I just noticed how neither Logos nor Accordance carry Chronological Study Bibles but Olive Tree does. I wonder why that’s the case 🤔
DAL
I agree. This has been a complaint of mine for some time now. My guess is that you could just use a reading plan to craft one but I wish they carried one I didn't need a plan to use.
NLT Chronological Life Application Study Bible is my favorite thus far.
Vote
https://feedback.faithlife.com/boards/logos-book-requests/posts/nlt-chronological-life-application-study-bible
This one comes out next month and I am looking forward to it. I made a vote for it as well
https://feedback.faithlife.com/boards/logos-book-requests/posts/nlt-one-year-chronological-study-bible
I would prefer an actual resource verses a reading plan which is what I believe DAL is driving at as well
There are so many older threads about this with bits and pieces of information, and I've looked through them, but does anyone have a reading plan document that follows the Tyndale One Year Chronological Bible exactly or a link to the discussion on how to create such a plan?
Yes, indeed!
I would also like to see an actual resource.
Out of curiosity, where would Job appear in a chronological Bible?
I get the appeal of the principle, I'm just not sure the principle is principled. Granted, there are some bits of Scripture that we have a fair sense of chronology-wise, but there also are bottlenecks that would seem to render any ordering pure guesswork. My concern is that folks can end up making conclusions and building on them as though solid and stable, when honesty would recognize shifting sand and forbear constructing on such real estate.
Being someone who takes a strongly synchronic view of Scripture, I also don't think that a whole lot is gained by saddling oneself to a strongly diachronic perspective. A lot depends on prerequisite concepts, methinks, such as who is the author of Scripture...people or ':Elohhiym. Similarly, what perspective should we have when reading the Book...a (that is, our) human one, or the perspective of ':Elohhiym? Virtually everyone follows the first route, when the second is certainly correct and proper. Humans experience diachrony while YHWH inhabits synchrony. I could ramble on about additional concerns, but I won't, other than to say that all kinds of assumptions are made based upon creaturely perspectives and senses of time that have zero mass and no effect on how YHWH as timeless Creator utilizes various thematic waypoints in Scripture. Revelation 12 informs Genesis 3 and refusing to acknowledge that is idolatry. Prophecy passes through the various supposed structures, borders, and barriers of various supposed Biblical genres as though they don't even exist, and the whole notion that the Bible was written for a contemporary audience who somehow HAD to properly comprehend what was being presented is a diachronous assumption of wet tissue. Assuming, much less declaring, that there was no Authorial consciousness of the serpent in Genesis 3 as equivalent to the dragon devil called Satan is to insist that YHWH was not the Author. It is such diachronic, time-bound, and chronologic assumptions and mindsets that insist on concepts such as "development" and "discovery" and "contemporary audiences". YHWH knows the end from the beginning because time is of no consequence to His intents, even though He subjects us to its limitations. Limiting ourselves to a diachronic understanding, or even giving "historical chronology" some imagined pride of place in "reality" is also idolatry. Can we gain any perceptual benefit from attempting to comprehend the "first this, then that" order within the Bible's textual presentations? I think so, as long as we don't codify our attempts. Making a chart with a best guess chronology seems acceptable--we consciously know it's just our own chart. But literally reordering the Book to inculcate a sense of "order" that is foreign and false has the potential for eventually rendering some serious downstream interpretive bungling. Neither the Hebrew nor the Christian Bible present itself in the manner which humans seem to lust for...perhaps that is a clue worthy of acknowledging and accepting.
Between Gen 11 & 12
Out of curiosity, where would Job appear in a chronological Bible? Between Gen 11 & 12
Yeah, that's pretty arbitrary...especially since Eliphaz was almost certainly a descendant of Esau. But at least you're willing to break into Genesis. Point is, even with every available data point at hand, there's plenty that's still just guesswork. The order of Paulus's epistles is another sticking point. There are probably at least a dozen suggested orders, if not more. Again, because you are literally messing with the Bible's structure, people get super persnickety and before long you could have dozens of chronological Bibles vying for attention...and which one has the TRUE chronology? Next thing you know, more churches and congregations are splitting over a complete non-issue.
I don't care what FL offers, but folks need to acknowledge both the haphazardness and slippery slopeness of this endeavor.
More of a devotional but something: https://www.logos.com/product/200738/reading-gods-story-a-chronological-daily-bible
As for me, I just look it as a different way to read the bible. I view it as a bible wide harmony.
Out of curiosity, where would Job appear in a chronological Bible? Between Gen 11 & 12 Yeah, that's pretty arbitrary...especially since Eliphaz was almost certainly a descendant of Esau. But at least you're willing to break into Genesis. Point is, even with every available data point at hand, there's plenty that's still just guesswork. The order of Paulus's epistles is another sticking point. There are probably at least a dozen suggested orders, if not more. Again, because you are literally messing with the Bible's structure, people get super persnickety and before long you could have dozens of chronological Bibles vying for attention...and which one has the TRUE chronology? Next thing you know, more churches and congregations are splitting over a complete non-issue. I don't care what FL offers, but folks need to acknowledge both the haphazardness and slippery slopeness of this endeavor.
I know at least the One Year Chronological Bible addresses these issues in the beginning. It presents a timeline, and includes the possible dating options based on current scholarship. It explains why it puts certain passages in certain places when there are differences of opinions. Reading a chronological Bible is a great way to better understand the context of the different parts of the Bible. No one is claiming it is more than what it is.
No one is claiming it is more than what it is.
Even if this is true...and, for some number of folks that is greater than "no one", I'm quite sure that is a squishy, tenuous "if"...when taken with this sentiment...
Reading a chronological Bible is a great way to better understand the context of the different parts of the Bible.
...I think there is an even more profound "IF" that is dependant on the guesswork being correct. It's really hard to unsee things and to unlearn things. For reasons stated above, I have personal doubts that "the context" presented by a constructed chronology will actually be synchronically, and thus prophetically, helpful. What gets ascribed as an immediate, logical, historical context is rarely the context that matters. This is one of the reasons that dismissing etymological concerns sight unseen based on the principle of "context trumps all" is so inclined to result in misinterpretation, especially when dealing with a abjad like Hebrew. Tweak a vowel (and vowels were not indicated in the Hebrew autographs), and an entirely different context is evoked, with an accompanying set of prophetic master keys. Prophecy, as a mechanism rather than a genre, employs and engages both concealing and revealing, and one of the concealing methods YHWH employs is the dependability that humans prefer invoking diachronic context when His "higher" way roundly engages synchronic contexts. I acknowledge that there is a smidge of hyperbole in saying that YHWH's prophetic mechanisms and the corresponding hermeneutics that undergird them manifest something akin to comtempt for whole swaths of what conventionally passes as "responsible Biblical hermeneutical principles", but it isn't more than a smidge. It's people being convinced that they have "the context" well in hand when the actual intended context is found thematically elsewhere that gives verses like Hab. 1:5 and Am. 8:11, 12 and 2 Th. 2:11, 12 their power and sting.
For clarity, it's actually context that I'm primarily addressing; chronologic focus obscures thematic focus which is where synchronic prophetic context dwells. That said, folks have to decide all this stuff for themselves.
And I could turn this around and say that every Bible provides that thematic focus, and most people do not get the contextual focus, so this provides something usually left out.
As far as how they decide, it does seem to be based on scholarship, again, with choices explained in various places where there are several options. It's no different that a book or preacher explaining the context of a passage, and it's certainly not claiming to be inspired.
