In Bible 101: What is the Bible?, I mentioned that Hebrew has 22 letters, and the New Testament is universally recognized as having 27 books. Therefore, if the Old Testament, which is written almost entirely in Hebrew and whose exact number of books is unclear (Jewish organization of the Old Testament is different from how Christians divide it up), could be consolidated into 22 books, there would be 49 books in the Bible. 49 is an important number in the Bible, as it is 7 x 7 (7 being the most important number in the Bible) and is also the number of years in a Jubilee cycle, an important symbolic measure of time in the Old Covenant.

Inspired by James B. Jordan’s Biblical Horizons No. 80: Rethinking the Order of the Old Testament, I’m going to propose my own 49-book Bible canon. Unlike Jordan, however, I will push further into reorganizing the New Testament, which he largely leaves as is.

Now, the Bible is so complex, it almost certainly has more than one intended canon ordering. Therefore, I’m not suggesting that my order is the “right” one and all others, including the default one in most Bibles, are wrong. Still, it is worth noting that the Bible strongly resists strict chronological ordering. Chronological reading plans have to split every book up and distribute them everywhere, suggesting this is not a natural way to order the Bible. Therefore, some kind of logical organizational system outside of linear storytelling must be used to structure the Bible.

The Old Testament

My proposed canon is the result of a chain of logic that begins with the simplest starting point and attempts to arrive at a conclusive Bible order.

The starting point is that the sequence of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, and Judges, the first seven books of standardly ordered Bibles, is a clear, properly ordered seven-book sequence. It also starts at the beginning (“Genesis” literally meaning “origin”). Hence, we will assume that those books are the first seven books of the Old Testament.

Given that the entire canon will be 49 books, that 49 = 7 x 7, and that these seven books are a logical unit, it is reasonable to infer that the canon will consist of seven seven-book sequences, or “cycles.” These seven books would therefore be the first cycle.

This looks like:

1. First cycle
   1. Genesis
   2. Exodus
   3. Leviticus
   4. Numbers
   5. Deuteronomy
   6. Joshua
   7. Judges

Next, we can deduce that with 22 books in the Old Testament, there will be a total of three cycles of seven books, then one book that will be paired with the New Testament. Whatever the final book will be, it will need to be something that fits with the New Testament well.

Next, the Hebrew canon (how the Jews organized the Old Testament) gets us almost all the way to 22 books by combining 1 Samuel with 2 Samuel (“Samuel”), 1 Kings with 2 Kings (“Kings”), 1 Chronicles with 2 Chronicles (“Chronicles”), and Ezra with Nehemiah (“Ezra-Nehemiah”), as well as combining all twelve minor prophets into one book (“the Twelve”). We will therefore assume that these combinations are appropriate. However, this scheme only gets us to 24 books, so there will need to be further consolidation.

Next, looking at the first seven-book cycle, we have four books of Law after Genesis. Likewise, the first four books of the standardly ordered New Testament are the four Gospels, which would follow the final Old Testament book. Moreover, there are four books of Solomon’s wisdom (Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs). Could we have a four-by-four pattern in the Old Testament with the prophets?

If so, having four sets of books would most likely correspond to the four phases of Israel’s history: the Tabernacle era, the First Temple era, the Second Temple era, and the era of the Messiah. These would match Law, Wisdom, Prophets, and Gospels. Moreover, the first seven books we’ve identified for the Old Testament would constitute the time of the Tabernacle. Therefore, we should see if we can identify seven books for the First Temple era and seven books for the Second Temple era (the Messiah cycle will have one Old Testament book, four Gospels, and two more New Testament books).

In order to fit the First Temple era into seven books, we will have to take the already combined two books of Samuel and two books of Kings and combine them all into what I call “Greater Kings.” This is inspired by Jordan’s combining of the two books of Chronicles with the two books of Ezra and Nehemiah into “Greater Chronicles,” which we will also have to do here. Greater Kings covers the entire era of the Israelite kings from Saul to the destruction of Jerusalem, while Greater Chronicles covers the background of the creation and destruction of the First Temple to its rebuilding and glorification after the Exile.

Judges represents a “The Story Continues” narrative for the Tabernacle era. Greater Kings would parallel this for the First Temple era, while Greater Chronicles would parallel this for the Second Temple era. Therefore, we will put Greater Kings as the seventh book of the second cycle, with Greater Chronicles as the seventh book of the third cycle. Interestingly, this would parallel Greater Kings with Greater Chronicles as four-part history volumes.

Ruth sets the stage for Greater Kings, while Esther does the same for Greater Chronicles. Putting them both into the sixth spot of their respective cycles would also create a parallel of books about women and marriage (appropriate for the sixth spot, as men and women were created on the sixth day). This doesn’t apply to all seven cycles of the canon, but it’s an interesting element nonetheless.

This leaves just Psalms as the final piece of the second cycle, which would mean it takes the first spot. This would be a reasonable parallel to Genesis, as Psalms introduces the concept of kingly wisdom just as Genesis introduces the covenant of Israel.

Next, in order to move forward the “four sets of four books” approach, we have to decide which prophet goes in the Messiah cycle: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, or the Twelve? Clearly we cannot follow Jordan’s practice of combining Jeremiah with Lamentations, as that would leave us with only 21 Old Testament books. So, the real questions are: which of these prophetic books functions as the best introduction to the Second Tabernacle era, and which functions best as an introduction to the Gospels?

When phrased that way, the answers are fairly obvious: first, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Twelve are mostly focused on the transition from the First Temple period to the Second, although they do of course contain some Messianic prophecies. Isaiah, however, is different – it crosses Israelite history to paint a picture of the coming of the Messiah. It is also referenced so often in the New Testament that it is nicknamed “the fifth gospel.” Therefore, we can pull it out of the third cycle and make it the backdrop to the Gospels as the first book of the fourth cycle.

Second, Lamentations begins with the destruction of the First Temple and ends with a prayer for restoration. This is the perfect context for the prophets, who largely wrote about the impending judgment of Jerusalem and the restoration that would follow the Exile. Lamentations also stylistically parallels Psalms, so it is a good first book for the third cycle.

Note the flow between the different cycles we now have: the absence of a king at the end of Judges is answered by the psalms of David, the destruction of the First Temple at the end of Greater Kings leads into Lamentations, and the failure of the post-Exile covenant at the end of Greater Chronicles leads into the messianic promises of Isaiah about Israel’s full redemption.

Now we can turn to the ordering of the four-by-four books. As previously mentioned, we can leave the four books of Law as traditionally ordered, though we need to take note that the final book, Deuteronomy, represents a repetition or revisiting of ideas in the previous three books. That will help us in ordering the other sets of books.

If we order the wisdom books as Proverbs, Song of Songs, Job, and Ecclesiastes, we see a natural flow from wisdom being taught to a child, then the child marrying in his youth, then him encountering trials and tribulations in his adulthood, then finally reflecting on what he’s learned as an old man. This would also parallel Ecclesiastes with Deuteronomy, as a retelling of the wisdom from Proverbs. It also has the wise woman at the end of Proverbs leading into the love tale of Song of Songs, as well as the challenge of Ecclesiastes 7:28 leading into the tale of the noble woman Ruth.

A natural flow in the third cycle for the remaining four prophets is Jeremiah to Ezekiel to Daniel, then a Deuteronomy-like retelling of the various prophecies in the Twelve. The Gospels would maintain their traditional ordering (especially considering the details discussed in Rethinking the Timeline of the New Testament Canon), with John as a retelling after the three synoptic Gospels.

Note that four books within each of four cycles corresponds to Jordan’s comments in Rethinking the Order of the Old Testament about Ox-Lion-Eagle-Man, as well as Priest-King-Prophet-Image. This would work within each four-book cycle, as well as for all four cycles taken as a whole. We can also see how the cycle of the Messiah is a Deuteronomy-like retelling of the first three cycles in Luke 24:44, where Jesus says, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.”

This means that so far we have:

1. Tabernacle
   1. Genesis
   2. Exodus
   3. Leviticus
   4. Numbers
   5. Deuteronomy
   6. Joshua
   7. Judges
2. First Temple
   1. Psalms
   2. Proverbs
   3. Song of Songs
   4. Job
   5. Ecclesiastes
   6. Ruth
   7. Greater Kings (1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings)
3. Second Temple
   1. Lamentations
   2. Jeremiah
   3. Ezekiel
   4. Daniel
   5. The Twelve
   6. Esther
   7. Greater Chronicles (1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah)
4. Messiah
   1. Isaiah
   2. Matthew
   3. Mark
   4. Luke
   5. John

The New Testament

Obviously, we already have the Gospels assigned, but we can finish the Messiah cycle by observing that Acts is very much the “The Story Continues” for the Gospels. Therefore, Acts should be the seventh book of the fourth cycle.

Note: Acts represents a Sabbath failure of the Jews refusing to accept their Messiah (the association of Sabbath rest with faith in Jesus is discussed in Hebrews 3 and 4), which leads to the gospel being given to the Gentiles to make the Jew jealous. This Sabbath failure also appears in Judges (repeated falls into idolatry), Greater Kings (failure of Solomon and later kings leading to the destruction of First Temple), and Greater Chronicles (failure of covenant renewal at the end of the Book of Nehemiah). This further reinforces Acts as the seventh book of the Messiah cycle.

As for the sixth book, The Epistles to the Hebrews connects to Isaiah in terms of showing how the Old Testament leads to Jesus. As the gospel was to the Jew first and then the Greek (Romans 1:16), having this uniquely Jewish epistle placed as a lead-in to Acts, which begins with the gospel being for Jews but soon moves to it being for Gentiles, is appropriate.

This relationship between books 1, 6, and 7 matches the other three main cycles. In the Tabernacle cycle, we see the promise to Abraham in Genesis being fulfilled in Joshua and lived out in Judges. In the First Temple cycle, we see David in Psalms, Ruth, and Greater Kings. In the Second Temple cycle, we see the rebuilding of the temple called for in Lamentations and answered in Esther and Greater Chronicles.

At this point, we now have a reasonable ordering of the Old Testament and the Messiah cycle, but we run into a problem: all four individual cycles have the sets of four books starting at the second book of the cycle, but the four overall cycles are currently at the beginning of the canon ordering. In order to be consistent, we must either move the first book in each cycle after the sets of four, or we must move a cycle of the New Testament before the Old Testament.

Putting Genesis after Deuteronomy completely breaks the flow of the Tabernacle cycle. The same is true for the other three cycles, especially if you try to put Isaiah after John. Therefore, we must consider putting seven New Testament books before Genesis.

To determine which ones, let’s consider the pieces of the New Testament that remain:

• Seven Pauline epistles covering the nature and implications of the gospel: Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians.
• Seven epistles concerned with the imminent Return of Jesus: 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 1 John, and Jude.
• Six epistles addressed to individuals: 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, 2 John, and 3 John.
• Revelation.

Considering this, by pairing Revelation with the individual epistles, we can see what our three remaining cycles will be. We just have to determine which cycle goes where and what the individual ordering is within each cycle.

First, let’s consider that in the Bible epistles, messages concerning specific individuals always come at the end. Therefore, we can infer that the individual epistles function essentially the same way in the overall Bible canon. Moreover, often the section on individuals is followed by a farewell and/or benediction and/or a reference to Jesus’ second coming. Hence, we can put the individual epistles in the seventh cycle, and Revelation would be a natural final book. Revelation is also the ultimate “The Story Continues,” and it being the seventh book of the seventh cycle would explain why the book itself is full of cycles of sevens. Revelation 22:16-21 also functions as an ending for the entire Bible, not just the Book of Revelation itself.

As far as order of the seventh cycle goes, the traditional order (including keeping the General epistles after the Pauline epistles) seems to work fine, except I would move 2 Timothy after Philemon, as it is Paul’s final epistle: he indicates that his time of departure is at hand, having kept the faith (2 Timothy 4:6-7).

Moving on to the next cycle, the Book of Acts ends in Rome, so it leads naturally into Romans, Paul’s general overview of the gospel, the perfect first book for the sixth cycle (note that the Messiah cycle is now the fifth cycle, not the fourth). The sixth cycle as an exploration of the gospel is a logical follow-on from the Messiah cycle.

As far as order for the sixth cycle goes, the traditional order seems to work fine. Having Romans at the beginning and Colossians at the end shows the progression of the preaching of the gospel from “from Jerusalem and round about to Illyricum” (Romans 15:19) to “to every creature under heaven” (Colossians 1:23).

That all means that the seven epistles about the return of Christ belong at the beginning of the Bible. This completely changes the nature of how the Bible is meant to be read. Instead of a chronological record of human history, this canon ordering is instead laying out the completed Holy Scriptures according to the urgency of Christ’s imminent return. It is the Holy Spirit’s presentation of the gospel through the writings of the apostles and prophets, not a dry sequence of facts.

A natural question arises, however: why are 1 and 2 Thessalonians separated from the seven Pauline epistles in the sixth cycle? Well, something odd happens in these two epistles: Paul makes references to the Thessalonians escaping the imminent judgment associated with the Second Coming (1 Thessalonians 1:9-10; 5:1-9) and to an event involving the Second Temple (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4). The Second Coming judgment fell on the faithless Jews of Paul’s day (see The Enigma of the End Times), not the Gentiles of the cities of the Roman Empire, and events concerning the temple would primarily interest Jews, not Gentiles. This means that these would be odd things to write to a Gentile church.

If we look in Acts 17:1-10, however, we see that unlike in Antioch (Acts 13:46), Corinth (Acts 18:6), and Rome (Acts 28:28), Paul did not shift his preaching in Thessalonica from Jews to Gentiles due to Jewish opposition. He simply wasn’t there long enough for it to happen before he had to leave for Berea. Therefore, while many Gentiles in Thessalonica believed (Acts 17:4), the core of the Thessalonian church was apparently Jewish.

1 and 2 Thessalonians are thus epistles primarily directed at Jews, not Gentiles. This explains why Paul compares the suffering of the Thessalonians from “their own countrymen” to the sufferings of Jewish Christians in Judea from “the Judeans” (1 Thessalonians 2:14-16), not from “the Jews” more broadly: he is referring to faithless Thessalonian Jews persecuting faithful Thessalonian Jews, just as faithless Judean Jews persecuted faithful Judean Jews. Many of these faithless Thessalonian Jews would have been trapped in Jerusalem while observing Passover when Titus besieged the city in 70 AD, thereby suffering the judgment of Jesus’ Second Coming. The faithful Thessalonian Jews would have been forewarned by the preaching of the apostles and would have known to stay away.

Because these two letters are Jewish epistles, they are therefore grouped with the writings of James, Peter, Jude, and John, who were all apostles primarily to Jews (Paul identifies James, Peter, and John as “pillars” of the Jewish church in Galatians 2:9). This therefore replicates on a larger scale the “to the Jew first, then the Greek” principle previously mentioned about the Epistle to the Hebrews: the Jewish epistles start the Bible, then we receive the story of salvation in cycles 2-5, then the Gentile epistles, then final instructions and the benediction of Revelation. Note that this constitutes a linking between cycles 1, 6, and 7, as we previously noted happens within each cycle.

As far as order of the first cycle goes, the traditional order seems to work fine again (including keeping the General epistles after the Pauline epistles), except I would move 1 John to the beginning, as its opening (especially verses 1-4) fits as an introduction to the entire Bible, not just that specific letter. Jude remains a fitting ending to the cycle, as its many references to Old Testament events are a perfect segue into the Old Testament.

This gives us our final model:

1. End Times Approaching (Jewish Epistles)
   1. 1 John
   2. 1 Thessalonians
   3. 2 Thessalonians
   4. James
   5. 1 Peter
   6. 2 Peter
   7. Jude
2. Covenant History: Tabernacle
   1. Genesis
   2. Law: Exodus
   3. Law: Leviticus
   4. Law: Numbers
   5. Law: Deuteronomy
   6. Joshua
   7. Judges
3. Covenant History: First Temple
   1. Psalms
   2. Wisdom: Proverbs
   3. Wisdom: Song of Songs
   4. Wisdom: Job
   5. Wisdom: Ecclesiastes
   6. Ruth
   7. Greater Kings (1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings)
4. Covenant History: Second Temple
   1. Lamentations
   2. Prophets: Jeremiah
   3. Prophets: Ezekiel
   4. Prophets: Daniel
   5. Prophets: The Twelve
   6. Esther
   7. Greater Chronicles (1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah)
5. Covenant History: Messiah
   1. Isaiah
   2. Gospel: Matthew
   3. Gospel: Mark
   4. Gospel: Luke
   5. Gospel: John
   6. Hebrews
   7. Acts
6. The Gospel (Gentile Epistles)
   1. Romans
   2. 1 Corinthians
   3. 2 Corinthians
   4. Galatians
   5. Ephesians
   6. Philippians
   7. Colossians
7. Final Instructions and Benediction
   1. 1 Timothy
   2. Titus
   3. Philemon
   4. 2 John
   5. 3 John
   6. 2 Timothy
   7. Revelation