Previously, I have reflected on why the New Testament appears in the order that is does and how considering different orders can better inform our engagement with Scripture. Of course, talking about the New Testament in this way raises the obvious question, “what about the Old Testament?”

This article is an attempt to answer that question by looking at the major orders in which the Old Testament can appear. First, we will consider canonical order: the order in which the writings of the Old Testament appear in the modern, published Bibles by Jews, Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants. Second, we will consider chronological order: the general order in which the events of the Old Testament are portrayed. And finally, we will consider a couple proposals for the compositional order: the order in which Old Testament writings were actually written down.

Let me say again that I believe each of these orders provides insights into the meaning and message of the Old Testament scriptures. Context matters a great deal—in fact, it governs the meaning of everything. While we often pay close attention to historical context when reading the Old Testament, literary context also matters. In short, where you find a particular book or passage in the collection known as the Old Testament makes a difference for and influences the interpretation of that book or passage. Thus, canonical order, chronological order, and compositional order each cast (and recast) the writings of the Old Testament in ways that are fruitful for faithful and critical readings of the text. Let us examine each.

Canonical Order – Jewish Bible

The order of the books in the Jewish Bible follows the pattern of Torah (Law), Ketuvim (Prophets), and Nevi’im (Writings). While many Protestants correctly claim that their Bibles include the books that are in the Jewish Bible, what many people do not realize is that the order is rather different. In Jewish Bibles, these writings appear in this order:

• Torah
  • Genesis
  • Exodus
  • Leviticus
  • Numbers
  • Deuteronomy
• Former Prophets
  • Joshua
  • Judges
  • 1-2 Samuel
  • 1-2 Kings
• Latter Prophets
  • Isaiah
  • Jeremiah
  • Ezekiel
  • The Twelve
• Pre-Exilic Writings
  • Psalms
  • Job
  • Proverbs
  • Ruth
  • Song of Songs
  • Ecclesiastes
• Post-Exilic Writings
  • Lamentations
  • Esther
  • Daniel
  • Ezra-Nehemiah
  • 1-2 Chronicles

Canonical Order – Christian Bibles

In contrast to the Jewish canonical order, Christian Old Testament canons are ordered as Law-Historical-Wisdom-Prophets, which reflects the basic pattern of the New Testament. However, different Christian Bibles include different books, with Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Bible all looking slightly different (and somewhat confusingly, sometimes moving books around in the canon).

Chronological Order

A chronological ordering of the Old Testament must account for a variety of complicating factors. Some major points of consideration include that the Psalms were composed, used, and edited throughout this chronology; wisdom literature often bears limited chronological indicators; prophetic oracles were likely delivered multiple times over an oft-indeterminate period; and the chronologies of 1-2 Samuel and 1-2 Kings are often paralleled in 1-2 Chronicles.¹ All of these factors make a strictly chronological arrangement of the Old Testament messier than we can outline here. But in general terms a chronological reading of the Old Testament probably looks something like this:

• Genesis 1-11
• Job
• Genesis 12-50
• Exodus
• Leviticus
• Numbers 1-12
• Psalm 90
• Numbers 13-36
• Deuteronomy
• Judges
• Ruth
• 1 Samuel 1-19
• Psalm 11, 59
• 1 Samuel 20-24
• 1 Samuel 25-31
• 2 Samuel|| 1 Chronicles 1-29
• Most of Psalms
• 1 Kings 1-11 || 1 Chronicles 29-2 Chronicles 9
• Proverbs
• Ecclesiastes
• Song of Songs
• 1 King 12-18 || 2 Chronicles 10-16
• Obadiah
• 1 Kings 19-22 || 2 Chronicles 17-20
• 2 Kings 1-14 || 2 Chronicles 21-25
• Jonah
• Amos
• 2 Kings 15-20 || 2 Chronicles 26-32
• Isaiah
• Micah
• Hosea
• 2 Kings 21 || 2 Chronicles 33
• Nahum
• 2 Kings 22-23 || 2 Chronicles 34-35
• Zephaniah
• Jeremiah
• Habakkuk
• 2 Kings 24-25 || 2 Chronicles 36.1-21
• Lamentations
• Ezekiel
• Joel
• Daniel
• 2 Chronicles 36.22-23
• Ezra
• Psalm 137
• Haggai
• Zechariah
• Esther
• Nehemiah
• Psalm 126
• Malachi

Compositional Order

A final way to think about the ordering of the Old Testament is compositional order: the sequence in which these documents were written. If canonical and chronological order have seemed complicated, compositional order is where the real fun begins. Arguments surrounding composition order are tremendously varied for three basic reasons.

Timeframe: To compare testaments for a moment, even the most skeptical scholars believe the New Testament was written in a relatively short time period; when it comes to the Old Testament, however, even the most conservative scholars argue for about 1000 years of compositional history. That greater length of times means that there are a much wider range of data and arguments to be considered.

Communication Culture: Similarly, the Old and New Testaments were composed in entirely different communication cultures. The New Testament was written in an increasingly book centered literary culture, whereas the Old Testament certainly took place in an oral culture and was only transferred to a book culture later on. This—combined with the realities of oral transmission, Midrashic practices, manuscript data on rewritten Bible, and the shear scope of time involved—make is difficult to discern every possible range of influences and time that might exist between a books origins and its authoritative form. This contributes to the third major complicating factor.

Manuscript Evidence: The earliest extent copies of the Old Testament (or at least, most of it) are the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are typically dated between 250 BCE and 100 CE. Prior to that, the second Old Testament texts were Greek translations from the fourth century. The next oldest Hebrew text for the Old Testament is the Leningrad Codex, which dates from 1008 CE. While the manuscript evidence for the Old Testament is typical for ancient documents, there is just not much hard evidence from which to argue. This means that other factors and predispositions often play a significant role in where scholars land no these questions.

These factors point not only make the compositional order of the Old Testament difficult to ascertain, but they also point to a couple of important realities. First, we must not ignore the fact that the Old Testament was likely written and edited over a substantial period of time, certainly far longer than the New Testament. These different parts of the Bible came to look as they do by very different processes.

Second and because of this, we must hold to claims about the compositional order of the Old Testament tentatively. There is much in these proposals that is based on theory and axiomatic logic. There is nothing wrong with that—in fact, in this case, it is necessary. But we should approach this subject with due caution accordingly. These realities in mind, let us look at three compositional orders: the traditional, the current consensus, and my best guess.

Compositional Order – Traditional Dating

These dates are typically approximations for the eras when traditional authors would have lived and written, usually in close proximity to the events described in their books. Accordingly, traditional composition dates are as follows:

• ~1450-1400 BCE: Writings of Moses (Genesis-Deuteronomy)
• ~1100-1000 BCE: Writings of Samuel (Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel)
• ~960 BCE: Writings of David (Psalms)
• ~920 BCE: Writings of Solomon (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs)
• ~950-650 BCE: Writing Prophets² (2 Samuel, 1-2 Kings)
• ~750-722 BCE: Hosea, Amos, Micah
• ~740-686 BCE: Isaiah
• ~625-586 BCE: Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah
• Before 586 BCE: Ruth
• ~586 BCE: Writings of Jeremiah (Jeremiah, Lamentations)
• ~571 BCE: Ezekiel
• ~550 BCE: Daniel
• ~520 BCE: Haggai, Zechariah
• ~450-400 BCE: Malachi
• ~435-425 BCE: Writings of the Chronicler³ (1-2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah)
• Before 400: Joel, Obadiah, Jonah (lots of debate and uncertainty)

Compositional Order – Current Consensus

There is really no such thing as a consensus in academia since the whole business of scholarship is to argue for or against claims through the marshalling of evidence. However, at any given moment there is what amounts to a scholarly majority, which currently tends to advocate for the following compositional date ranges:

• Before 750 BCE: Pre-Monarchic Fragments (Song of the Sea, Psalm 29, Song of Deborah, Song of Moses)
• ~740-700 BCE: Amos, Isaiah 1-39, Hosea, Micah
• ~649-609 BCE: Zephaniah, Habakkuk, Deuteronomistic History (Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1-2 Samuel, 1-2 Kings), Deuteronomy 5-26
• ~626-612 BCE: Nahum
• ~586-539 BCE: Obadiah, Deuteronomy 1-4, 29-30, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah 40-55, Psalms
• ~538-521 BCE: Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy 31-34), Isaiah 56-66
• ~520 BCE: Haggai, Zephaniah
• ~450-350 BCE: Malachi, Joel
• ~350-330 BCE: 1-2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah
• ~300-200 BCE: Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Jonah
• ~225-175 BCE: Tobit
• ~175 BCE: Sirach
• ~168-164 BCE: Daniel
• ~146-129 BCE: 1 Maccabees
• ~150-100 BCE: Judith
• ~134-100 BCE: 2 Maccabees

Compositional Order – My Best Guess

While foregrounding that I hold to these dates very tentatively, my general perspective on ancient literature is that there had to be substantive reasons to commit these stories to writing and preserve them. Composition was a much more significant task in the ancient world than it is today and something fairly dramatic would be necessary to launch and perpetuate such an endeavor. Using that framework, I view five moments as the centering events for the composition of the Old Testament.

Emerging Identity: As people began to take on the identity as “we belong to the nation who follows YHWH at His temple in Jerusalem” some central concepts were written down. This would have included some form of Torah and—as I view this as likely occurring during the reigns of David and Solomon—much of Psalms and Wisdom literature (Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs). These writings codified the covenant with YHWH and the claim to the land, as well as reflecting the literary works of the Davidic kingship.

Kingly Reforms: As the kingship progressed, there came a time when the golden age of the past needed to be reinvigorated and reclaimed. At this point, Torah was rediscovered and authorized, the prophets began to write (Nahum), and the Deuteronomistic History (Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel) committing the conquest and early royal history of the people to writing.

Threat of Empire: As the power of Assyria and Babylon loomed, the prophets began to speak about why God’s People were facing punishment. Drawing on the heart of Torah, Isaiah, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah were famous, infamous, or literary enough to have their words committed to writing.

Babylonian Exile: As the people were forced into exile, they again found themselves asking why and wrestling with their identity. From this disaster came the oracles of Jeremiah (including Lamentations) and Ezekiel. Eventually, the exile also led to the codification of the historical books that traced the nation’s downfall (2 Samuel, 1-2 Kings).

Persian Restoration: With restoration came a new issue: how to preserve the people and reform the nation. Here prophets such as Haggai and Zechariah, and eventually Daniel and Malachi left their mark. From their position of influence, the Chronicler provided perspective on the history learning to the restoration and what needed to occur to preserve this new moment in Israel’s history (1-2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah). Finally, additional stories that circulated among the people found themselves written down as a reflection of the growing literary culture. This likely included stories like Esther and those now viewed as Apocrypha.

To reiterate, I hold to this viewpoint lightly. But as I examine the story of the Old Testament and the arguments surrounding its composition, these five moments seem like the critical pivot points that would help explain the creation of Old Testament literature.

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Why does the Old Testament appear in the order it does? For a variety of reasons, perhaps including reasons influenced by chronology of events or order of composition, but not limited to those factors. Considering alternative orders to the Old Testament—especially the chronological and compositional—provides a useful lens for considering what these writings say and mean. In fact, there is much to be learned from considering alternative orders. As we take up and read, therefore, let us be aware of how literary context shapes and influences how we engage the Scriptures.

Notes

¹ How these passages parallel and corroborate is itself a major project, so please note that these are approximations and subject to scholarly nuance.

2 Traditionally Nathan and Gad

3 Traditionally Ezra

Image courtesy of IMJ.org