Those of you who read my books are aware that I’ve written a good bit about the importance of narrative theology and understanding the NT in its socio-historical-chronological sequence.
In Chapter 11 of Pagan Christianity, George Barna and I deal with this. And I’ve written an entire book that presents the NT narrative in its chronological order, filling in the historical gaps between Acts and the Epistles. It’s called The Untold Story of the New Testament Church.
In recent years, three chronological Bibles have been published.
The first is called The Narrated Bible in Chronological Order
LaGard put The Narrated Bible together to fulfill a wish of his father, who said to him before he passed, “Somebody ought to put the Bible in the right order.” Well, he did. And The Narrated Bible was the result.
Based on the NIV, The Narrated Bible puts the books of the entire Bible in their chronological sequence. And LaGard gives his own narration along the way. It took him only 5 years to put this massive work together. Impressive!
The other attempt at chronology was put together by Dr. Christopher Smith. His work is called The Books of the Bible and it’s based on the TNIV. Chris and I have talked quite a bit and he understands the importance of knowing “the story” as he calls it and the problem of approaching the Bible in its present fragmented state.
THE BOOKS OF THE BIBLE takes out chapters and verses. The only beef I have with it is that Chris and I disagree on Paul’s first letter. I believe it was clearly Galatians and he affirms Thessalonians. I’ve yet to persuade him on this, but I’m hopeful J
Just recently, Thomas Nelson put out their premier chronological Bible. And Wow! It’s something else. 
It’s called The Chronological Study Bible
This is an incredible work. What gives it particular appeal is that it has colorful maps, diagrams, photos, etc. all throughout. Cosmetically speaking, it’s a masterpiece.
Here’s an excerpt of a recent review of this Bible written by a reader.
In college the bible was studied as literature, language, exegesis, theology and each verse was parsed into little pieces of truth. We did study through the bible more than once, but we never wavered from the canonical flow of the books.
Can you imagine reading through a book of American History that was out of order? Let’s say the narrative started with man stepping on the moon, then moved to the war of 1812, then to the Great Depression, then the signing of The Declaration of Independence and next to the War Between the States, finally ending with the Golden Era of Industry beginning in the 1900’s.
You would indeed have individual stories of historical fact about America and Americans, but it would be difficult to fully see the grand picture of the historical timeline of the USA. The bible most of us read and study from everyday is much the same way. Each book is truth and points to The Truth but, many times the narrative timeline is out of order.
The Chronological Bible does much to alleviate the problem. The editors carefully attempt to move books, chapters and verses of scripture from their canonical location to a location in the narrative that best reflects the historical order of the story of the bible, God and Jesus.
You will see and experience the beauty of the bible narrative in a new way. Freed from the canonical order, the bible becomes a giant story novel of God and His relationship with His planet and creation.
For those of you who are people of Christian faith, the NT will bring a new clarity of the Life of Jesus and the first 100 years of the church. The four gospels and Acts are no longer five separate books, but a written story of the life and incarnation of Jesus and the founding of the Christian Church.
The voices of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are clear, but they are interwoven into a chorus of story tellers. As you move through the founding of the church, the Epistles of the church leaders of Paul, Peter, John and the rest are read as they would have been written. I Corinthians is placed after Acts 19:22, the place in the narrative of Acts where Paul might have written and sent the letter from his time in Ephesus. The entire NT flows in this manner until you end with the book of Revelation.
The publishers have not only provided a new view of an age old text, but they have included tools in the text to help the reader along the way. By glancing at the top of each page the reader will find out what scriptures are included as well as the approximate dates of the writing. At each book change or mashup, the editors include transitional explanations as to why the passage was placed in that spot.
Notes are included to explain important archeological finds and information as well as secular and biblical historical details. Maps and geographic information are printed on the page as it coincides with the story, making it easier to visualize the physical placement of the narrative details. Illustrations are ghosted unto the pages at intervals to give visual interest to the text. The opening pages of the book have a comprehensive introduction that explains each tool and even suggestions for their use.
I like this bible. As a matter of fact, I wish I had owned one many years ago. This presentation allows the story of the bible to flow in a narrative form that will remind you of a novel. During my time of reviewing a copy, I took the Chronological Bible with me almost everywhere and showed it to many people. Each one that looked at the book and allowed me to show them “how” it worked had one statement, “I gotta have one.”
Related Posts:
A New Chronological Bible by Tyndale
The Bible Translations I Use & Recommend
Reapproaching the New Testament: The Bible is Not a Jigsaw Puzzle
A Unique and Amazing Look at Jesus Christ
Back Story to the ReChurch Library
New Interview with George Barna and Frank Viola
I found this post by once agin fruitlessly searching for an audio version of the Narrated Bible. I started listening to audio versions of my favorite translations years ago just to change things up and it was great for learning whole new things. But no version could be as good as a well-narrated LaGard Chronological Bible. Cannot understand why Harvest House hasn’t cashed in on this!
This compilation was written in 2008. You (and others) might like to look at the new “Chronological Life Application Study Bible”. I had the opportunity to review this title. I wonder how you see this new entry compared to the earlier works you reviewed?
The publisher is sending me this book as I write. I will review it in due time, God willing.
I might add Calvin not only did a Harmony of the Gospels but a commentary on them, however, his could be improved (dare I say) by the inclusion of the Gospel of John.
At least he did it and what a treasure it is!
As far as New Testament Scholars not agreeing on the exact layout of a chronological work, it is of little consequence, but should not deter the scholars from going to the majority of ancient opinions on the harmony of the Gospels, just like the majority of older texts being used in the NU are used to determine what the heck the Bible actually says in the GNT or and English (or fill in the blank language).
What I am saying is that if lack of concensus were a reason to not go forward with an issue of the Bible, we would be stuck without a Bible, other than the individuals like Luther and Tyndale who just trudged ahead coming to their own conclusions from the consensus they had at the time.
Kudos again for anyone who attempts this, F. LaGard Smith especially, since he honored the word of the Lord through his Dad. His reads like silk, and although he asserts Job was written in the Days of the Captivity, I do not disagree, however, the story is ancient, and the lifetime of Job does fit in more with the times of the early patriarchs, and the thousand other things like lack of mention of the Scriptures, et cetera, et cetera, show it is an older book and should be set chrnologically around the story of Abraham.
I also think the Psalms should be more intertwined with the narrative than placed in a topical lump. This totally breaks the chronological flow and wars against the chief purpose of the Chronological Bible. It would not take too much creativity and scholarship to see around when the Psalm was written and piece it in the general timeline of the narrative, especially for a some students of Hebrew Poetry.
Lastly, filling in the historical gaps between Acts and the Epistles, as Mr. Viola does in “The Untold Story of the New Testament Church” would be an awesome asset to have, especially if done as F. LaGard Smith does w/ the Apocrypha. It is clearly NOT part of the Inspired Scrolls, but a little fill in is helpful to most readers. I would add that the FONT should be markedly different, smaller, perhaps, so as to reiterate the filling in of the historical gaps is not canon.
F. Larard Smith’s Bible is superior to most of others because it doesn’t repeat parallel sections (and therefore reads more like a book than a forgetful news reporter who keeps retelling the nightly news three times in a row [Matthew, Mark, Luke]).
Agree, tremendous work.
I do however not agree to the Genesis part, where the secular world-view (non-creationist) is adapted, in other words allowing for tens of thousands of years BEFORE the fall. I would like the NKJ to take a more specific stand on this. But, details none the less 🙂
Does anyone have an opinion on the Seamless Bible by Destiny Image? Isn’t it also a chronological NT?
Frank Viola,
I think that a key difference between yourself and others like you, and what I’ve seen in other camps is that you are much more interested in “story”…which is exactly where my point was coming from. As Valdez said “the story is already there”, but as you and MM elucidated we have so many filters, so many ways of seeing it, so many out of context assumptions that it is important to richly appreciate the setting of those stories, if nothing else but to understand why they were important to the people commissioning the narratives being written.
Anyhow, I appreciate that your interest is less on the historical end (ala BW3) and more on the narrative…either way I fear the puritanism fervor of “The Story” I encountered in the last 8 years…finding the truth out…building the RIGHT expression of the Church based upon the HiSTORY behind the New Testament that only a few qualified, well trained, christian workers knew or could express. But…that’s always the risk, eh?
Anyhow…
Cheers!
Right on. Elitism, in whatever form it takes, is a spiritual stench and a stumblingblock to God’s purpose in Christ. We must tread humbly in these matters, as Frankie Valdez initially pointed out.
Excellent conversation, saints. A hearty amen to Valdez, Brittain & Viola especially. Humility is needed. Reconstructions neither should nor shall ever replace the cannon. And I’m glad for anyone who’s promoting such attempts. We do NEED to improve in this area…
As far as the CSB itself – I enjoyed reading their preface and the format seems interesting. I haven’t studied OT history before 600 BC, and I’ll reserve comment on their NT sections. Mostly, I just hope it’s successful enough to encourage more such productions in the future. I interned for Thomas Nelson once, and I’m definitely rooting for them on this project.
By the way… Pal, thanks for the link. And Chris, thanks for the plug! 😉
And Frank Viola, thanks for keeping comments turned on. What a great conversation! 🙂
Frank, I feel like I just read a new story. Your telling of the ‘untold’ really brought me an new excitement. It’s nearly like ‘the first time I’ve read it’. I wonder why the Old Testament hasn’t been done the same way. I don’t know how it was arranged, but obviously not to be sequential (if that is a right word there). I know there are some books out there that try to order the OT books, but they’re just about as bad, at least to me. Well, anyway thanx for the fresh take on an old story. I’m anxiously awaiting the next. See ya’ later.
Frank, thanks so much for continuing to spread the word about The Books of The Bible and other editions that take a chronological approach. I would like to acknowledge the eight colleagues I worked with to help develop that format. It’s great to hear about the experiences that people like Gunnar, Elizabeth and Kat are having with it.
Frank, there are really two different ways of reading the Bible as a narrative. One is to construct a narrative of the events that we think stand behind the Bible. This is a speculative reconstruction that has at it’s best a degree of probability and can, If we’re not careful, become a substitute for the narrative that’s already there, in the Bible itself.
This brings us to the other way to read the Bible as a narrative. That’s to tell one another the narrative(s) that are already there in the text rather than the narratives we construct as lying behind the text. This second way of reading the Bible seems to be the way in which the writers of the New Testament read the Old Testament. They didn’t try to put together an account of how the OT texts were written: they read the existing texts in the context of the ongoing life of the people of God.
Again, this doesn’t mean that it’s wrong in any way to use the best lexical and historical tools available when we read the Bible. It just means that while our historical narrative about the Bible may be helpful and illuminating, it is in and through the narrative in the Bible itself that we are able to hear God’s Word for the Church today.
The rest is useful but subordinate.
Brittian is definitely on to something in her comment.
So, yes. buy your historical reconstructions and learn everything you can from them, but don’t forget that the real site for Biblical interpretation is not the historian’s study. It’s the ongoing life and fellowship of the people of God.
If anyone wonders why I’m making such a point about this they just need to look at your recent debate with Ben Witherington on his blog. His problem was that he thought that the historian’s narrative just is the meaning of Scripture. I know that you don’t believe that but some readers here very well may.
Frank Valdez
Frank, I agree. There are two narrative approaches. I believe both are valuable and they shouldn’t be pitted against one another. It’s both/and rather than either/or. It’s exciting to me that only now are both narrative approaches receiving noticable airplay. I trust that this will benefit the church in the future. And hopefully, we’ll see the fruit of it in the reshaping of the church, in both her life and her mission.
Great conversation! Like Brittian & Frank Valdez, I’m no longer so keen on a chronological Bible that splices letters into Acts, or blends Gospels, or (worse yet) splices OT books together – at least not as my primary (or probably even secondary) bible. But! I do like the idea of an at-least-somewhat better arranged NT narrative Bible, and I think that’s what many of these new Bibles are offering us. And I’m all about reducing/removing chapter/verse numbers.
Thanks for bringing our attention to this Bible, and reminding us about the IBS’s excellent Books of the Bible project.
I got the NKJV one foe my birthday last month and I enjoy it very much. Always a problem I had with the standard Bible was the sequence… it always confuse me… maybe I am just too literal. But the one downside is that once I get into it I tend to spend more time with it due to the commentary etc… I say downside in jest. That is a good thing.
tom
I really appreciate where Frank Valdez was going with his comment. Along those same lines, I would suggest that the Enlightenment Project, and along with it, the declaring of Secular professionalized society as the “new sacred”, did profoundly changed our appreciation for knowing God. History as science and absolute fact replaced other more nuanced appreciations of Truth.
I have a concern that this approach, while intruiging, panders to this understanding of “fact as truth”. The reality, as Frank Valdez already stated, is that these “facts” are highly contested, and, I would add, the relevance and value is unproven at best.
I’m NOT opposed to it, that’s NOT what I’m saying…but I wonder if attempting to integrate it into a historical story might be stealing from the narratives that are already implicit to the text. For instance, blending the gospels together seems like a reasonable idea…but the early communities of Christians who sponsored those seperate biographies in the first place did so for a reason. Those gospel stories aren’t just historic texts–they’re thematic…Mark provides, most scholars agree, an absolute smashing together of events in complete chronological disarray, not because he was an idiot, but because it mattered to the community he was writing to. John arranges his gospel in such a way and presents certain facts because he (or Lazarus, wink wink at Ben Witherington III) was making a point. And the author even declares this, there were many many more events that he could have included had he been writing a history of Jesus…but that wasn’t his point…he was selling a drama…he was telling a Truth.
I suppose I’m just entering a protest towards Chronological renderings of the Bible being the highest and best…especially in the New Testament…they simply were not written towards such ends, it would seem. And by rearranging them, particularly by blending gospels and inserting epistles into Acts, as if these were supposed to be read as historic documents, sort of misses the point.
I realize that the bible, in its current shape, is not a masterpiece of arranging. I’m not suggesting it needs to remain so. I’m simply commenting on the NEED, the DRIVE, towards Chronology. I wonder if in its striving towards history it fails to appreciate Story…
Still…I’ll probably buy it in the end… 😉
Chronological Bibles should never replace the Canon as we have it, especially those that mix literature. At the same time, as I point out in the article “The story we haven’t heard”, the problem is that we’ve lost the narrative in the way we approach Scripture, and chapters and verse divisions have hurt us more than they’ve helped us. (The latter were not in the original text.) John Locke made a great point about this some 300 years ago. Further, while we cannot be positive on the exact chronological of all NT books, there is a strong consensus among scholars on the arrangement of most of them, including certain indisputable dates … enough to where a historical reconstruction can, for the most part, accurately be brought forth.
In short, understanding the fluid narrative makes all the difference in the world to rightly understanding the text. Without it, we’re relegated to the prooftexting method that has done much harm to the body of Christ. For that reason, I applaud the efforts of those scholars, harkening as far back as F.F. Bruce, who have sought to reconstruct the story for us. Hat tip to Thomas Nelson, Harvest House, and The Int’l Bible Society for breaking new ground in a narrative reading of the Scriptures 😉
If one were to go to http://www.ibsdirect.com, and search for a ‘The Books of the Bible’ bible, they would find it costs 8.99 in paperback, and while maybe not perfect, it attempts to align the books of the bible in chronological order, and my favorite part, removes the chapters and verses, although at the bottom of every page, it lets you know where you are at, roughly. They are available by the case too, for $96, so if a group wants to all get the same one to refer to, together, this may be the way to go. It is translated in TNIV.
Frank, my husband and I read through the Bible together the year before we married and then the first five years of our marriage. We did a different translation or arrangement of reading each year, from the One Year Bible, daily reading plan in our traditional Bible, as well as The Narrated Bible. Of all the readings, we enjoyed the Narrated Bible most and used it twice in our six years of reading. We are planning to start up our annual reading again this year and invite our girls to join us. We are planning to use The Books of the Bible, though I am encouraged to see the NKJV Chronological Bible. What I’m interested in finding is a Chronological Audio Bible – do you know of one? I like to listen and read along since I am primarily an auditory learner 😉
Elizabeth, I have been searching and searching for a version of an Audio Chronological Bible, and it seems no one has stepped up to record one yet. The best I can come up with is a link that has outlined parts of the Bible into daily readings with a link to BibleGateway where you can click the speaker button and it will play a whole chapter (and unless you unclick the continuous play, will play the whole book)!
You can read along, however, and stop after the proper, chronological portion is covered and/ or scroll ahead to the proper chronological portion is covered).
If anyone finds one, please post it here… Thank you in Christ Jesus.
That should read ” many Christians have entered into…”
Every once in a while my two remaining brain cells will fire at the same time and I actually remember how to spell.
Frank Valdez
If we’re going to renarrate the actaually existing Bible in the chronological oreder that we feel that the modern science of history anables us to construct then we must bring a high degree of humility to the project. You mentioned how you and Chris disagree about the relative placing of Galatians and the Thessalonian letters but this is just the tip of the iceberg. If you read the superb NT scholarship produced by F. F. Bruce, Donald Guthrie, and John A. T. Robinson you’ll see fine scholars debating over the precise chronological placing of a great deal of the NT. I wouldn’t hold a candle to any one of them.
Before the creation of modern historical science many Christiand have entered into profound relationships to Christ. Their reliance on the existing canonical arrangement doesn’t seem to have done them a great deal of harm
Any proposed renarration of the Bible is just that: a proposal open to debate and testable against what we find in the actual Bible itself.
This is not to say that such a renarration is a bad idea or to deny that in some contexts it may be extremely helpful. It’s just to say that we must do so with the sort of humility that generally characterizes your writing.
Frank Valdez
I am reading The Books of the Bible now, and I really appreciate the freshness of the chronological approach. A number of years ago, I edited and wrote a chronological curriculum for our Sunday school. How I wish I’d had it then!