Why would you do that? Part 5 Revisited: Putting the books in a better order (in the spirit of St. Jerome, a “helmeted” defense!)

So why can’t we just keep the traditional order of the books? Well, strictly speaking, the traditional order is . . . a bunch of different orders. There is no single “traditional order of books.” (There is the common modern Protestant one that essentially got “hardened” by the invention of the printing press, but that is just one of many “traditional” orders.) The overwhelming weight of the whole tradition (including biblical manuscripts and lists of books in other writings) is behind a variety of book orders.

It’s important to keep other terminology straight too. I often hear people refer to “the canonical order of the books of the Bible.” The use of this phrase implies that book order is on the same level as the question of which books are in the canon, or that the settling of the question of the boundaries of the canon also involved choosing a particular order. But the various decisions throughout the history of the church which defined the canon did not specify any particular order for the books.

Folks will also often talk about “THE Hebrew order” or “THE Greek order.” But wait! What are these definite articles doing here? There were, at best, orders of categories. For the Hebrew First Testament: law, prophets, writings. For the Greek First Testament (the Septuagint): law, history, poetry, prophets. Within these categories, lots of different book orders exist (except for the law). Similarly, the New Testament books seem to have been gathered first into larger groups (Paul’s letters, gospels and the other writings), but within these groups again variety reigned. So when it comes to the arrangement of books in the Bible, the order of the day, so to speak, is diversity.

Now for some questions for those who would question any contemporary re-ordering:

Why was it acceptable for the translators of the Greek First Testament to change the order of the books?
Why has it been acceptable for us to follow a Greek order rather than a Hebrew one?
Why do both the Hebrew and Greek versions show so much variety?
Why was it acceptable for Bible commentators and copyists throughout history to vary the order?
Why was it acceptable for the Reformers to introduce a new Bible (the Hebrew canon but in a Greek order) as late as the 16th century?
What, precisely, does the common modern order have to commend it?
What is the advantage in mixing the lyric and wisdom books?
What is the advantage in having the prophets so far removed from the history books?
What is the advantage of having the prophets out of historical order?
What is the advantage of having Paul’s letters in order of size?
What is the rationale for the order of the gospels?
Why should Luke and Acts be separated?
Would Luke approve of this?
If it was acceptable for generations of God’s people to rearrange the order, why is it now, for the first time, inappropriate for us to do so?
If the tradition itself was always changing how does it honor tradition to freeze forever one version of it?
Finally, if the Holy Spirit has been active in the development and arrangement of the Bible throughout history, is he not still active today? Are we not part of a living tradition?

I was just wondering.

-Glenn