Why is Scripture not chronologival if Gid is the author of Scipture?

[Veteran1990]

I'm curious if there is intent behind this?

 

[Sabertooth]

The Bible is a compilation of books.
You do not order a conventional library by the dates on which the books were published.
You order them by subject matter.
The Bible is ordered the same way...

 

[HTacianas]

I'm curious if there is intent behind this?

Why would it need to be chronological?

 

[com7fy8]

Why a book within itself is not chronological > possibly, because different portions of the book are each primarily intended to tell us something, and not to reveal chronology.

If whole books contain items found in each other, instead of their being combined into one chronological writing > possibly, each book has its own specialized purpose to tell us something or things and not just chronology; plus, if two books have similarities but also unique items, they can be helping to confirm each other . . . bearing witness to what each holds that is the same in both books.

And, of course, ones might say God "sits outside of time"; so He is not terribly concerned about order of things in human time, as much as He is about special messages which can help us to know Him and learn how to love. But I personally accept that God is aware of time, and works in time; but there is kind of a point to this idea, even so, I would say

 

[d taylor]

-​

The books of The Tanakh what people now call the Old Testament are not in the correct order in the current Bibles. Except for Bibles like The Complete Jewish Bible. If you want to see the order of past times you would need to see a Jewish Tanakh or The Complete Jewish Bible.

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Jewish-Bible-Testament-Hadashah/dp/9653590189

the Torah, the Nevi'im, and the Kethuvim

The Five Books of Moses (Chumash)

• Genesis

• Exodus

• Leviticus

• Numbers

• Deuteronomy
  
  The Eight Books of the Prophets (Neviim)

• Joshua

• Judges

• Samuel

• Kings

• Isaiah

• Jeremiah

• Ezekial

• The Twelve (minor prophets) Trei-Assar

• The Eleven Books of the Writings (Kesuvim)

• Psalms – Tehilim

• Proverbs – Mishlei

• Job – Iyov

• Song of Songs – Shir HaShirim

• Ruth – Rus

• Lamentations – Eicha

• Ecclesiastes – Koheles

• Esther

• Daniel – Doniel

• Ezra/Nehemia

• Chronicles – Divrei Hayamim

 

[Veteran1990]

Why a book within itself is not chronological > possibly, because different portions of the book are each primarily intended to tell us something, and not to reveal chronology.

If whole books contain items found in each other, instead of their being combined into one chronological writing > possibly, each book has its own specialized purpose to tell us something or things and not just chronology; plus, if two books have similarities but also unique items, they can be helping to confirm each other . . . bearing witness to what each holds that is the same in both books.

And, of course, ones might say God "sits outside of time"; so He is not terribly concerned about order of things in human time, as much as He is about special messages which can help us to know Him and learn how to love. But I personally accept that God is aware of time, and works in time; but there is kind of a point to this idea, even so, I would say

I only Evaluated that if it kept record of genealogies the concept of chronology was apparent and important to the author's. I say this because it seems like there is no purpouse to countless reference different chapters endlessly for a single verse.

 

[Veteran1990]

-​

The books of The Tanakh what people now call the Old Testament are not in the correct order in the current Bibles. Except for Bibles like The Complete Jewish Bible. If you want to see the order of past times you would need to see a Jewish Tanakh or The Complete Jewish Bible.

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Jewish-Bible-Testament-Hadashah/dp/9653590189

the Torah, the Nevi'im, and the Kethuvim

The Five Books of Moses (Chumash)

• Genesis

• Exodus

• Leviticus

• Numbers

• Deuteronomy
  
  The Eight Books of the Prophets (Neviim)

• Joshua

• Judges

• Samuel

• Kings

• Isaiah

• Jeremiah

• Ezekial

• The Twelve (minor prophets) Trei-Assar

• The Eleven Books of the Writings (Kesuvim)

• Psalms – Tehilim

• Proverbs – Mishlei

• Job – Iyov

• Song of Songs – Shir HaShirim

• Ruth – Rus

• Lamentations – Eicha

• Ecclesiastes – Koheles

• Esther

• Daniel – Doniel

• Ezra/Nehemia

• Chronicles – Divrei Hayamim

Do they make more sense read in this order?

 

[d taylor]

Do they make more sense read in this order?

Not sure what you mean by making more sense.

 

[Percivale]

There was a time in history when people liked to order a collection of books from longest to shortest. Maybe that worked better for scrolls so you would not run out of parchment in the middle of a book. That's the way the Quran is organized and also how Paul's Epistles are. That's only one of many ways in which the Bible is not like what you would expect it to be if God wanted to give us a perfect authoritative scripture.

 

[com7fy8]

I only Evaluated that if it kept record of genealogies the concept of chronology was apparent and important to the author's. I say this because it seems like there is no purpouse to countless reference different chapters endlessly for a single verse.

Yeah, that can be crazy. But references can help you to find other verses which can help you and even give context and understanding to the verse you are reading. First, though, it can be good just to read through what is in the book you are investigating.

Ok, so thank you for telling me. I'll try to give you something helpful.

Indeed, for a genealogy you might be more concerned about chronology, because it has a lot to do with who is the father of who! But, even if a genealogy is accurate, still it might not be clear how one genealogy fits in time with another. But for each genealogy a primary purpose is to tell who gave rise to whom in a family line, not who was born in chronology with ones of other family trees.

Also, now I have been getting more of a love message from genealogies and other scriptures. Now I appreciate more how a genealogy in the Bible shows that God knows about people of that time, He cares about them. A genealogy report can be a sample of this, showing God does care about individuals of that time . . . though of course He has not done genealogies of any and all humans ever. So, this shows God knows and loves us all; and so I need to love any and all people, even if they have no report in history, have not been put in a genealogy, at all.

But we see how at places in a genealogy, there can be a little report about some individual person. This tends to be a person who walked with God; so God mentions the person. He knows who is walking with Him, and it matters to Him. And there can be a meaning of the story, in order to help us to walk with God and to love the way God wants.

Now I see how there is a compassion message in the fact that only certain people have something told about them > so many are only named, but nothing about them and God is reported. This could mean so many have missed being with God . . . a very sad possibility; so I should care about people and do what I can to help anyone to know God through Jesus - - instead of being fast to criticize people.

So I can get meaning from a genealogy

But other things might not need to have an exact time line given, because their love meaning in God's word does not need for you to know the exact chronology. But we might need to see why things happened the way they did, so we can learn from good example of godly people, and be wise not to follow the bad example of other people.

 

[Silly Uncle Wayne]

I'm curious if there is intent behind this?

Actually very few books are chronological. Most biographies will start with one key moment in the life of the subject and then revert back to a chronological take on how they got to that point.

Historical books where multiple things are going on will often complete the story of one event, then revert back a few hours/days to explain another, the whole story following an overall movement through time but individual episodes jumping back and forth for clarity.

The Bible as a whole is ordered the way it is because that is the way it was historically done. So the overall thrust is chronological, but not extensively so.

The Hebrew way of ordering the Tanakh is Torah, Prophets, Writings. Torah is probably the earliest writings (barring Job), the prophets follow and do have some chronology and some overlap. They are mostly organised by what can realistically fit on one scroll.

Internally the writings tend to follow a chronology too, though many have asides and references back to something else.

If you want to see the Bible in Chronological order, F. LaGard Smith produced one that I found very useful early on: The Narrated Bible - he even explains his reasoning for some events and their placement, though not everyone would agree with him.

 

[Eftsoon]

I'm curious if there is intent behind this?

Why would chronological order be superior?

 

[Knasbas]

God is not the author of scripture. That is how Muslims reson about Koran. The only thing that God wrote is the ten comandments and whatever Jesus wrote or drew in the sand, if I remember correctly.

The thing that is stated is that God influenced the scripture.

I would be carefull of treating the Bible that way 'cuz you can get into a mindset that detaches the text from the people that wrote it and risk geting into som odd theology that way and make the scripture mean anything you want it to mean.

And why it's not chronological I think alot of people here made some good points allready.

 

[plain jayne]

Two things:

I: The Holy Spirit of God authored the scriptures by inspiration. It is a holy and supernatural book.

1 Corinthians 2:12-13 = "Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual."

How much is inspired? All of it.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 = "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work."

II: Why is it not in chronological order? Why does it HAVE to be? It's in order of genre: history, poetry, prophetic words, etc.

And even inside singular books, there are flashbacks and things. For example, Genesis 10 and Genesis 11 and not in chronological order. Genesis 10 is the Table of Nations listing people groups and their languages and migrations. Genesis 11 explains how that happened.

 

[pescador]

What difference does it make if the books of the Bible are in chronological order? It's a collection of 66 separate "books" written on many different subjects over many centuries. Think of the books on your bookshelf. Are they arranged chronologically?

The "books" are loosely grouped -- my grouping -- into the law, history, biography, poetry, writings by the prophets, the gospels, the epistles, and visions. Again, these are just my groupings, nothing more.

 

[pescador]

There was a time in history when people liked to order a collection of books from longest to shortest. Maybe that worked better for scrolls so you would not run out of parchment in the middle of a book. That's the way the Quran is organized and also how Paul's Epistles are. That's only one of many ways in which the Bible is not like what you would expect it to be if God wanted to give us a perfect authoritative scripture.

So exactly what order does God expect the "books" to be in?

God gave us a perfect authoritative scripture. The order of the "books" doesn't affect the contents.

 

[pescador]

I would strongly recommend reading "Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes" by E. Randolph Richards. We are all strongly conditioned by the culture and language we live in to interpret things and events through our "correct" lens, including the Bible. It is most important to understand the Biblical "books" through the cultural "lens" of the people who wrote it, not our own, which is extremely separated by both time and space from when/where/how they thought and wrote.

 

[Soyeong]

I'm curious if there is intent behind this?

The important thing that the authors of the Bible wanted its readers to understand was not the chronolectal order of how everything happened, and I see no reason to think that would be the important thing that God wants us to understand. A chiasm is where the Bible expresses a sequence of thoughts and then usually repeats the same sequence in the reverse order, and the Bible is full of countless chiasms, with whole books forming complex chiastic structures. For example, the book of Genesis is one giant chiasm that is composed of 81 smaller chiasms, which can be divided into halves, thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths, eights, ninths, tenths, or eighteenths, and each part of those fractions forms is own chiasm. For example, the disaster of the Noah's flood of too much water mirrors the disaster of Joseph's famine of there being too little water, and on a different fraction, it also mirrors famine of when Abraham when down to Egypt. The important thing that the author wants us to notice is at the center of the chiasm and how the parts that mirror each other provide commentary on each other, which can throw off someone who is approaching what they wrote as if the important thing that the author wants them to understand it a precise chronological order of what happened.

For those who are interested, this site has an index that tracks this sort of complex chiastic pattern found in many of the books in the Bible:

Patterns Of Life Bible

 

[Eftsoon]

The important thing that the authors of the Bible wanted its readers to understand was not the chronolectal order of how everything happened, and I see no reason to think that would be the important thing that God wants us to understand. A chiasm is where the Bible expresses a sequence of thoughts and then usually repeats the same sequence in the reverse order, and the Bible is full of countless chiasms, with whole books forming complex chiastic structures. For example, the book of Genesis is one giant chiasm that is composed of 81 smaller chiasms, which can be divided into halves, thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths, eights, ninths, tenths, or eighteenths, and each part of those fractions forms is own chiasm. For example, the disaster of the Noah's flood of too much water mirrors the disaster of Joseph's famine of there being too little water, and on a different fraction, it also mirrors famine of when Abraham when down to Egypt. The important thing that the author wants us to notice is at the center of the chiasm and how the parts that mirror each other provide commentary on each other, which can throw off someone who is approaching what they wrote as if the important thing that the author wants them to understand it a precise chronological order of what happened.

For those who are interested, this site has an index that tracks this sort of complex chiastic pattern found in many of the books in the Bible:

Patterns Of Life Bible

That's rather interesting. The first thing that came to mind was the way that music is structured. Complex musical structures are built up in this way.
My only concern is that this could end up being self-fulfilling. Is there any evidence that the biblical authors intended this?

 

[Soyeong]

That's rather interesting. The first thing that came to mind was the way that music is structured. Complex musical structures are built up in this way.
My only concern is that this could end up being self-fulfilling. Is there any evidence that the biblical authors intended this?

That's a good comparison because much of the it is poetry, which does have a rhythm. I think that the possibility that one the books of the Bible has this sort of complex chiastic pattern by chance is astronomical, which is compounded by the fact that it is found in many of the books of the Bible, so to me it is clearly intentionally created that way, and if it was intentionally created, then there is a reason why it was created that way, and a reason that its creator wants its readers to dig deeper in order to understand. There is the issue of how much this pattern was influence by the authors or by the Spirit, and this pattern might be evidence for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, though I'm not sure the extent to whether there are any works outside of books of the Bible that have this sort of pattern, and I'm not prepared to say that anything that has this sort of pattern is inspired by the Spirit. If the intention was for this pattern to be noticed, then it seems doubtful to me that the authors were completely unaware of the pattern and were shocked to find that it was present in what they had written. The Bible contains thousands of chiasms with at least one in every book, so it seems doubtful to me that this was not intended by its authors. Chiasms allow for authors to provide their own commentary and are an effective means of putting layers of information in a small amount of space. There are things that stick out that are meant to cause us to ask the right questions and to dig deeper to find answers, which is an Eastern way of thinking.