Draw Near – 365 Guides to Greater Intimacy with GodSample

A LOGICAL ORDER Genesis was not the first Bible book to be written. Most scholars agree that the book of Job takes that honor in the Old Testament, and 1 Thessalonians had this distinction among the books of the New Testament. The obvious question is, "Why aren't the books arranged in chronological order in our Bible?" The answer is that our English Bible is arranged for readability. It follows this order: Law, History, Poetry, and Prophecy. The New Testament is similarly divided: Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypse. The Jewish Canon has only twenty-two books compared with thirty-nine in our Old Testament. The same material is in both, but the Hebrew Scripture is divided to accord with the twenty-two letters of their alphabet. In their Canon, the Minor Prophets are counted as one book, Ruth is coupled with Judges, Ezra with Nehemiah, Lamentations with Jeremiah, and the two books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles are considered as one each. They have three major divisions: The Law, The Prophets, and The Writings. By the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, the Old Testament was pretty well completed as we have it today. Josephus says "that since the death of Artaxerxes (424 B.C.) no one had dared to add anything to them, to take anything from them, or to make any change in them." When we read the Bible from its beginning, we see how God has worked in every generation to bring man back to Himself. The theme of all of God's Word is the gift of His Son. Paul says man's highest purpose is to be conformed to that image (Romans 8:29).