The Books of the Bible they speak will be evident." This new order is introduced because "the order in which today's readers are used to encountering the books of the Bible is yet another factor that hinders their understanding." The book order in "The Books of the Bible," and the rationale for it, is as follows: The Covenant History "The first quarter of the Bible unfolds as one continuous narrative." Genesis<br> Exodus<br> Leviticus<br> Numbers<br> Deuteronomy<br> Joshua<br> Judges<br> Ruth<br> Samuel–Kings The Prophets The prophets are presented in "what… is plausibly their historical order." Jonah Amos<br> Hosea<br> Micah<br> Isaiah Zephaniah<br> Nahum<br> Habakkuk Jeremiah<br> Obadiah<br> Ezekiel Haggai<br> Zechariah<br>
The Yale Book of Quotations songs, political slogans, proverbs, and television catchphrases. There is also coverage of traditional literary sources. There are, for example, 400 quotations from the Bible, 106 quotations from Charles Dickens, 127 quotations from T. S. Eliot, 153 quotations from Mark Twain, and 455 quotations from William Shakespeare. This coverage is less extensive than that offered by "Bartlett's", which provides 1,642 quotations from the Bible and 1,906 from Shakespeare. "The Yale Book of Quotations"' introduction also exhaustively describes the editor's attempts at research to identify many famous quotations, trace them to their original sources as far as possible, and record those sources