Books of the Bible in Order

The Bible contains 66 books in the Protestant tradition, arranged in a canonical order that groups texts by genre and tradition rather than by when they were composed. The Old Testament’s 39 books move from Law through History, Poetry, and Prophets. The New Testament’s 27 books begin with the four Gospels and end with Revelation. This order has been standard in English-language Bibles since the Reformation, but it obscures something significant: the sequence in your Bible’s table of contents bears little resemblance to the sequence in which these texts were actually written.

What follows is the complete list of all 66 books, their canonical position, and the approximate date when scholars believe they were composed. The gap between those two columns tells a story of its own.

Old Testament: 39 Books

The Old Testament is arranged in four major sections in most Protestant Bibles: Law (Torah), History, Poetry and Wisdom, and Prophets. This ordering follows the structure established by early Christian tradition, which reorganized the Hebrew Bible’s three-part arrangement (Torah, Prophets, Writings) into a genre-based sequence.

#	Book	Canonical Section	Approx. Composition
1	Genesis	Law (Torah)	~400 BCE (final form)
2	Exodus	Law (Torah)	~400 BCE (final form)
3	Leviticus	Law (Torah)	~400 BCE (final form)
4	Numbers	Law (Torah)	~400 BCE (final form)
5	Deuteronomy	Law (Torah)	~620s BCE (core)
6	Joshua	History	~550-400 BCE
7	Judges	History	~550-400 BCE
8	Ruth	History	~450-400 BCE
9	1 Samuel	History	~550-400 BCE
10	2 Samuel	History	~550-400 BCE
11	1 Kings	History	~550-400 BCE
12	2 Kings	History	~550-400 BCE
13	1 Chronicles	History	~350-300 BCE
14	2 Chronicles	History	~350-300 BCE
15	Ezra	History	~400-350 BCE
16	Nehemiah	History	~400-350 BCE
17	Esther	History	~400-200 BCE
18	Job	Poetry/Wisdom	~500-400 BCE
19	Psalms	Poetry/Wisdom	~400-300 BCE (compilation)
20	Proverbs	Poetry/Wisdom	~450-400 BCE (final form)
21	Ecclesiastes	Poetry/Wisdom	~300-200 BCE
22	Song of Solomon	Poetry/Wisdom	~300s BCE
23	Isaiah	Prophets	~740-450 BCE (multiple authors)
24	Jeremiah	Prophets	~626-580 BCE
25	Lamentations	Prophets	~586-550 BCE
26	Ezekiel	Prophets	~593-571 BCE
27	Daniel	Prophets	~165 BCE
28	Hosea	Prophets	~750-720 BCE
29	Joel	Prophets	~600-500 BCE
30	Amos	Prophets	~760-750 BCE
31	Obadiah	Prophets	~586-550 BCE
32	Jonah	Prophets	~450-350 BCE
33	Micah	Prophets	~735-700 BCE
34	Nahum	Prophets	~612 BCE
35	Habakkuk	Prophets	~600 BCE
36	Zephaniah	Prophets	~630-620 BCE
37	Haggai	Prophets	~520 BCE
38	Zechariah	Prophets	~520-300s BCE (multiple authors)
39	Malachi	Prophets	~500-450 BCE

Notice the composition dates. The first five books — Genesis through Deuteronomy — appear first in the canon but were not the first texts written. Deuteronomy’s core dates to the 620s BCE, while Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers reached their final form around 400 BCE. The earliest datable biblical text is Amos (#30 in canonical order), composed around 760-750 BCE — roughly three centuries before the Torah was compiled. As John Barton has noted, the canonical arrangement reflects theological priority, not historical sequence.

New Testament: 27 Books

The New Testament arranges its 27 books in four groupings: the Gospels and Acts, Paul’s letters (longest to shortest, roughly), the general epistles, and Revelation. The canonical order places the story of Jesus first and the letters of instruction after — a theological arrangement that reverses the actual order of composition.

#	Book	Canonical Section	Approx. Composition
40	Matthew	Gospels	~80-90 CE
41	Mark	Gospels	~65-70 CE
42	Luke	Gospels	~80-90 CE
43	John	Gospels	~90-100 CE
44	Acts	History	~80-90 CE
45	Romans	Pauline Letters	~55-58 CE
46	1 Corinthians	Pauline Letters	~53-55 CE
47	2 Corinthians	Pauline Letters	~55-56 CE
48	Galatians	Pauline Letters	~50-55 CE
49	Ephesians	Pauline Letters	~80-90 CE
50	Philippians	Pauline Letters	~54-62 CE
51	Colossians	Pauline Letters	~60-80 CE
52	1 Thessalonians	Pauline Letters	~50-51 CE
53	2 Thessalonians	Pauline Letters	~51-52 or ~80-100 CE
54	1 Timothy	Pastoral Letters	~90-110 CE
55	2 Timothy	Pastoral Letters	~90-110 CE
56	Titus	Pastoral Letters	~90-110 CE
57	Philemon	Pauline Letters	~54-62 CE
58	Hebrews	General Epistles	~60-90 CE
59	James	General Epistles	~60-100 CE
60	1 Peter	General Epistles	~70-90 CE
61	2 Peter	General Epistles	~100-150 CE
62	1 John	General Epistles	~85-100 CE
63	2 John	General Epistles	~85-100 CE
64	3 John	General Epistles	~85-100 CE
65	Jude	General Epistles	~65-90 CE
66	Revelation	Apocalyptic	~90-95 CE

The most striking gap in the New Testament: Matthew appears first in the canon, but 1 Thessalonians — Paul’s letter to the church in Thessalonica, composed around 50-51 CE — is the earliest Christian text by roughly 15 years. Paul was writing theology to scattered communities before anyone had composed a narrative of Jesus’s life. Bart D. Ehrman has emphasized that understanding this timeline fundamentally changes how readers interpret both Paul and the Gospels — Paul’s silence on events central to the Gospel narratives (the birth story, the Sermon on the Mount, most of the parables) becomes significant once you realize he was writing first, not summarizing accounts he had read.

Why Canonical Order Is Not Composition Order

The canonical order reflects decisions made centuries after the texts were written. The Old Testament arrangement follows genre categories — Law, History, Poetry, Prophets — that impose a structure on texts composed across more than 600 years. The New Testament arrangement follows theological priority: the story of Jesus first, then the church’s expansion, then doctrinal instruction, then apocalyptic vision.

These arrangements are not arbitrary, but they are choices. The Hebrew Bible ends with 2 Chronicles and its call to “go up” to Jerusalem — a very different ending from the Christian Old Testament, which closes with Malachi’s prophecy and creates a narrative bridge to the New Testament. Same books, different order, different meaning.

Christine Hayes, in her Yale Open Course on the Hebrew Bible, has observed that the arrangement of texts within a canon is itself an interpretive act. The order tells readers how to connect the parts, what to read as introduction, and what to read as conclusion.

The canonical order groups books by genre and tradition. Uncanon uses compositional order — arranging texts by when scholars believe they were composed. This reveals how ideas developed over time rather than presenting them as a unified block. Explore the compositional approach.

Why Does Order Matter?

When texts are read in composition order rather than canonical order, patterns become visible that the traditional arrangement conceals. Israelite religion’s development from acknowledging multiple divine beings (as in Psalm 82) to strict monotheism (as in Second Isaiah, ~540s BCE) unfolds as a historical process rather than appearing as a given from page one. The literary relationships between texts — where later authors quote, revise, or respond to earlier ones — become traceable.

The order in which you encounter these texts shapes what you understand about them. A reader who starts with Genesis encounters monotheism as a premise. A reader who starts with Amos encounters social criticism directed at a community whose theological assumptions are still forming. Neither reading is wrong, but they produce very different understandings of how biblical thought developed.

For a detailed analysis of how composition order differs from canonical order and the scholarly methods behind dating biblical texts, see Books of the Bible in Chronological Order. For the complete composition-order reading sequence with historical context, see Bible in Chronological Order.