The purpose of this page is to provide a Canonical Column reference table that I can link to in blog posts. Its function is purely practical: to give readers a convenient lookup tool for quickly identifying the two witnessing chapters corresponding to any given book of the Bible.
If you have arrived here without any prior exposure to the Canonical Column, I highly recommend reading my full introductory article on the subject here. That post explains the mystery in detail. Nevertheless, a brief, bare-bones summary is provided below for those who simply need a concise overview before consulting the table.
What is the Canonical Column?
Have you ever wondered why some books are in the Bible and some are not? Or maybe you’ve noticed that different sects of Christianity have different biblical canons, and you want to know which canon is the “correct” one. Perhaps you want to know if the books of the Apocrypha are to be accounted as part of the sacred canon of Scripture. The Catholics and Eastern Orthodox say that it is Scripture, the Protestants say it isn’t. Who is to say that Luther & Tyndale didn’t get it wrong? And what about the book of Enoch? Jude quoted it–doesn’t that mean that the book of Enoch should be part of the canon?
These are all valid and important questions. If the Creator of the Universe gave us a body of sacred writings that reveals who he is and tells us what he requires of us–it’s important to make sure that we have the correct book! Fortunately, the Lord in his perfect foreknowledge knew that post-modern Christians would ask such questions, and he therefore left not himself without witness, and took it upon himself to place an internal measuring line within the Bible which bears witness to the final form of the divinely sanctioned biblical canon. This proverbial measuring line I am referring to is known as the Canonical Column.
The Canonical Column is the name that I have given to a divinely encoded structural framework and prophetic network embedded within the Bible which bears witness to the final form of the divinely sanctioned biblical canon.1 It is the measuring reed God has given us which allows us to determine objectively which books are part of Scripture and which are not. What is more, it reveals which biblical canon is the divinely sanctioned one which blooms blossoms and yields almonds (Num 17:8), thereby identifying all others as unsanctioned and destitute of divine authority.
Summary Definition
The Canonical Column is a divinely designed structural framework and prophetic network embedded within Scripture that bears witness to the organization of the biblical canon itself. Patterned after the menorah (Exod. 25:31–40), it comprises six branches arranged as three pairs. All three pairs are unified by the central shaft—Jesus Christ, the Spirit of prophecy—who stands as the centerpiece of their collective testimony, filling the entire framework with meaning and giving it life. The innermost pair of branches—the inner branches—represents the Old and New Testaments. Distinct from these are the four scaffolding branches: The Circumcision (Genesis 12–50) and An Holy Priesthood (Leviticus), and First Isaiah (Isaiah 1–39) and Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40–66). Each scaffolding pair contains 39 chapters in its “former” branch and 27 chapters in its “latter” branch, corresponding to the 39 books of the Old Testament and 27 books of the New Testament. In each case, the former branch functions as a figurative type of the Old Testament (The Circumcision, First Isaiah), while the latter branch functions as a figurative type of the New Testament (An Holy Priesthood, Second Isaiah). Every book of the Bible is confirmed by two witnessing chapters—one from the Law (The Circumcision or An Holy Priesthood) and one from the Prophets (First Isaiah or Second Isaiah)—each bearing divinely embedded textual allusions and echoes to the content of the biblical book occupying the same ordinal position in the canonical sequence. For example, the two witnessing chapters of the book of Hebrews are Leviticus 19 and Isaiah 58—each being the nineteenth chapter of its respective branch and the fifty-eighth chapter of its respective branch-pair—reflecting Hebrew’s ordained placement as both the nineteenth book of the New Testament and the fifty-eighth book of the Bible.
One unified framework; six individual branches
As previously stated, the Canonical Column is intricately tied to the menorah, which as I have explained in a previous post on this blog is a symbolic prefiguring or type of the Holy Bible as specifically exemplified in the Protestant biblical canon. The framework’s three pairs of branches thus adhere to the very same structural logic and the same meticulous numbering system which is inherent to the menorah’s design.
Branch 1 (The Circumcision) & branch 4 (An Holy Priesthood) constitute the first pair of branches, branch 2 (First Isaiah) & branch 5 (Second Isaiah) constitute the second pair, and branch 3 (The Old Testament) & branch 6 (The New Testament) constitute the third pair.
| Pair of Branches | Classification | Identification |
| 1 & 4 | “The Law” | The Circumcision (1) & An Holy Priesthood (4) |
| 2 & 5 | “The Prophets” | First Isaiah (2) & Second Isaiah (5) |
| 3 & 6 | “The Word” | Old Testament (3) & New Testament (6) |
As indicated in the image above, the two innermost branches (branches 3 & 6) of the Canonical Column signify the Old and New Testaments, and therefore this particular pair of branches signifies the Holy Bible itself. I refer to these as the inner branches of the framework. These are the most important because they are the two branches that the other four are ultimately testifying of.
The middle and outer two pairs of branches are what I refer to as the scaffolding branches of the framework. Each of these functions as an individual figurative type of whichever testament that their lamp of the candlestick is oriented towards.2 Thus, The Circumcision and First Isaiah are both figurative types of the Old Testament canon–each containing 39 chapters which have been divinely designed to prefigure the 39 books of the Old Testament canon. Likewise, An Holy Priesthood and Second Isaiah are both figurative types of the New Testament canon–each containing 27 chapters which have been divinely designed to prefigure the 27 books of the New Testament canon.
Because the four scaffolding branches are designed to bear witness to specific testaments of the biblical canon, I refer to the individual chapters within the four scaffolding branches as witnessing chapters–so called because there is a one-on-one correspondence between each witnessing chapter and its corresponding biblical book. Each witnessing chapter has been meticulously infused with structural echoes and creative allusions to the biblical books that they correspond to within the Protestant canon, and have been deliberately sequenced within their respective branches so that their placement directly mirrors the exact ordinal position of their counterparts.3 The end result is that both the canonicity and ordinal position of every book of the Bible is established by two witnessing chapters (Matt. 18:16; 2 Cor. 13:1; cf. Deut. 19:15). Each witnessing chapter serves as a prophetic mirror—its position, content, and internal imagery intentionally echo its corresponding book of the canon, confirming both its inclusion and its ordained ordinal position within the biblical canon.
To minimize confusion, the following table reveals what sections of the Bible the four substantiative branches of the Canonical Column encompass.
| Name of branch | Biblical section | Number of chapters | Foreshadows |
| The Circumcision | Genesis 12-50 | 39 | The Old Testament |
| An Holy Priesthood | Leviticus | 27 | The New Testament |
| First Isaiah | Isaiah 1-39 | 39 | The Old Testament |
| Second Isaiah | Isaiah 40-66 | 27 | The New Testament |
Thus, what we are essentially dealing with with regards to the Canonical Column is a framework which contains not one, but two detailed figurative models or blueprints of the complete Holy Bible–both testifying not only of the precise number of books in the canon and its 39-27 book sectional division, but both even identifying all 66 books of the Bible and affirming their precise ordinal positions within the canon!
The Canonical Column functions as a self-witnessing system within Scripture itself—a light that bears witness of its own divine origin (John 8:12-18; Num. 8:2-4). The table below reveals the precise correspondences through which each book of the Bible is affirmed by its two witnessing chapters.
Canonical Column Reference Table
The Canonical Column reference table is provided below. Use this table to quickly identify the two witnessing chapters of any book of the Bible. Note that each chapter or biblical book listed in the table is clickable, and links to a discussion which explores the correspondences between that particular biblical book and its two witnessing chapters.
For a far more detailed discussion and demonstration on how the Canonical Column functions, see my previous introductory article on the Canonical Column.
- The mystery of the Canonical Column was divinely revealed to me way back in 2009, although I didn’t name it “the Canonical Column” until 2011. ↩︎
- Although it is not evident in the image, the wicks of the lamps of the six branches of the golden candlestick all pointed inward toward the central shaft. The golden candlestick was thus, quite literally–a light which bore witness of itself (John 8:12-14), exactly like the biblical canon that it symbolizes. ↩︎
- If that sounds confusing—don’t worry; the reference table below will make this visually clear. ↩︎
