Many Christians who have grown in the church had the experience of memorizing the names of the books of the Bible while they were children. What most did not realize, however, is that not all manuscripts of the Bible have the same order and scholars debate which is the correct order. Christians might know of the debate between Catholics and Protestants about the inclusion of certain books in the canon like Judith and 1 Maccabees, a set of books called the Apocrypha by Protestants and the Deuterocanonical books by Catholics. However, much less well-known is the debate about the order of Old Testament books.

The order familiar to most western Christians is based in four sections: Law, History, Poetry and Prophets. This order has an ancient heritage in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint. However, the ancient Hebrew manuscripts had only three sections: Torah, the 𱹾’i and the Ketuvim (see below). Based on an acronym of these three words, it is sometimes called the Tanak. The first section, the Torah, is the same as the Law. However, the second section, the 𱹾’i, differs in content and order from the English order. The 𱹾’i (which means “Prophets”) has two sub-sections. The first, the former prophets, is similar to the History section of the English Bible: Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. The second, the latter prophets, is similar to the Prophets section: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Minor Prophets. The third section, called the Ketuvim (which means Writings), contains everything else, and it is here that the order becomes quite fluid between different Hebrew manuscripts. I have included below one of the standard orders, but other manuscripts have different orders.

Jewish (Hebrew) Canon

Torah

  • Genesis
  • Exodus
  • Leviticus
  • Numbers
  • Deuteronomy

Prophets (𱹾’i)

Former Prophets
  • Joshua
  • Judges
  • 1 & 2 Samuel
  • 1 & 2 Kings
Latter Prophets
  • Isaiah
  • Jeremiah
  • Ezekiel
Minor Prophets

Writings (Ketuvim)

  • Psalms
  • Job
  • Proverbs
  • Ruth
  • Song of Song