Richard McGough, creator of the 'Bibllewheel' has this to share:THE BIBLE WHEEL is composed of twenty-two Spokes and three concentric wheels within the Wheel called Cycles. The sixty-six books of the Bible fit perfectly on this structure. Each Cycle spans a consecutive set of
Click on the highlighted blue links and it will take you there.
| Cycle 1 | Genesis - Song of Solomon |
| Cycle 2 | Isaiah - Acts |
| Cycle 3 | Romans - Revelation |
- Aleph) to the end (
- Tav). The three Cycles were designed by God in accordance with the primary divisions of Scripture:| Genesis | The first book of the Law |
| Isaiah | The first book of the Prophets |
| Romans | The first book of the NT Epistles |
These three books constitute the first Spoke of the Wheel.
EACH SPOKE cuts across the three Cycles to reveal the common themes emerging at that stage of the everlasting story. The themes are governed by the meanings of the twenty-two Hebrew letters as revealed in Scripture in the Alphabetic Verses and much of the ancient Rabbinic tradition.
) and Tav (), the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Historically, biblical scholars have long recognized that the books of the Bible fall naturally into seven categories as follows:
| Division | # | Books |
| NT Epistles | 22 | Romans, 1,2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1,2 Thessalonians, 1,2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews, James, 1,2 Peter, 1,2,3 John, Jude, Revelation |
| NT History | 5 | Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts |
| Minor Prophets | 12 | Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi |
| Major Prophets | 5 | Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel |
| Wisdom | 5 | Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon |
| OT History | 12 | Joshua, Judges, Ruth, I-II Samuel, I-II Kings, I-II Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther |
| The Law | 5 | Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy |
These seven divisions follow the traditional order of the Christian Canon as exemplified in the King James Bible. The distribution of books in each of these seven divisions is arranged in harmony with the three Cycles in following symmetric fashion:
| Cycle | Range | Distribution |
| 3 | Romans - Revelation | 22 |
| 2 | Isaiah - Acts | 5 - 12 - 5 |
| 1 | Genesis - Song of Solomon | 5 - 12 - 5 |
The numbers 5, 12, and 22 are not random; they are geometric numbers. They are successive terms of the pentagonal number sequence.
Thus, we can display the Christian Canon as three perfectly symmetric foundational columns upholding the New Testament Epistles:
| Spokes 1 – 5 | Spokes 6 – 17 | Spokes 18 – 22 |
| New Testament Epistles | ||
| Major Prophets | Minor Prophets | NT History |
| The Law | Old Testament History | Wisdom |
This gives rise to the obviously divine structure, the Canon Wheel. There is a great cloud of scholars who bear witness to this design. Christian artists also bear a prophetic witness to the divine origin of this pattern. It's basic threefold cruciform structure has been used in Christian iconography for over 1500 years. Compare Christ's halo in this icon from the Hagia Sophia Church (~1260 AD) with the Canon Wheel:
Genesis: The Origin of All
here is a vast array of reasons why God designed the Wheel as He did. I begin with Spoke 1, consisting of Genesis, Isaiah, and Romans. Little need be said to explain why the Bible begins in Genesis. Its very name signifies an origin, beginning, or birth. All the fundamental doctrines of Scripture find their root in this book; the sovereignty of God, the creation of man, the origin of sin and the consequent curse of death, God’s promise of the virgin-born Redeemer, and the great doctrine of God’s gift of righteousness through faith. No author, human or divine, could have begun in a more logical, intelligent, or skillful fashion.
Romans: The Cathedral of the Christian Faith
If the doctrines of the Bible find their root in Genesis, so they flower in Romans. Few books, if any, have received accolades quite like this "cathedral of the Christian faith" as it was called by Godet. His comments from the introduction to his Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans1 list but a few of the prominent Christian leaders who have recognized the unique significance of Romans (emphasis mine):
Coleridge calls the Epistle to the Romans 'the profoundest book in existence.' Chysostom had it read to him twice a week. Luther, in his famous preface, says 'This Epistle is the chief book of the New Testament, the purest Gospel. It deserves not only to be known word for word by every Christian, but to be the subject of his meditation day by day, the daily bread of his soul.' ... Melanchthon, in order to make it more perfectly his own, copied it twice with his own hand. It is the book which he expounded most frequently in his lectures. The Reformation was undoubtedly the work of the Epistle to the Romans, as well as the epistle to the Galatians; and the probability is that every great spiritual revival in the church will be associated as effect and cause with a deeper understanding of this book.
Gleason Archer2 concurs, saying, "There is no more complete compendium of the Christian doctrine in the sixty-six books of the Bible than the Epistle to the Romans." John Phillips referred to it as "the Gospel according to Paul." John Wesley, who later would be called the "Apostle of England," had his heart "strangely warmed" when he heard Luther's preface read and went on to become "the true genius" of the eighteenth century revival in England.
Isaiah: The "Romans" of the Old Testament
The only other book of the Bible to approach the significance of Romans is Isaiah, called "the Mount Rushmore of biblical prophecy" by J. W. D. Watts, who went on to say:
Sculpted on its massive slopes are the major themes of Scripture: who God is, what he has done for his people, and how he expects us to serve him. ... No other part of the Bible gives us so panoramic a view of God's handiwork in Israel's history nor such clear prophecies of his lordship over the nations. If Beethoven's nine symphonies loom as landmarks on the horizon of classical music, Isaiah's sixty-six chapters mark the apex of prophetic vision.
The unity of the thematic river flowing through Isaiah and Romans, the two undisputed doctrinal masterpieces of the Bible, was succinctly expressed in the comments of Herbert Wolf (my emphasis):
The Book of Isaiah, one of the most important and best-loved books in the Bible, is sometimes called the Gospel of Isaiah because of the good news that characterizes its message. Indeed, no other Old Testament book contains as many references to the Messiah as does the Book of Isaiah. Its sixty-six chapters contain crucial passages that allude to Christ's incarnation, earthly ministry and atoning death and glorious world-wide rule. ... Isaiah also has been called the Romans of the Old Testament because like the Book of Romans, it sets forth God's case against sinners, unveils the wretchedness of the human heart, and reveals the way of salvation for Israel and the world. Under the hammer blows of Isaiah's message, God calls sinners to repentance and graciously promises forgiveness. It is no accident that in Romans Paul quoted Isaiah seventeen times - more than any other New Testament author. And, like Romans, Isaiah is a profoundly theological book that deals with a number of vital doctrines.
To behold Isaiah as the Romans of the Old Testament appears, in light of God's Wheel, to be nothing less than the purest prophecy. Likewise, to see them both identified as Gospels elevates these great doctrinal books to the highest level of biblical significance, the Gospel being the ultimate point of all Scripture.
The links amongst the three books constituting Spoke 1 are truly astounding. As a brief review quickly reveals, Romans is essentially the product of an intricate weaving of Genesis and Isaiah, supported primarily by a number of references from the Psalms. In the first nine chapters, Paul refers extensively to Genesis and in the ninth chapter he bridges to Isaiah, from which he then derives the dominant themes through to the end of the book, quoting Isaiah by name five times. In fact, of all Paul's writings - which constitute about a third of the New Testament - Romans is the only book in which he mentions Isaiah's name at all, and of the fifty-seven direct citations from the Old Testament found in this book, twenty-six, or slightly less than half, come either from Genesis or Isaiah. The links between these three books are profound and inextricable.
Genesis, Isaiah, Romans - there are simply no other books in all the Bible that can compete with their illustrious preeminence and graceful integration of all the primary doctrines of the Gospel, and so it is that the wisdom of God is greatly glorified beyond measure in the structure of His Wheel.
The Law and the Prophets
Perfect symmetry of the Christian Canon on the Wheel.
Broken symmetry of the Jewish Canon. OT colors indicate Torah, Former Prophets, Minor Prophets, Writings.
It must be kept in mind that this pattern is by no means necessitated by the "Law and Prophets" structure of the Old Testament. Although Genesis and Isaiah are distinguished from all other books in the Old Testament by virtue of being the first books of the Law and the Prophets, this fact in itself does not determine their position upon the Wheel. If, for example, the historic Christian church had chosen to follow the order of the Jewish Canon, the little book of Zephaniah would then hold the twenty-third position, displacing the magnificent all-encompassing Isaiah as the first book on Cycle Two. The chaos resulting from following such an order is displayed in the two figures on the right, wherein we witness the complete destruction of both the radial and the bilateral symmetry of the Canon Wheel.
first books of the Bible since these teach about the life, death,
and resurrection of Christ, .........who is "the firstborn of every
creature." This would have displaced Genesis, and probably
Isaiah and Romans as well, from the first Spoke. Or the church
could have noted the significant relations amongst Genesis,
Isaiah, and Romans and placed these three first, as a kind of
sacred triplet. In principle, history could have produced any
order of these books whatsoever if history were in the hands
of mere mortals. It is this that points so clearly to the work of
God.
What are the Chances?
The total number of ways to arrange n things is called n factorial, denoted by "n!". It is calculated by forming the product of all numbers less than or equal to n.
n! = n x (n-1) x (n-2) x ... x 3 x 2 x 1
For example, the total number of ways to arrange the letters ABC is 3! = 3 x 2 x 1 = 6. This is easy to check by simply listing them:
ABC, ACB, BAC, BCA, CAB, CBA
The logic that gives rise to this formula is equally elementary. One simply notes that there are three choices for the first position, after which there remains two choices for the second position, and finally one for the last. Multiplying the number of choices yields the total number of ways one could arrange the three letters.
Precisely the same logic applies to the sixty-six books of the Bible. Although some configurations certainly seem more likely than others, blind chance could have left any one of the sixty-six books as the first book of Spoke 1, any one of the remaining sixty-five as the second book on Spoke 1, and any one of the remaining sixty-four as the third book on Spoke 1. There are, therefore 66 x 65 x 64, or 274,560 possible ways to construct the first Spoke. This is simply an indisputable mathematical fact; there is one chance in 274,560 that blind history would give us the first Spoke as we have it today. Viewing these remote odds in light of the testimony of the numerous witnesses cited above, who were obviously innocent of any bias towards the Wheel by reason of complete ignorance of it, establishes the divine origin of the Wheel, and therefore of the entire Bible, beyond all reasonable doubt. These arguments are greatly augmented in Probabilities: What are the Chances?
Richard, a mathematician, has a myriad of information on his 'old' site - - He shows the Bible as literally, numerically and geometrically confirming itself - its 'own' threefold witness - needing no other. HOWEVER: It appears to me, now reviewing his new site and blog that has 'evolved' over the years - his ideas have turned to (?) pursing cosmic consciousness (?) and mine - following Hebraic thought, the focus on the walk of Christ, and the walk of the apostles as central.
The articles, digital graphics, and code for the Biblewheel website were all designed and composed by Richard Amiel McGough, the sole owner and operator of BibleWheel.com.
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