The Books of the Old Testament

Wibbly Wobbly Wonder

Two thirds of the bible seems to be Old Testament , Why ? is the New Testament not more important / relevant ?

The Books of the Old Testament - Why are they not arranged in chronological order, like the New Testament seems mostly to be ?

Can ye Christian folks explain what order The Books of the Old Testament are actually arranged in, and why were they were arranged in this order ?

Also, what's your favorite books in the Old Testament and Why ?

Peregrinus

Wibbly Wobbly Wonder wrote: »

Two thirds of the bible seems to be Old Testament , Why ? is the New Testament not more important / relevant ?

Even if we grant that the NT is more important - a controversial claim, possibly - why should length be correlated to importance?

The OT is long, partly because the canon was never formally closed. Broadly speaking, books were considered scriptural if they were received by the community, and employed in prayer, study and worship and, in principle, right up to the time of Christ new books could be added. (Obviously the reception of books as scriptural was a process rather than an event, plus there was no central authority in charge which would rule on what was scriptural and what was not. So there was room for debate about what was scriptural, and in fact in those debates lie the roots of the disagreements among different Christians today about exactly which works belong in the canon of the Old Testament. But that’s another story.)

So you had the Pentateuch, capturing the mythic stories of the Jewish people, the writings of various prophets (and there was no limit to the number of prophets the Lord might send), the later histories, the wisdom books, etc. And, apart of course from the Pentateuch, all of these collections were always open to being added to.

However when the Christians came to consider criterion of canonicity for the NT, top of the list was apostolicity; a work was not scriptural unless it was accepted as having been written by an apostle, or by somebody closely connected to an apostle. That effectively confined consideration to works written from just after the death of Christ to about sixty or seventy years beyond that - a comparatively small timespan. Hence, a much smaller canon.

Wibbly Wobbly Wonder wrote: »

The Books of the Old Testament - Why are they not arranged in chronological order, like the New Testament seems mostly to be?

Can ye Christian folks explain what order The Books of the Old Testament are actually arranged in, and why were they were arranged in this order ?

The question of how scriptural books are arranged really doesn’t arise until we have the technology to print the bible in a single codex, or book. So it’s a comparatively late-arising issue.

The NT is not really arranged chronologically. The arrangement is:

- The four gospels, presented in (what was thought to be) chronological order.
- Acts, as a sort of appendix to the Gospels - it takes up where Luke leaves off.
- The Letters of Paul, all of which are written either to particular churches or to particular named individuals. These are arranged in descending order of size, the longest book first, except for Hebrews which comes at the end because its authorship by Paul was considered uncertain.
- The catholic or universal letters, which are not addressed to any particular church or individual. These are arranged by (traditional) author - first Peter, then John, then Jude
- The Apocalypse, which doesn’t fit into any of the previous groups, and whose canonicity was the last to be accepted.

The OT is likewise arranged thematically:

- The Pentateuch, which is the oldest part of the canon, the first to be written down, and which embodies creation and origin stories.
- The Historical books, which take up the story of the Jewish people from where the Pentateuch leaves off. This group is of course arranged chronologically, except that sometimes ti doubles back and covers some ground a second time. And there are some gaps in the biblical history.
- The Wisdom books - Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Songs, Job, etc. These employ various literary forms (poetry, music, fable) to reflect on God and his relationship with his people.
- The Prophets, who can be seen as commenting on, and drawing conclusions from, the events in Jewish history (although some of the events they comment on are not included in the History books which, as noted above, are incomplete).

Doc Farrell

Even if we grant that the NT is more important - a controversial claim, possibly - why should length be correlated to importance?

With the greatest respect I'm not not sure what the above sentence refers to? If you have time perhaps you could explain it or am I missing something?

with the greatest appreciation to our Antipodean friends!

Peregrinus

In Post #1, Wibbly Wobble Wonder suggests that the NT is regarded as "more important/relevant" than the OT and, in light of that, he asks why the bible devotes more space to the OT than the NT.

My response is (1) it's not necessarily true that Christians regard the NT as more important/relevant than the OT (I suspect if you asked them you'd get different responses from different Christians about this) and (2) even if it were true, I don't see why the more important passage of scripture needs to be the longer one.

purple_hatstand

Peregrinus wrote: »

In Post #1, Wibbly Wobble Wonder suggests that the NT is regarded as "more important/relevant" than the OT and, in light of that, he asks why the bible devotes more space to the OT than the NT.

My response is (1) it's not necessarily true that Christians regard the NT as more important/relevant than the OT (I suspect if you asked them you'd get different responses from different Christians about this) and (2) even if it were true, I don't see why the more important passage of scripture needs to be the longer one.

Quantity/Quality issues aside, the new testament contains the death and resurrection stories without which christianity would surely not exist...?

Peregrinus

purple_hatstand wrote: »

Quantity/Quality issues aside, the new testament contains the death and resurrection stories without which christianity would surely not exist...?

Sure. But the OT contains the texts which ground the Christian understanding of the Fall, without which Christians would not understand the resurrection as they do, and Christianity (if it existed at all) would be a fundamentally different religion.

Look, I don't particularly want to get into a "which is the more important scripture?" debate. If it helps, I'll agree to this; Christians read all the scriptures in the light of the gospels, so the gospels are central.

The point is, I think this is irrelevant to the OP. The contents and arrangement of the scriptures is driven by other considerations.