Introduction to The Letter Map

Using the book of Isaiah the 66 books of the Bible can be arranged into a canonical, inspired, book order. But there's a secondary order for reading and study, that is based on mapping the letters of the Hebrew/Aramaic alphabet to the books of the Bible. This alternative reading order is really a refactor of Isaiah's Book Order.

To refactor Isaiah's Book Order simply map the 22 letters of the Hebrew/Aramaic alphabet to the 66 books of the Bible. The result is 22 sets of 3 books. For example, 1 Genesis, 23 Hosea and 45 Philippians form Set 1 while 2 Exodus, 24 Haggai and 46 First Thessalonians form Set 2.

With the books in sets of 3 you simply read any set you desire or if you want to work through the whole Bible in order you read Set 1 followed by Set 2 and so forth.

Work remains to tease out the implications of this alternative reading plan, but while studying several sets I have stumbled onto significant correlations that tightly relate the books in a given set.

One of my favorite examples is found in Set 18. Set 18 is Esther, John and First Peter. Esther submits to the king and God delivers the Jews. Jesus submits to the governor in John and brings deliverance to the race. In both cases they are submited to God. In First Peter we read:

The verses state that we should submit to kings and governors. How? Like Esther and Jesus which we would have read prior to reading First Peter if we were reading Set 18 in order. Whatever else Set 18 is about there's a high-level theme of submission that is hard to miss.

Set 18 does have other correlations as do the other sets I've read so far. In fact, I've seen enough correlation to say with confidence that this system will work in each set even if the documentation is not in yet.

Another pattern I've seen in this reading plan is the idea of books chaining together. Another section of this website deals with how the books of the Bible chain together end to end once the books are in order, but the pattern appears to work in this alternative reading plan too.

The idea is that the subject the first book in a set ends with will be picked up in the second book in the set. The theme the second book ends with will then appear near the start of the third book in the set. Finally, the topic at the end of the third book in a set will link to the start of the first book in the next set.

To tease this out, go back to Set 1, which is the books of Genesis, Hosea and Philippians. Philippians ends with mention of two women who labored at Paul's side:

Now, go to the first book of Set 2, which is Exodus. Exodus also has mention of two women near it's start:

The two midwives in Exodus are related to the two women who "labored" at Paul's side in the gospel (which really just means giving spiritual birth to people).

When the books were out of order this stuff didn't work. Now there's a tidal wave of potential discovery simply there for the taking. It's only a matter of time and perhaps sensitivity to the Holy Spirit to see much of what is being laid bare in Scripture.

The goal is to crawl through this alternative reading plan and note correlations among books and how books chain together in this refactored order. The following table provides the basic map. Links in the table or the left menu lead to notes. Obviously you can launch from here and see what you find for yourself.

By Ryan Eaton
Posted Monday, Asher 20, 13000