Order of New Testament Books

Here's another interest of mine—the order of books in the Bible and, to a larger extent, what got put into the Bible and what got left out. I don't know why exactly, but maybe it has to do with educating myself about how the Bible came about and trying to explain to Biblical literalists that things didn't come about in such a nice neat package as they like to think.

But I also like the stories of coming across old writings and researchers' analyses of them (Nag Hammadi, various palimpsests, etc..). There may be a tie in to genealogy (a lot of old writings there) and languages (most of the old stuff is in Greek, Coptic, Syriac, Aramaic, and so on).

What I'm finding out is that, to my surprise, the gospels and the epistles tend to be pretty uniform. According to a copy of The Lost Books of the Bible and the Forgotten Books of Eden, a wonderfully strange book I came across, the early churches accepted all the books we have now—more or less. Actually, it isn't so much the order of books as the translations that are important. Of course.

Anyway, According to The Lost Books, the following writers (writing from the years 210 to 390) accepted the same 27 books we have today. (They left lists of the books they accepted or churches accepted. Some writers' lists aren't 100% clear. Researchers apparently can infer from their descriptions what they mean.) The writers are: Eusebius Pamphilus, Athanasius (Bishop of Alexandria), Epiphanius (Bishop of Salamis in Cyprus), Jerome, Ruffin (Presbyter of Aquilegium), Austin (Bishop of Hippo in Africa), Third Council of Carthage (Austin was at this council of 44 bishops), "Dionysius of Areopagite" (actually a pseudonym of the unknown author). BUT, Eusebius Pamphilus mentions that, although he personally accepted the 27 we have today, some churches did not accept James, Jude, 2 Peter, 3 John, and Revelation. Jerome had doubts about Hebrews, though he ultimately leaves it in.

The next set of writers had problems with various books. These books are in parentheses: Origen (James and Jude), Cyril (Bishop of Jerusalem) (Revelation), Bishops at the Council of Laodicea (Revelation), Gregory Nazianzen (Bishop of Constantinople) (Revelation), Philastrius (Bishop of Brixia in Venice) (Hebrews and Revelation).

As you can see, some books have become the "usual suspects."

Anyway...

How the Bible came about is a ridiculously broad subject. And here on this page I'm going to limit myself to the order of books of the New Testament for the most part. This page is really more a reference for myself than for anyone else. If you want to amuse yourself then continue on.

Here is the usual order found in all Catholic and Protestant New Testaments published today. I call this the "Western" order. The Orthodox churches in the East do some unusual things (below), but there is quite a bit of uniformity, surprisingly. (Over the centuries some sects or denominations have accepted or rejected various books or parts of books long after the councils of the early Church. For a time, the Quakers accepted the Gospel of the Laodiceans.)

The Gospels—

Before the Latin Vulgate they were this apparently: Matthew, John, Luke, Mark!

Then you have Acts. Acts and Luke are referred to by more scholarly types as Luke-Acts because Acts is kind of a continuation of Luke. So anyway—

Then you have the Pauline Letters/Epistles. These were put together longest to shortest, like the suras in the Koran! Of course, the Koran, written some 600 years after, may have borrowed this from the New Testament or maybe this was just the way it was done then. In any case, neither what's in the New Testament or in the Koran is arranged chronologically— After this we have the General Epistles— And last we have that mess that was seemingly written by someone on LSD or crack or something (early Church leaders and even Luther thought it a mess)—

And speaking of Luther...
Luther didn't think much of four books in the New Testament: Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation (the "usual suspects" above). He didn't like them mostly because they didn't seem to support the Protestant ideas of sola fide and sola gratia. These were his αντιλεγόμενα—those things that were spoken against. Luther wasn't alone in having problems with these books. Other issues concerning them went back to the early Church. Although he ultimately kept them in, he put them at the end. All my German Bibles have this Lutheran order, except most of the bilingual ones (they follow the English order) and one in Modern German. (Lutherans also have issues with 2 Peter,2 John, and 3 John, according to something I found buried in a wiki.)

The Upper Sorbian Bible I have has the book order found at the top of the page. Most of the few speakers of this language (all in Germany) are Catholic now.

The Swedish Bible I have does something kinda funny. Swedes are mostly Lutheran. You would think they would use one order or the other, but not this (see below).

Here is the German Lutheran order in a more Modern German (still a Lutherbibel) and in 19th century German. The differences have to do with not using old Latin case forms anymore and the spelling changes. The ones on the right of the slash are in the genitive because they modify Epistel, which isn't always written out. I'm surprised that the Modern German one didn't make changes like Petrus>Peter. What's more, even my Pennsylvania German Bible kept the names of the books as shown on the left below:

Back to the Swedes: The Swedes split the difference! From a New Testament printed in Chicago in 1883 (or a little after), an English-Swedish bilingual one (also 1883), and two at Cleveland Public Library (1902 and 1917), there is the regular Western order and then:

The Swedes must have had a spelling reform. Sadly, Swedish Bibles from 1990 and 1993 have the regular Western order.

Two Danish (from 1992 and 1913) and two Norwegian (1995 and 1973) New Testaments have the Western order.

The Slavs (at least the Orthodox ones) have their own order (Slavonic order). They switch around the General Epistles with the Pauline Epistles. I haven't learned the reason yet, but I'm working on it. Protestants trying to proselytize in Slavic Orthodox countries apparently use this order, too. Below is from a Russian New Testament I have:

A Bulgarian New Testament that I have has the same. A Romanian New Testament from 2000 has the Western order. And so does a Ukrainian from the United Bible Societies. But one published by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has the Slavonic order. So, only New Testaments in Cyrillic characters and for the Orthodox are in Slavonic order? (Romanian hasn't used Cyrillic in well over a century.) A recent (year?) Serbian New Testament has the Western order.

Where things really get strange are in Coptic, Syriac, Ethiopian versions.

Perhaps, this is the 'broad canon' of the Ethiopian version. The 'narrow canon' includes the same 27 books as other churches'. Oddly, though, the broad Ethiopian version is not printed in Ethiopia. A reference in a wiki says that it has never been published in one volume. Also,note that the line between what is canonical or not in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is not so sharply drawn as it is in the West. Also, the Ge'ez version of the Bible has 81 books. It includes some deuterocanonical books that the Catholic version doesn't have.

The Ge'ez version has 35 books in the New Testament. At least, I think so. I think it is in this order—though it's hard to find a reliable source.

I'm not so sure of the placement of Hebrews. If you use Slavonic order, it's in one place. If Catholic, then another. My bet is on the Orthodox/Slavonic.

The Copts have 29 books—the usual ones plus 1 Clement and 2 Clement, which may or may not be the same as the Ethiopian Clement. I don't know where they place them.

The Syriac Church used these books only. And this was only in the first centuries of the church. It later expanded (according to another source) 22 books. Or maybe it always had 22 books. Sources are hard to pin down here, too. I have no idea what the order was. There is a harmony of the gospels called the Diatessaron that the Syriac church also used, but the original is now lost.