The Hebrew Bible - But in Which Order?

The Hebrew canon, known often as either the Tanakh or as the Old Testament, is a collection of thirty-nine books. The number is somewhat arbitrary, because some books, like I Samuel and II Samuel, were divided into two merely because of the typical length of a scroll.

These books are further grouped into three sets. The first set is called the Torah, or the five books of Moses. Properly speaking, therefore, the Torah is not the same as the Old Testament. The Torah is merely one part of the Old Testament.

The word ‘Torah’ is often (mis)translated into English as ‘law,’ but ‘instructions’ or ‘directions’ might be more accurate. These five books are also called the ‘Pentateuch.’

The second segment of the Tanakh is called the ‘prophets’ or Nevi’m (also transliterated as Nebiim). This group is subdivided into the ‘earlier prophets’ (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings), and the ‘later prophets’ (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve ‘minor’ prophets).

The third segment is the Ketubim (also Ketuvim) or ‘writings.’ This group includes Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Ruth, Esther, Song of Solomon, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Daniel, Ezra, and Chronicles.

The order of the books in the Hebrew Bible varies: in the Tanakh the books are presented in the three groups described above. Most English translations of the Old Testament follow a different order, a pattern first found in the Septuagint, a translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, made by the Jewish communities in Egypt sometime between 300 BC and 100 BC.

Franz Delitzsch and Johann Friedrich Karl Keil coauthored an exhaustive analysis of the Tanakh. They write:

The prophetic histories are followed in the Old Testament canon by the prophetic books of prediction. The two together form the middle portion of the threefold canon.

Delitzsch and Keil note that definition of the words ‘prophet’ and ‘prophecy’ need to be examined. The middle third of the Tanakh is called the ‘prophets,’ but isn’t Moses a prophet, too? Yet he and his words are recorded in the first third. Arguably, some texts in the final third are also prophetic.

The Torah is indeed also a prophetic work, since Moses, the mediator through whom the law was revealed, was for that very reason a prophet without an equal (Deu. 34:10); and even the final codification of the great historical law-book possessed a prophetic character (Ezr. 9:11). But it would not have been right to include the Torah (Pentateuch) in that portion of the canon which is designated as “the prophets” (Nebiim), inasmuch as, although similar in character, it is not similar in rank to the other prophetic books. It stands by itself as perfectly unique — the original record which regulated on all sides the being and life of Israel as the chosen nation, and to which all other prophecy in Israel stood in a derivative relation. And this applies not to prophecy alone, but to all the later writings. The Torah was not only the type of the prophetic histories, but of the non-prophetic, the priestly, political, and popular histories also. The former followed the Jehovistic or Deuteronomic type, and the latter the Elohistic. The Torah unites the prophetic and (so to speak) hagiographical styles of historical composition in a manner which is peculiar to itself.

Comparing the groupings and orderings found in the Hebrew Tankah with those found in the English Old Testament is a worthwhile and thought-provoking task.

Finding the Eternal

As followers of Jesus organize those aspects of their life which are corporate, they ask, “how should we live?” (Luke 3:10, II Peter 3:11).

Because people have been following Jesus for around 2,000 years, there’s a wealth of patterns and examples to study. How do we make the best use of a previous generation’s experience?

In this context, the question of tradition is hotly debated. Those who find worthy examples in the past are accused of being woodenly and slavishly bound to tradition. Those who depart from patterns of the past are accused of blindly rejecting experience’s wisdom.

With a couple of millennia behind them, the followers of Jesus have experimented with, rejected, and accepted a diverse assortment of models. What might be called traditional in a North American Pentecostal church would be seen as a break with tradition in the Armenian Orthodox church, and vice-versa.

But God asks each generation of Jesus followers to reexamine these matters and sort them out again. Why? Perhaps He wants them understand, and engage with, whichever order they inhabit. He doesn’t want them to merely go through the motions of some organization.

How do we distinguish, in tradition, between what is valuable and what should be cast aside? How do we determine which innovations are salutary and which are wasteful? Noted scholar Jaroslav Pelikan writes:

Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And, I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name. The reformers of every age, whether political or religious or literary, have protested against the tyranny of the dead, and in doing so have called for innovation and insight.

In making a distinction between ‘tradition’ and ‘traditionalism,’ Pelikan is giving us a bit of advice. A truly beneficial tradition is part of a living faith: it engages with the lives of the believers, and with the lives of the rest of the world; it brings the eternal into the present. Mere formulaic activity is not a living faith. Merely replicating a pattern, with little thought to its meaning or purpose or its points of contact with current life, is not a meaningful tradition, but rather a dead traditionalism.

Bound, as humans are, by living inside time, humans tend to make a great distinction between the past, the present, and the future. This difference may not be so great for God, because He lives outside time.

In 1979, when the Episcopalian church in the United States experienced animated debate about the adoption of a revised prayer book, a comment was made to the effect that God is neither old nor new, but eternal. (The reader is advised to search the periodicals of that time for an exact quote.)

The danger in a discussion about tradition is that one can be easily sidetracked into a consideration of concrete external symbols, which are not as important as the eternal meanings which such symbols are supposed to carry into contemporary daily life.

Phrasings, wordings, types of music, architectural and garment are, of themselves, of little value. They are the “jars of clay” (II Corinthians 4:7) which carry the wisdom of God into our hearts, minds, and hands. Richard Rohr writes:

Many religious people seem to think that God, for some utterly unexplainable reason, loves the human past (usually their own group’s recent past) instead of the present or the future of this creation.

Whether one maintains tradition or departs from it, in either case this choice should be a means to an end, not an end in itself. The goal is neither to preserve tradition nor to violate it. But such preservation or violation can be a step toward a goal. Rohr continues:

We can do much better than substituting mere traditionalism for actual God experience.

Obviously, the locus classicus for this theme is Mark 7:8, as Jesus says, “You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”

Another relevant text is found in John’s Revelation (3:2): “Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God.”

If the goal is to “strengthen,” then we choose to follow, or depart from, tradition as that goal dictates. Richard Lenski explains that this passage

means to take strong, immediate, effective measures. “To make decisively firm” all that is ready to die completely conveys the idea of establishing it with new life and vitality so that it may be able to shake off this creeping death and to stand solidly against its inroads.

The stakes here become apparent: if we become sidetracked, then spiritual death will ensue.

Inevitably, we will become sidetracked. We will embrace tradition when we should depart from it, and we will violate tradition when we should preserve it. We are sinners and we are sinful.

Jesus reaches into our blind and confused fumbling, and He directs us. Despite our best efforts, not because of them, He will lead us according to His will.

He will forgive us for our bad corporate choices as well as for our bad individual choices. His Holy Spirit, not our squabbling among ourselves, will call, gather, enlighten, and sanctify the followers of Jesus on earth.