Order of the Books of the Old Testament

Course: Survey of the Old Testament

Lecture: Order of the Books of the Old Testament

Introduction

I have a threefold entry point. This three prospective entry point into the Old Testament and the whole Bible comes to us from the last chapter of the Book of Acts. Lucas is summarizing the fact that Paul is teaching day and night about the kingdom of God, trying to convince them about Jesus from the law of Moses and the prophets. We've got a theological center, a thematic framework, which is the kingdom of God, and it is expressed covenantally. Then we have a canonical or covenantal structure expressed by the words, the law of Moses, and the prophets. In the last lecture, we talked about the thematic framework, about the kingdom of God, and Jesus is the king of the kingdom. The way He administers that kingdom is covenantally through a series of covenants.

Speaker 2 (00:59):

We talked about the fact, I'm just going to review this because now I have a better drawing on the board having thought about it at lunch. We have the eternal covenant of redemption, which happened before the creation of the heavens and the earth. So pro [inaudible 00:01:11] , before the foundations of the world. There are two administrations of that eternal covenant redemption, two covenants that come out of that.

Speaker 2 (01:21):

There's the covenant of works with the first Adam. There's a covenant of grace with the second Adam, also a covenant of works, but we receive its benefits by grace, through faith in Christ. That covenant begins, or is promised in Genesis three, 14 to 19. There are a number of administrations of that one covenant, historically, as we progress through covenant or redemptive history, those include the Noahic covenant or covenants, however you want to come out on that. The Abrahamic covenant, the Mosaic covenant, the Davidic covenant and the new covenant happening both in the first coming and the second coming. So that's a summary of how all that works. That's the covenantal backbone of the administration of the kingdom of God covenantally. Okay.

Speaker 2 (02:04):

Now I want to turn to the third section, which is the structure of the Bible, which is in some sense, a weird topic. Okay? Another term for this is macro canonical hermeneutics. Macro big, canonical, Bible, hermeneutics interpretation. Big Bible interpretation, based on its form. Based on its form. I want you to think about this with me in terms of why this is such an important thing. We often don't give enough attention to the form that our Bibles come to us in, right? But form is meaningful. Right? Form is meaningful.

Speaker 2 (02:44):

In terms of the character of God, I want you to understand that God is always working from chaos to cosmos. He's always shaping and forming things. And as His image bearers, that's what we do, too. We bring structure to chaos in our lives, in our work and in our homes. So if you think about creation, in the beginning, God created the heavens the earth. The earth was formless and void and darkness was hovering over the face of the deep, chaos. And by the end of day seven, you have complete order where God is in throne, a Sabbath king over the creation kingdoms and the creation Kings, from chaos to cosmos. When we get to the account of Noah, right? God throws the world back into chaos with the delusion, the great waters and the flood waters. But then after that, the waters subside and a new creation emerges and there's form to it.

Speaker 2 (03:36):

And God's very particular about design. You think about when he commanded Noah to build the Ark. He gave them the exact specifications. How many floors, how wide, how tall, how high, how to build the boxes in the middle of the window, the door, all of that, very specific. You think about the Lord with his people in the wilderness and the tabernacle. He gave them very specific instructions, how to build that tabernacle and how to camp around it. Three tribes here, three tribes here, three tribes here, three tribes here. All of it coming together to look like a new Eden paradise with the tabernacle right in the middle of it all. God's holy dwelling place. So from chaos to cosmos in that camp, Okay?

Speaker 2 (04:16):

The temple is the same way, the new heavens and the new earth, right? In the new heavens and the new earth, what's the first thing that that angel says when he appears? He goes to John, let's go measure it, right? Of all the things they want to see the form and the structure and the beauty. Well, you think about our bodies, right? Our bodies have very specific form to them. Our arms do what our arms do because of where they're located, right? Our legs do what our legs do because of where they're located. And so form and function go together. And if you pay attention to those things, it can help you know what's going on. So I'm kind of trying to convince you, this is important. And one of the ways I do that in my classes at RTS over the years, not so much recently, is I used to begin with an experiment before this lecture, or I'd bring in 10 bags of Legos.

Speaker 2 (05:03):

And all of those bags had the identical sets of Legos in them. And I would get the students in a group for three or fours depend on how many we had in the class. And I would say, you've got 30 minutes to build anything you want out of these Legos, but you've got to use all the Legos. And then you've got to explain to us what it is and what it does. All right? And there was not one year where any group built the same thing and had the same function, right? Some would build a boat, some would build a house, some would build a computer center, some would build a castle, some would build a car, all these different things. And the way in which you put those units together, determined what it did. The Bible is not unlike that, the way we put it together, determines what it does and in some sense, how we use it.

Speaker 2 (05:51):

A good example is this. There was a propeller, there's one propeller in that bag of Legos, right? And you could make three different things with that. Propeller, according to the box, you had three different options. You can make an airplane, a helicopter, or a boat. An airplane, helicopter or a boat. So on the airplane, the propeller went on the front and pulled it. On the helicopter, the propeller went on the back and steered it. And on the boat the propeller went on the back and it pushed it. The same piece depend on where you put it has a different function. Position equals function in many, many ways. And so we're going to try to pay attention to that. And I'll give you an example from the book of Ruth in a little bit about how that works. Okay. For me, the designation law prophets is a hint at a threefold division of the old Testament that is still in existence today.

Speaker 2 (06:40):

It's the original order and why it's still in existence today. The law, the prophets and the writings, or the Psalms. We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about the threefold division of the Hebrew Bible, what those divisions do and how those divisions are reflected in the new Testament. We have the same three divisions in the new Testament. Okay? So here's my statement, my thesis. The structure of the Christian Canon, that is the arrangement of the books in the old and new Testament, is deliberate and meaningful for interpretation. It is often said in our circles that when it comes to interpreting the Bible, context is king, right? And that is certainly true. And since this is true, then the macro canonical context of the whole Bible must be the king of Kings. When it comes to interpretation, you can't take a verse out of context, apply to any way you want, and then say that God's being faithful or unfaithful to you. And if it comes true or not, or if it works or not, right? There's a bigger, bigger context. Right?

Speaker 2 (07:39):

And so the context of the whole is just as important as the context in a chapter. It's important to know, we know what Samson is doing in Judges 13 to 16, because of what God says he's doing in Judges chapter two, right? We know how to interpret these things. We look at the context through that. So we're going to do that. In this lecture, we will consider the structure of the old Testament, also the new Testament and how that structure informs our understanding of how the Bible works. So it can better understand what it says in the context of its intended function. So I'm going to kind of set this out programmatically by way of preliminary summary. It is the covenantal nature of the cannon that controls the larger groupings of the old and new testaments in a way that links the two testaments as mirror images of each other.

Speaker 2 (08:23):

I'm going to draw a picture too. Type and antitype, shadow and substance or fullness. In this way, we will come to see an intentional divine design at work for the whole Bible. That the new Testament is a mirror image of the old Testament in both design and function. This important connection will help us with our interpretation of the whole Bible, but especially the old Testament this week together. The fact that the order of the biblical books is not random or chaotic makes sense from what we know about God's character. He's always working from chaos to cosmos. All right, we talked about that. I don't know if you've watched HGTV in your life and apparently I'm dating myself for what we do with our free time, my wife and I. But there used to be the show called Divine Design. I liked that title, not for HGTV purposes, but for biblical purposes, that is the Bible has a divine design.

Speaker 2 (09:11):

And over the course of the last 250 years of old Testament scholarship, let's say, since about mid 1700s, the whole goal has been to take the Bible apart in to as many possible pieces and study them in minute detail. So we're taking it apart, taking it apart, taking it apart, taking it apart. And then when we're done, we don't know what the whole used to be. I felt like when I left seminary, I had a great big bag of Legos, and I knew all kinds of great stuff about each little piece, but I didn't know what to put them into. What was I building? And I had to really step back and take a look at this issue for myself to say, how does it all fit together? How does it all fit together?

Speaker 2 (09:51):

It all started to make sense for me once I read this book, I'll just give credit to it. There's a book called The Structure of Biblical Authority by Meredith Klein. In that book, he has an article called The Old Testament Origins of the Gospel Genre, where he connects what's going on in the gospels with the book of Exodus and showed how these things link up. And that started in my mind, the flowering of ideas that maybe there are more connections to see that maybe more from the new Testament is reflected in the old Testament and maybe more from the old Testament helps us make sense of the new Testament. So I was like someone put two puzzle pieces together for me. And I was wondering if I could put the rest of the puzzle together. I was so thankful for that. So I recommend that I've read that book many, many times in my life, and I always benefit from it.

Speaker 2 (10:34):

It's hard to read a little bit, but it's worth the investment. It's worth the investment. A comment on form that I just came across. I'm reading this book called interestingly, look at this, The Design of the Psalter, it's a new book out. The Design of the Psalter by Peter Ho. And we'll be talking about the design of the book of Psalms. It's got five books, it's got a Davidic design to it, the rise of the Davidic monarchy, its fall, and the kingship of [inaudible 00:10:59] , that kind of visits. Very interesting. And it's called a macro structural analysis of the book of Psalms saying that scholars are now recognizing the 150 Psalms that we now have in this book are not randomly placed there. They're actually meaningful, right? In terms of where they are and where they live. And it helps you to understand what they're doing.

Speaker 2 (11:15):

So at the end, in his conclusion, he quotes a guy named David Friedman, David Knoll Friedman, who was a professor of old Testament at the University of Michigan in the latter half of the 20th century. A very prominent well-known old Testament scholar at university of Michigan. And he wrote this book called The Unity of the Hebrew Bible. The Unity of the Hebrew Bible. Out of print, but I just found it on Amazon. And so you can dig it up there if you want it. I don't know his background. I'm not sure he's an Evangelical, but he's making some amazing statements about the Hebrew Bible here. And I'm quoting him right here on page... Out of this book from... This is his introduction page VI. So page six. He says "for me", and he's talking about how his Hebrew Bible, there's this many words here in this section, this many words here, this many words here, how they all work back and forth and how they have this unity keywords that link up with each other and stuff like this.

Speaker 2 (12:10):

For me, a primary indicator for larger groupings within the Hebrew Bible is symmetry. Symmetry defined by structures and numbers usually of a simple binary or bilateral kind. You know the rule of two? We're going to see that today. When symmetry is established or confirmed by examination, it must be the result of conscience planning of deliberate decisions. Conscience planning of deliberate decisions. Therefore, I contend that the selection arrangement and organization of the books of the Hebrew Bible follow from the deliberate and purposeful decisions and actions of an individual or small group of people at a particular time and in a particular place that's producing a unified whole. Now that is a radical statement in light of the nature of old Testament scholarship over the last 250 years. And he would have held to those critical views. [inaudible 00:13:06] those critical views. But when he steps back and he looks at the finished product, right, we're not talking about how it got there, but he'd step back and look at the finished product, He's overwhelmed by its unity and symmetry. Okay?

Speaker 2 (13:17):

And that's no small thing. So at the end of the day, today at the end of our lecture, which is going to consist of several lectures strung together, I want you to be overwhelmed by the beauty and the symmetry of the whole Bible, but especially the old Testament. Because this is old Testament survey.

Speaker 2 (13:35):

We're back in Acts 28, and it says from morning till evening, he explained and declared to them, the kingdom of God, tried to convince them about Jesus from the law of Moses and the prophets. The law of Moses and the prophets represent for me, the covenantal structure of the Christian Canon. The covenantal structure of the Christian Canon. The design, the law of Moses, and the prophets constitute a shorthand reference to the Hebrew old Testament. It is a reference by section. This two-fold shorthand reference is filled out by Jesus in Luke who records the words of Jesus. Again, the master summary statement maker.

Speaker 2 (14:11):

Luke has this way of summarizing all that Jesus and Paul are doing. Jesus says in Luke 24, again, this is the road to Ameas, he's talking to the disciples, these two disciples. Then Jesus said to them, two certain disciples, "these are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled". This threefold reference by Jesus to the old Testament canon is a reference to the standard threefold division of the Hebrew Bible today, which is law prophets and writings. Law, prophets, and writings. This is the order and arrangement of my modern Hebrew Bible. And it is the order and arrangement of the Jewish Bible in modern English, often referred to as the Tanakh.

Speaker 2 (14:56):

So I have my English Bible here, right? And it's got four divisions in my old Testament. It's got my Moses books, the books of Moses, and it's got historical books. Then it's got poetic books and it's got prophetical books. So it's structured by genre. Here is my Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew and Greek is the whole Bible, but this there's a Hebrew in there. And it's got three sections, not four. Torah, Nevi-im, Kethuvim, or law, prophets and writings. And so frequently, you'll hear our Jewish friends refer to their Bible as a Tanakh. In fact, my grandfather was Jewish and that's how he would refer to his Bible, the Tanakh. You never say, go get my Bible. He'd say my Tanakh. You can still go to the bookstore, dial it up on Amazon, look up Tanakh, Jewish publication society. They're going to have a Bible where the order of the books are slightly different than ours.

Speaker 2 (15:51):

So the T stands for Torah. We know what that is. The law of God, the N stands for Nevi'im. That's the masculine plural noun for prophets in Hebrew. And then the K stands for Kethuvim. That's the masculine plural form of the word for writings. So law, prophets, and writings, Tanakh in Hebrew. Okay. So remember that. I don't refer to it as the Tanakh. I refer to my old Testament as the Hebrew old Testament. So I've got a Greek new Testament, a Hebrew old Testament. I remember when this became an issue for me, because I just had in 1990-91, that academic year, a year of Hebrew at Azusa Pacific University, where I had Bill for Greek the next year. And I was so excited, just fell in love with Hebrew. It was really hard and I really struggled to be good at it.

Speaker 2 (16:37):

But I said "this summer, I'm going to read something in Hebrew and get better at Hebrew". I thought what's short. So I didn't want to start with Isaiah or Job. And so I said, Ruth, all right. So it's narrative, it's easier than poetry. It's just four sweet chapters. So a little love story. And so I go to my Bible in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, no Ruth. It was Joshua, Judges, Kings. And I thought, oh, I got to take this Bible back to the bookstore. They left part of the books out. And so I was completely befuddled. I had no idea. I had no idea. And so I had to go back to the table of contents, right? And say, holy cow, Ruth is way on the end of the Bible after Proverbs 31. What in the world is going on?

Speaker 2 (17:22):

And then I noticed, I was looking at table conscious like, whoa. Chronicles is at the very end Ezra Nehemiah's at the very end. It's Psalms that's the beginning of this section, not Joe. I was calling all my friends saying, I didn't know what was going on? I was so alarmed. And that's when I realized that it was really my second to last year of college there, that there were two distinct orders that I was working with. I didn't have any idea about them. So I started doing some research and this is the fruit of that research. And so now Jesus calls it the law of Moses, the prophets and the Psalms.

Speaker 2 (17:59):

Historically speaking, the Torah would have been canonized or become authoritative first, the prophets, which include former latter privates second. And I'll show you what those all are. And the writings would have been the latest. And so maybe the name wasn't established for it yet, I'm thinking, and again, this is very controversial, but I'm arguing for a closed Canon around the time of Ezra Nehemiah at 400 BC. And I really think in the back of my mind, we don't know for sure, but in my fantasy world Ezra is the one who's finally responsible for the final editing and putting together of the old Testament this way. So we know he was a skilled scribe. He collected the scriptures. He helped make sense of them to the people. And he and Nehemiah did the library thing together. And so that's in my mind the possibility of what those are working on. So that's what we're going to work on. So the reason it's called Psalms in Jesus's day is because Psalms is the first book in the writings.

Speaker 2 (18:53):

And it's a convention in ancient literature, at least in Jewish ancient... Biblical ancient literature that you just name something after the first thing or word in it. In Genesis, for example, we don't call it Genesis. It's just called bereshit, which is the first word in Genesis. Exodus, we know why we call it Exodus because of the great Exodus, but really the first word is we'elleh shemot. These are the names. That's the Hebrew name. These are the names. Leviticus is vayikra, and he called, or proclaimed. So they're not sexy titles or anything like that. But you just know it's the first part that characterizes the whole. The first part that characterizes the whole. So it's just the way of doing it. So Jesus was just following the convention, what do we call this thing? We'll just call it the Psalms and the other books.

Speaker 2 (19:34):

So, okay. I can show you this chart right here then. Okay. In section one, English Bible arrangement on the left, Hebrew Bible arrangement on the right, we call this the Pentateuch call this the law. You can see there are five books there. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Five books on this side. Everything's A-OK good. Okay. Now you can see here in this section, we can see the second section in the English Bible contains all the historical books in roughly chronological order. So from Joshua entering into the land, right? To Samuel and Kings, where they get exiled, then first, second Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, which would have been the latest books, chronologically speaking. Okay. So that's a group by genre and chronology. Over here, you have two groups, you have Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, and they're called the former prophets from the moment you get into the land to getting exiled out of the land.

Speaker 2 (20:29):

And then Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the book of the 12. Okay. In Hebrew manuscripts, and we'll talk about this. When we get there, the minor prophets are considered just one book. So Isaiah, Jeremiah Ezekiel and the 12, which I wish I would've known that as a kid, because when I was in Sunday school, those are the hardest books to memorize. Right. And if I could have just said the 12, it would have saved me countless hours. All right. So the former prophets, the prophets quote unquote, have two sections to them, the former and the latter. Okay. Then we get to English Bible and now we're into the poetic genre again, we've got this poetry thing going on and a little bit by authorship here, we've got Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and song of Psalms, all kinds of Solomonic in origin.

Speaker 2 (21:12):

We've got David with Psalms and then Job's just starts out because it's the oldest perhaps. And so you've got those poetical books, right? Those are the ones that are hard to read in Hebrew. Once you get there, you kind of have to step your game up. And then you get the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, because tradition has it that Jeremiah wrote it. But it's one of those anonymous books. Ezekiel, Daniel, and then notice that Daniel's going to be down here with the prophets because he has these weird apocalyptic visions, like Ezekiel. And then the 12 minor prophets. So basically from Genesis to Malachi. Okay. In the Hebrew Bible order, there's only the third section and it's the writings. And so it's an eclectic group of poetry and prose or narrative and poetry. So you have, starts with Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Song of Psalms, Ecclesiastes.

Speaker 2 (22:03):

There's one group. Okay. And then Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles, that's the next group. Okay. One of the things we're going to see, and I can make this observation here, when it comes to the writings is that Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings are about the history of life in the land, right? In Joshua, they enter into the land and take possession of it. In Judges, they mess it all up. And then the kings tried to come in Samuel King and try to fix it and they mess it all up. And then they're booted out in second Kings 17 and 25. So this is the history of life in the land. These prophets down here, right? They interpret that history, right? And prepare God's people for exile or talk about exile. So this is about life in the land. This is about life in exile.

Speaker 2 (22:48):

Isaiah is right before the exile. Jeremiah experiences the exile and we get to Ezekiel, he's already in Babylon. So it kind of progressed through that. And then some prophets are [inaudible 00:22:55] Some are [inaudible 00:22:57], et cetera, et cetera. We'll talk about that in more detail. So you've got those two divisions there. And then in the writings, you'll notice that the same two divisions apply that these are books about life in the land or life in covenant with [inaudible 00:23:12] , right. Life in the land. So worship, suffering, wisdom, marriage, anti wisdom. But these books are about life and exile. The same organizing rubric from the profits apply to the writings, right? So Lamentations is the fall of Jerusalem. Esther and Daniel are two examples of lives in exile. And then you've got Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles that talk about exile and the return from exile.

Speaker 2 (23:36):

And we'll talk about how that works. So you can see at the very beginning right now there's hints of organization and structure that we're going to capitalize on. But first we've got to know, where does this threefold division come from? And then where does the fourfold English Bible division come from? Just so we can handle the timing on that and which one is first, which one's adapted and what are the reasons for that? Okay. So here's some biblical evidence for a threefold division of the Hebrew Bible in Luke, chapter 11 verses 49 to 51. And the synoptic account, Matthew 23, 33 and 35. We hear this, the wisdom of God said, I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute so that the blood of all the prophets shed from the foundation of the world may be charged against this generation. Okay. From the blood of Abel to the blood of Zachariah who perished between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes. I tell you, it will be required of this generation.

Speaker 2 (24:35):

So what Jesus is doing here is he's talking about the accountability of this generation to what he's doing. And he's saying the blood of all the prophets are going to bear witness against you from Abel to Zechariah and in our mind we're thinking yeah. From a to z, right? But that's English. It's not Greek right. Or Hebrew. Right. In Hebrew, Abel begins with an H and Zechariah begins with a Zion and Zion is not the last one. You can hear the Z, it's [foreign language 00:25:08] Zion. So from five to seven, right? From, from the fifth to the seventh, no, it's not how it works. Canon scholars, people do this like Francis Beckwith and stuff like that have recognized that what Jesus is doing here is he's talking about the canonical listing of martyrs, not the chronological listing of them.

Speaker 2 (25:27):

Okay. So canonically Abel is the first martyr in Genesis chapter four. And Zachariah is the last martyr in second Chronicles, 24. And so canon scholars say, this is Jesus's way of saying from the prophet first mentioned in the Bible martyr to the last one. From beginning to end, not from a to Z, but a to Z works in English. You can think of it that way. Right? So you've got, Jesus has a threefold. According to Luke 24, Jesus has a three-fold Bible, old Testament that runs from Genesis to Chronicle. So we now have the divisions and we have the bookends, right? So we're building some structure there. Okay. There is this book in the Apocrypha called the wisdom of Syriac or Ecclesiasticus written by Ben Sira. We don't know exactly when he wrote it, but his grandson translates it into Greek in 132 BC.

Speaker 2 (26:25):

Okay. And he writes a prologue to it in 132 BC, okay saying, this is my grandfather's work. He knows it's not the Bible, but he says, once you've mastered the Bible and you want more work in [inaudible 00:26:35] literature, read this, you might benefit from it. So just like we know John Piper or Tim Keller, people like that are not inspired authors, but they make true comments and they make helpful comments and it helps us understand things. So, in 132 BC in the prologue to the Greek translation, the grants and referers to the threefold division of the Hebrew scriptures three times over, three times over. And he calls it an ancient tradition in 132 BC. Now, when you think about ancient tradition in that day and age, when I think about ancient tradition or my kids think about ancient tradition, that's like talking about the iPhone six, right?

Speaker 2 (27:15):

Or the iPhone 12. Right. So we're talking just a few years, but my parents' generation think about ancient traditions, they're thinking about in the 1800s we did this. Right. So it's a little bit of a different timestamp on it, but you can think about in the ancient world, an ancient tradition would have been hundreds of years old, something like that, which would put it back at the time of Ezra or something like that. And here's some of it right here, I just copied it out of the Greek prologue. Not in Greek it's translating. Many great teachings have been given to us through the law and the prophets and the other books that followed them. So again, there's not that designation there yet. So it's still an early canon form.

Speaker 2 (27:52):

Okay. And for these, we should praise Israel for instruction and wisdom. Now, those who read the scriptures must not only themselves, understand them, but must also as lovers of learning, be able through the spoken and written word to help outsiders. So my grandfather, Jesus, so Joshua [inaudible 00:28:09] Joseph [inaudible 00:28:09] who had devoted himself, especially to the reading of the law and the prophets and the other books of our ancestors. There it is, and had acquired considerable proficiency in them was himself led to write something pertaining to instruction and wisdom. And then it says it again at the end, not only this book, but even the law itself and the prophecies and the rest of the books, different on a little when read in the original, this is what I like. He talks about you got to learn Hebrew to love these books.

Speaker 2 (28:33):

So I encourage all of you to learn Hebrew, to love these books. So we've got Jesus right in the middle saying, he's got a threefold Bible with Abel to Zechariah, Genesis to Chronicles. And when I show you how Genesis and Chronicles go together, I think you'll be encouraged by the correspondences in terms of connecting them. Then the Babylonian Talmud was written after the time of Jesus, several centuries after Jesus. Jewish interpretations of the old Testament, traditions, all that kind of good stuff. And this is the thing from the third to the sixth centuries, AD. And so this is an attract take called everyone's favorite Bava Bathra, Bava Bathra 14 B, you can look it up. If you just type in, B A V A, then B A T H R A 14 B, you can find all kinds of sites of the Babylonian Talmud on them for free.

Speaker 2 (29:17):

You can read all this stuff that talks about in 14 and 15, they talk a lot about who wrote the old Testament, even the anonymous books like Samuel wrote this one, Nathan and GAD finished it up after he died and stuff like that. Again, we don't know that for sure, but they're recounting the tradition to us.

Speaker 1 (29:33):

Okay. So you've got to be careful.

Speaker 2 (29:35):

And even talk about why books are in particular spots in places. So, Isaiah is here for this reason. Jeremiah is here for that reason. Ruth is here for this reason. It's very interesting stuff. So they're talking about the significance of location for interpretation. So by way of summary, the Hebrew canonical order, we can call it the Tanakh or the Hebrew old Testament represents the original presentation of the old Testament scriptures. One Testament with three sections. It begins with Genesis and ends with Chronicles.

Speaker 2 (30:04):

Just by way of something interesting about this at this point, that Genesis and Chronicles are the two books that begin with Adam, right? And [inaudible 00:30:13], so Adam is a key figure, even at the end of the old Testament, right. And I already told you how Genesis and Chronicles correspond. Genesis begins with creation, sin, exile, then exits to Chronicles creation, sin, exile. So it's got those same patterning things too. So that's just corresponding things.

Speaker 2 (30:37):

This is a good place for a break from this particular part of the lecture. We've simply established the fact that, or I've identified for you that there is at least another possibility in terms of the ordering of the books and structure that we need to consider before we think about the structure of the old Testament. In the next lecture, I'm going to show you why it's important to understand the arrangement of the old Testament in the covenantal categories of the Hebrew old Testament, rather than the genre categories of, we can call it the English or the Greek Septuagint.

Speaker 3 (31:09):

Thank you for listening to this lecture brought to you by biblical training.org. Your prayers and financial support enable us to provide a biblical and theological education that all people around the world can access. Blessings. As you continue to study and live out your faith. And as you grow in your relationship with the Lord.