Has anyone read Ernest Martin's book "Restoring the Original Bible"? In it he advocates returning to the "original manuscript order" of the biblical books:



Any thoughts?

[Brother Tim]

At first glance at his introductory chapter, some alarm bells have gone off. Since his dating indicates that this "new" Bible in the "old" order was to be on the bookshelves by 1996, and since I haven't noticed it being advertised, it appears that it hasn't really caught on. Without reading the rest of the book, I am going to make a wild assumption. My uneducated guess is that it is not a pure KJB in a different book order. Please point out my ignorance if this is not true.

The church of God has accepted the canon as we have it, in the order that we have it for multiple centuries of time. I doubt Mr. Martin is going to convince many that we were all wrong.

Brother Tim:

Thank you for your reply. I'm not sure about the Bible version he is advocating (I don't remember reading any Bible version comments in his book). What he is advocating is rearranging the book order back to the "original" Jewish order and the New Testament books into their proper "original(?)" order before Jerome rearranged the Vulgate into the order we have now, supposedly due to his desire to elevate Rome (e.g. Book of Romans & the other "Gentile" epistles) above the more Jewish epistles (Peter, John, James, Jude, etc.) by putting them first.

It's been a few years since I read the book, but if I remember correctly, he says that if the book order is restored, then the harmony and message woven through all of the books of the Bible is much more clearer when read, and that numerically speaking, it also attests to the perfection of God: 22 OT books+5 Gospels/Acts+22 NT books = 49 = 7x7, etc, etc.

Looks like he is rearranging the books a certain way to attempt to reinforce his own doctrine. Seeing as I do not agree with his doctrine, I would not accept his determined book order.

[Brother Tim]

When you start looking for sevens, then sevens show up EVERYWHERE, even where they are not!

[bibleprotector]

The accepted Protestant tradition which we have all received should be good enough. In fact, I believe the Canonical order as shown in any KJB today is final.