Setting is important. A bloody knife in a butcher shop is one thing; it is another when found at the scene of a crime. Where you find the knife leads to different conclusions. Reading Chronicles after you read Kings can be helpful, but this is not the order that Jesus and His disciples would’ve had in mind. The Hebrew Old Testament had a different setting (both in division and order), and that different setting can lead to different thoughts.
The Hebrew Old Testament is called the Tanakh and has a tripartite structure.
Torah (LAW)
a
Nevi’im (PROPHETS)
a
Ketuvim (WRITINGS)
When the New Testaments refers to “the law and the prophets” it is shorthand for the Tanakh. Jesus alludes to all three divisions in Luke 24:44 when He says, “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.” There, “the Psalms,” being the largest portion of “the Writings,” are representative thereof.
The New Testament has a correlating threefold division, as indicated in this plan. The purpose of this reading plan is to help you read the Old Testament more like those who wrote the New Testament would have, and thus, to elicit certain thoughts and conclusions.
For more on the Hebrew Old Testament and the significance of the canonical
order we recommend:
- Dominion and Dynasty by Stephen Dempster
- God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment by Jim Hamilton
This reading plan is designed to be flexible. If you read four chapters a day, you can read through the Bible in a year (with 67 makeup days). Or you may check off one box each day and read through the Bible in roughly three years. You might want to read a few chapters from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament each day. Whatever you do, the critical thing for any Bible plan is to read through the whole Bible and the central point of this plan is to read it canonically. If you fall behind, don’t try to catch up, just start up where you left off and keep going.