This past week Acadia hosted its annual Hayward lectures. Dr. Christopher Seitz was the speaker and his topic was having to do with the canonical order of the Hebrew Bible. Not surprisingly, he is an advocate for the tripartite division of the Hebrew Bible — I’m not sure I have heard a Hebrew Bible professor who wasn’t. What he aimed to show, though, was that the tripartite order of Torah, Prophets, and Writings causes us when reading to associate some books with others. His focus primarily was on the area of the prophets in particular, and it was this area that most interested me. In a nutshell, putting the latter prophets with the former prophets causes us to associate the 12, Isaiah, etc., with the Deuteronomistic history. This is a welcome word in a modern day church that thinks Tim LaHaye has figured out how to understand the Hebrew prophets.

During Dr. Seitz’s lectures, he emphasized, with a handout from Lee McDonald’s book, that the traditional Protestant order (torah, history, poetry, prophecy) is not represented in any early canonical list. While there is some shuffling of the Tanak order in ancient lists, the tripartite division is still there.

This got me to thinking, and it came up in the lectures as well, is there any trained biblical scholar today who argues for the protestant order of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament? My guess is no. And yet almost every Bible sold today follows this improper order. Why is that? There is nothing inherently “Christian” about the current order, aside perhaps from Malachi being a nice ‘closer’ that leads into the NT. And yet this order persists. Dr. Seitz mentioned the JPS translation as being the only one to follow the tripartite order. This is the only translation I know of as well and I know that there are very few Christians buying the JPS translation. Are there any others? I suspect not, and I really have to wonder why.

Which leads me to the title of this blog. Is there any popular publisher like Zondervan or HarperCollins that is willing to acknowledge current (and ancient) consensus regarding the order of the HB/OT and henceforth publish their Bibles in this order? Is there really any legitimate reason not to? I would contend that there could actually be much to be gained intellectually. The average Christian in the pew, somewhat puzzled by an unfamiliar order, may actually look into the reason why and learn a little about the Jewish heritage of their Old Testament. The association factor may also cause more fruitful reading of the Bible in Protestant churches.

Any publishers dare to rise to the challenge?