The New Testament consists of 27 books. The story of how we got the order we have now today may be very interesting, and it affects how we engage with it. This is the story …
Order of the Bible
We are used to the order of the books of the Bible, which range from Genesis to Revelation. The Bible is just not a single book as such, but more of a compendium of constituent books – or a library. Their traditional order is just not strictly chronological, nor are they ordered in response to importance. The Bible can, and has been, ordered in some ways. The standardisation of the order got here about when the earliest books, called codices, were created. When the books of the Hebrew Scriptures were each kept on a separate scroll within the synagogue there was no real official order for all of them. An order needed to be decided once they were placed consecutively in a codex.
Alphabetical order
If you access a Bible via the favored YouVersion app, you possibly can decide to sort the books of your Bible by ‘Traditional’ or ‘Alphabetical’ order. When the books of the Bible are sorted alphabetically, they go from Acts to Zephaniah, and the New Testament goes from Acts to Titus. The alphabetical order will vary from language to language, and it is just not very useful theologically, but may be very useful for those who are usually not used to the normal order of the books. Some Bibles include a contents page on the front, with the books listed alphabetically and a page number for the primary page of every book. An alphabetical list may be very helpful for those who really do not know where to seek out Job, Nahum or Titus. The reality is that the order that the books of the New Testament are put in is all the way down to historical tradition.
History of the order
The Bible starts with the creation narratives and the origin stories of Israel, followed by the historical books of the kings and chronicles. The Old Testament is in roughly chronological order but in lots of the books the timelines overlap.
In an identical way, the New Testament starts with the stories of Jesus followed by the Acts of the Apostles. The Old Testament then has the stories of the prophets, and likewise the New Testament has the writings of the apostles. Placing the core story with the primary five books Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts in the beginning, echoed the placing of the five Books of Moses also called the Pentateuch, in the beginning of the Jewish Scriptures.
After the primary five books of the New Testament, the remainder of the books are usually not really books in any respect, but letters known traditionally as epistles. These are often grouped because the letters by St Paul after which the letters by other apostles.
St Paul’s letters
The letters traditionally ascribed to St Paul, are also called the Pauline Epistles (not because they were written by a girl called Pauline, but because Pauline is the adjectival type of the name Paul). These are clustered into two groups: the letters to the churches after which the pastoral letters.
Epistles to the churches
The first group of letters from Paul were written to church congregations across the eastern Mediterranean. So there’s the letter to the churches in Rome, in Corinth, within the province of Galatia, in Ephesus, in Philippi, in Colossae, and in Thessaloniki. Sometimes books and commentaries claim that the letters to the churches were ordered in size with the longest, Romans, first to the shortest, 2 Thessalonians last, but this is barely partly true because Galatians is definitely shorter than Ephesians which follows it.
Pastoral epistles
The letters to the churches are followed by letters to individuals, often called the Pastoral Epistles. There are two letters to Timothy, a letter to Titus and one to Philemon, after which one to the Jewish Christians often called Hebrews, which today we would call Messianic Jews.
General Epistles
The letters written by other apostles are traditionally called the ‘Catholic Epistles’. The term ‘Catholic’ Epistles doesn’t mean Roman Catholic, but reasonably catholic within the sense of general, and in order that they are also sometimes called the ‘General Epistles’. These are traditionally ascribed to the apostles James, Peter, John and Jude.
Traditional order
The order of the New Testament which is present in modern published Bibles known as the ‘canonical’ order, or for those who use YouVersion the ‘traditional’ order. The problem with calling it the canonical or traditional order is that it’s misleading. There is actually nobody single set tradition or canonical order, although those people only used to 1 tradition may not realise this.
Eastern and Western orders
In the Orthodox or Eastern tradition the New Testament is ordered by placing the General Epistles before St Paul’s letters, in order that the Epistle of St James follows Acts. However, within the Catholic or Western tradition the letters of St Paul are placed after Acts and before the General Epistles, in order that the Epistle to the Romans comes after Acts.
Why the order of the epistles within the eastern and western traditions differ is debated. One idea is that for the Eastern Churches the writings of James, Peter, John and Jude took precedence over the writings of St Paul, who was admitted as an apostle later. James, Peter and John were considered the pillars of the Early Church (Galatians 2:9), with James and Jude being considered actual half-brothers of Jesus. St Peter wrote “Some of the things which Paul writes are obscure” (2 Peter 3:15 NIV). The order with the General Epistles before the Pauline Epistles is an ancient order present in the fourth century Codex Vaticanus and the fifth century Codex Alexandrinus.
The Western book order goes back to the Latin Vulgate. Some people think that the Roman Church favoured the writings of St Paul over the writings of the opposite apostles, and so placed his letters first. However, this can be an ancient order, which is sort of similar to present in the fourth century Codex Sinaiticus.
English language Bibles
English Bibles follow the Western traditional order. The Protestant tradition got here out of the Catholic tradition and has the identical book order, so English Bibles (whether Catholic or Protestant) have the identical book order for the New Testament. Whilst this is barely a practice and a convention, few publishers and mission agencies are willing to vary the order.
Does the order matter?
On one level the order of the books does not likely matter since it is only a convention and standard. It is helpful to have a set order to assist to seek out books once you get used to where they’re. If you might be in one among the main historic traditions of the Church, which access the Bible by a lectionary then the verses that are read every day, or each Sunday, are usually not chosen in response to the printed order of the Bible anyway.
Why the order does matter
However, on one other level the order does matter. People who read through the New Testament are inclined to start at the start and skim through to the tip, so the printed order is the order wherein they read. The order gives the thought of a progression of events from Jesus within the Gospels, to the beginning of the Early Church in Acts, to the event of the life and practice of the Early Church within the letters.
By placing the letters of St Paul first we get the distorted view that they’re more vital than those of James, Peter, John and Jude, whereas actually St Paul deferred to James, Peter and John. So by placing the letter to the Romans after Acts it makes it seems to Catholics and Protestants that Romans is an important letter.
While it’s a crucial letter, its location as the primary epistle has misled people through the ages into pondering it’s in that location since it is an important. To those from the Orthodox tradition the letter of James is the primary letter after Acts, and so this seems to provide it more significance within the Eastern Church.
Actually, there was no idea of rating by importance within the Early Church. This idea got here later with Martin Luther.
Luther’s order
During the Reformation the Catholic traditional order of the New Testament present in the Latin Vulgate was kept. However, Martin Luther had a low opinion of the Epistle of James, which he considered an “epistle of straw”, and was suspicious of Hebrews, Jude and Revelation too. In his first German New Testament published in 1522, Luther recognised 23 books because the authoritative books of the New Testament, which he numbered within the contents, but then he placed the books of Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation at the tip, which weren’t numbered within the contents. Traditional Lutheran Bibles still follow this order.
Tyndale’s order
William Tyndale was the primary Englishman to translate the New Testament from Greek into English. He probably accomplished it in 1525, and the New Testament was being brought into England from 1526. Tyndale knew German and was conversant in Luther’s work, so his 1526 New Testament followed Luther’s order. Thus, the primary printed New Testament into English didn’t follow the normal order of New Testaments which we use today.
Other orders
The New Testament is just not ordered chronologically, but reasonably books are grouped together by creator and kind in sections. This echoes the Old Testament which for Jews was ordered by Torah, Prophets and Writings, and so the New Testament has the History, Epistles and Revelation.
Some people have attempted to order the New Testament chronologically. This may be done two ways. Even then it will possibly be ordered chronologically by the dates wherein the texts were written, sometimes often called the compositional order, or it will possibly be ordered chronologically by the dates wherein the events happened in sequential order. The problem is we can’t be exactly sure of either, but there’s some consensus on general order.
Compositional order
Attempts to place the New Testament in composition order are inclined to put the epistles before the Gospel accounts. We cannot ensure of the precise dates of composition of the unique books. They didn’t include dates, but scholars can find clues within the text. Most scholars think that the majority of Paul’s letters were written first, and the letters of John were written last. Most scholars also think that the Gospels were written later, and that Mark was the primary which was also utilized by Matthew and Luke.
An attempt at compositional order was produced by the publisher Biblica, who produce the New International Version. Biblica produced an edition of the New Testament called “The Books of the Bible” which unusually re-orders the New Testament in some form of rough compositional order, while also clustering books by creator. It starts with Luke-Acts, then has St Paul’s epistles, then Matthew, Hebrews, James, Mark, 1 and a couple of Peter, Jude, John, 1-3 John and Revelation. The publisher claims that “the books of the Bible are arranged in an order that helps you see the unfolding drama more easily”. Reading the New Testament in chronological compositional order is maybe not as helpful as reading it in chronological sequential order.
Chronological order
Reading the Bible in chronological order of the events is difficult to do since the time frames of many books overlap. Ever for the reason that Early Church there have been attempts to make a harmony of the Gospels, putting all of the events so as of sequence. The earliest known Gospel harmony is the Diatessaron of the second century.
Modern attempts have been made to ordering the entire Bible chronologically. This has been done by re-ordering the books, or more extremely by cutting and splicing sections and verses in order that for instance the psalms related to certain stories actually follow them, and the prophets are placed with the context of the relevant kings. Today plenty of publishers produce Chronological Bibles which follow different theories of chronology, or different models of splicing.
Reese’s Chronological Bible
The earliest published Chronological Bible was produced by Dr Edward Reese (1928-2015) who was professor of Bible and History at Hyles-Anderson College, Hammond, Indiana within the USA. This may be bought today as Reese’s Chronological Bible, which is produced with the Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible.
Daily Bible in Chronological Order
The hottest chronological version has been produced by LaGard Smith. His version also presents the laws of Moses as a unified legal code, arranged by subject. In the New Testament the 4 Gospels are harmonised, and Paul’s epistles are spliced with Acts to relate the letters within the contexts of events and Paul’s travels. The Bible is then split into 365 sections, to enable the reader to undergo the entire Bible in a yr with a way of its order. The Daily Bible in Chronological Order is accessible in English with some different versions of the Bible comparable to the New International Version (NIV) and New Living Translation (NLT), and the concept has also been adopted in other languages as well.
Lectionary Order
Many Christians don’t engage with the Bible by reading it so as. Instead Christians in liturgical traditions comparable to the Orthodox, Catholic and Anglican communities engage with the Bible especially on Sundays, using a lectionary, using the ecclesiastical calendar to guide the readings. The lectionary orders passages and places in response to their relevance for the Church calendar.
Almost all major lectionaries are based on the three-year cycle of the Revised Common Lectionary, which takes people through much of the Bible within the context of the normal cycle of church festivals. It could make more sense to make use of a lectionary and for instance to read in regards to the crucifixion and resurrection at Easter, and the birth narratives at Christmas, reasonably than use a seemingly-random Verse of the Day from a digital app.
Engaging with the text
Any belief within the inspiration of Scripture shouldn’t extend to a belief within the divine inspiration of the order of those books, which is all the way down to tradition. Most people don’t really think in regards to the book order, but as we read the New Testament we must always remember that the book order can influence and shape how we engage with the text. For example there’s the danger that we give undue prominence to the early books and fewer emphasis to the latter books.
We must be aware that the best way wherein we perceive and interact with the New Testament may be affected by the order we use to access those texts. Each order has its merits, and using a Bible organised another way, or using a reading plan or lectionary, can provide a helpful and fresh way of engaging with the New Testament.
