Books of the Bible Challenge
Arrange the books into canonical order. Drag them, or use the arrow buttons and your keyboard — both work everywhere.
Leaderboard
The twenty highest scores for this game, by day, week, month and all time.
About Books of the Bible Challenge
This challenge builds a mental index of the sixty-six books, so that a reference like Habakkuk 3 or 2 Thessalonians 2 tells you roughly where you are in the story before you have turned a page.
The Old Testament in most English Bibles falls into recognisable groups: the five books of the Law (Genesis to Deuteronomy), the historical books (Joshua through Esther), the poetry and wisdom books (Job through Song of Songs), the major prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel) and the twelve minor prophets (Hosea to Malachi). 'Major' and 'minor' refer to length, not importance.
The New Testament groups just as clearly: four Gospels, the book of Acts, the letters attributed to Paul, the general letters, and Revelation. Learning the groups is more useful than learning the list, because the group tells you what kind of writing you are about to read — narrative, law, poetry, prophecy, letter or apocalyptic.
Worth knowing: the order of books differs between traditions. Hebrew Bibles arrange the same Old Testament writings in a different sequence, and Catholic and Orthodox canons include additional books. This game follows the sixty-six-book Protestant order, which is the arrangement most English Bibles use.
How to play
- 1.Pick a tier — a single group, one testament, or the full sixty-six.
- 2.Arrange the shuffled books into canonical order by dragging them, or use the arrow buttons and keyboard, which work the same way.
- 3.Check your answer to see which books are correctly placed.
- 4.Repeat with a larger set once a group feels automatic.
What it reinforces
- Canonical order, so you can find a book without the contents page.
- The five-part shape of the Old Testament and the four-part shape of the New.
- Which prophets are long and which are short, and where each sits.
- The habit of reading a reference as a location in a larger story.
What to notice while you play
- The seam between history and poetry: Esther ends the historical run, Job opens the wisdom books.
- The twelve minor prophets, which are the hardest stretch for most people and reward being learned as a sequence.
- Paul's letters running roughly longest to shortest rather than in the order they were written.
- The general letters — Hebrews, James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude — which are easy to jumble.
Taking it into your Bible reading
Order is not trivia. Knowing that Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel sit around the Babylonian exile, or that Ezra and Nehemiah come after it, means you read them with the right crisis in mind. Knowing that Acts follows the Gospels and precedes the letters means you can place a letter against the events in Acts that produced it.
A simple exercise: open to the table of contents, cover the page numbers, and name what kind of book each one is. Do that a few times and the game becomes easy — and so does finding Nahum on a Sunday morning.
Passages to read
- Luke 24:44 — Jesus refers to the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms — the Hebrew arrangement of the same writings.
- 2 Timothy 3:16-17 — On the usefulness of all Scripture, whatever section it sits in.
- Nehemiah 8:1-8 — Public reading of the Law, with explanation given so the people could understand it.
Read these in full rather than as single lines. A game can only point at a passage; the passage itself is the thing worth your time.
Keep learning
- Bible Timeline Challenge — the events behind the books, in sequence.
- Bible Trivia — test recall across the same sixty-six books.
- Learning Center — lessons that work through what each part of the canon is for.
Learn what is inside each book with Bible Trivia and Verse Builder.