Why are the biblical books not arranged in chronological order?

Answer 1

Assuming you mean arranged by the dates of the subject matter of each book, The Bible books aren't in chronological order mostly because it would be almost impossible to do so. So many of the books cover a wide range of years, often the same years, how do you put the books themselves in order? For example, the four Gospels all cover roughly the same time span; from Jesus' birth to his death. Which goes first? We aren't even sure which one was written down first; I've seen Mark, Matthew and Luke all listed by various scholars as having been written first. We do know that Second Corinthians follows First Corinthians; similarly Thessalonians (perhaps the books written the earliest, except possibly for James), and that Acts was written as a second volume to Luke. Beyond that, there is a lot of chronological overlap.

Similarly, the Old Testament isn't as concerned with chronology as we might like. The first five books are probably in the right order, but most scholars believe Job tells of a time sometime within the period covered by Genesis. The prophets are listed more according to length than chronology, with many of them speaking of times related in earlier books.

So, the Bible is, instead, listed more or less topically; with the O.T. broken into Law, History, Wisdom and Prophets (by length) and the N.T. following Gospel, Epistles and Apocolyptic (the Revelation), with Acts tossed in after John and before the Epistles because it was written by Luke and tells the story of the early church, during which many of the Epistles were written.

Any good study Bible, like the Oxford Annotated, will give you a better overview.