explicitly reveal God (at least if you believe the Bible). The second type of revelation is called "general revelation" and refers to creation or nature. There's a missing type of revelation in my mind, such as the many times God reveals himself to people "personally," but that's a different problem.

Though not particularly popular among scientists, these definitions of "revelation" make sense. The Bible does reveal God in great depth and detail and is easily picked up and read. There may be other ways to learn about God, such as through nature, but it's certainly more difficult to learn that "God is love" by studying nature. Case in point are the large number of scientists that don't believe God exists, let alone understand that he is loving.

So based on these theological definitions of "revelation" the book order project is not "new revelation" because we are not writing scripture. However, this project is "new" in the sense that I'm unfamiliar with any time in history when the books of the Bible were arranged based on the book of Isaiah or arranged in this particular order. Is it "personal revelation" in the sense that God revealed this to me? You can decide for yourself whether or not the Holy Spirit revealed this. Even if I claimed the Holy Spirit did this you would have to discern for yourself whether that is true so it's not terribly important for me to say one way or the other.

One thing that is clear, though, is our high regard for scripture. The whole idea behind using Isaiah to order the books is based on elevating scripture above tradition, church authority, theology and other off-Bible criteria that's been used in the past to determine the book order. If we didn't have a very high regard for scripture we wouldn't use scripture to overturn centuries of history and tradition. So we are doing something new, but it's based on "special revelation" because it's based on scripture. I suppose that makes it just "new."

---

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 famous haircuts are there in the Bible? Isaiah 7 has one and I can think of one or two others (Samson and Paul). Just use a concordance to determine how many times something exists and you will have a good sense of whether it qualifies as a unique identifier.

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 other work on the Bible and it's preservation. If not why did he cause it to be written in the first place?

---

Is the Book Order Bible a chronological Bible?

The short answer is no, but the whole idea of "chronological Bibles" is interesting in light of our proposing a new book order for the Bible. If you think about it, chronological Bibles are more radical than changing the book order.

Throughout history there have been different book orders. Some level of disagreement or lack of contentment with the book order has allowed trying different ones along the way. In some ways our project just adds another book order for the records, though we would never propose another book order without good reason. Our point, which I don't think has been made well in history, is the Bible defines it's own book order, in Isaiah, and a book order defined by the Bible is the one people should normally use.

While different people have used and proposed different book orders throughout history, has anyone chopped the actual books apart and rearranged chapters and verses in an attempt to make a more "chronological" Bible? I can't think of examples when this has been done in the past, so it seems more radical than just changing the book order.

That said, I don't like chronological Bibles because they treat the Bible in a manor that is counter to a conviction that is fundamental to the book order project. One of the fundamental beliefs that lead to using Isaiah to define the book order, was that books are "whole literary units" and should not be broken apart. When the books of the Bible could not be matched to the chapters of Isaiah originally, it was not the chapters of Isaiah that needed to move, but the books of the Bible.

In contrast, chronological Bibles rearrange chapters and even verses in the attempt to be chronological. In the process chronological Bibles break the integrity of books as literary units. The question is at what price are we breaking the literature? Since chronological Bibles wreck the literature I consider them Bible study tools, not Bibles.

One thing that chronological Bibles genuinely attempt to explain is the pervasiveness of time and chronology present in the Bible. Rather than wreck the Bible to explore chronology, why not draw the Bible's time references on a time line to understand chronology? That's what my business partner did, and he's learned a ton since.

In fact, when properly understood, the basic chronology of the Bible is a template for many special periods in history, like Noah's flood, the life of Jesus, ministry of Jesus and Passion week and many others. Even a modern time period, that we're in the middle of, is patterned after the Bible's chronology as news headlines follow the basic themes of the Bible's story at the expected times. Check out www.bibletime.com to learn more.

---

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.

Now when translators changed the New Testament occurrences of the word Jacob to James they removed the ability for the reader to easily connect those stories with the Jacob of Genesis. This problem is clear in the opening to the book of James.

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 what is about to be said.

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 (44.15) and book 55 itself. So perhaps the King wanted his new edition of the Bible to project what type of leader he was going to be. Or maybe the translators did it in honor of the King or to curry favor with him. 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, probably for concern over what people would think (which is ironic if the name was originally changed to effect how people thought).

So while God changed Jacob's name to Israel he did not change it to James. So to be as transparent as possible to scripture we have elected to change the book name back to Jacob.