Did you know that your English Bible puts the Old Testament books in a different order than was used by Jewish traditions? Noah Diekemper makes a brief yet strong case for rearranging the books in our Bibles to be more like Jews have ordered them for millennia. Among his reasons are the effect of the order on our understanding of various books, and the manner in which Jesus himself referred to the Old Testament. Diekemper’s conclusion:
The order that our Bibles printed the Old Testament in is a silent conversation. Bibles are printed in the conventional order either for the sake of mere convention (the lowest form of conservatism), or else because the question is never raised to arrange them otherwise. But when the evidence of historical orderings and intertextual links is considered, the order of the Biblia Hebraica presents a more intelligible whole, a work that more visibly testifies to the singular intelligence responsible for its authorship.
For my annual Bible speed read, I no longer follow the English order of the OT books. I find it makes it more difficult to read in large chunks, especially since it puts so many difficult books together for the last third of the OT, without much contextualizing of them to assist the reader. The Hebrew order seems to have readers more in mind, since the Prophets include some of what we consider histories, and the corpus ends not with persistent prophetic denunciation, but with generally hopeful reflections on life lived in service to Yahweh God (the Writings).
Diekemper’s piece will help you to understand more of the benefits of rearranging the books, and how this in no way violates belief in biblical inerrancy or authority.
Do you have a Tanak reading plan to share?