The Narrow Path Ministries

What is the reason for the differences in the arrangement or order of books in the TaNaKh as compared with the Christian Old Testament?

This is what I found:

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/inde ... 103AASlNmt

I think the main reason why there are various orderings is that these individual books were made as scrolls and then kept in a collection (rather than being bound together into 1 volume). As scrolls laid alongside each other, there was no 'right' way to order them. This being the case, there were various Jewish orderings of the Old Testament books (though one ordering is most common today).

The Jewish Old Testament goes Law, Prophets, Writing (Tanakh is an acronym of sorts for those 3 sections). The Christian Old Testament goes Law, History, Writings, Prophets. The Christian division of the prophets as 'history' and 'prophets' does create quite a bit of chronological confusion for Bible novices, no doubt. But basically the reason for the division seems to be that the history section has a clear chronological order and is more focused on political leaders (in general) whereas some of the prophets aren't necessarily easy to place chronologically and are focused more on the prophetic individuals.

Ruth might be a good example to show different approaches to ordering the books. The Jewish orderers put it in the 'writing section' as a short story of sorts. The Christian orderers recognized that it took place during the Judges, so they placed it directly after that historical book (maybe realizing people would need a happy story after the miserable sequence of events in Judges!).

I don't think there's necessarily a 'right' way to order it.