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Photo by Erich Lessing/Art Resource, N.Y.

ON THE COVER: Luke, Matthew and Mark sit on the shoulders of the prophets Jeremiah, Isaiah and Daniel (from left to right) in these 13th-century stained-glass windows from Chartres Cathedral. According to Christian understanding, the prophets, by announcing the coming of the Messiah, are the literary ancestors of the evangelists, who describe Jesus’ life in the Gospels. In Christian Bibles, the Old Testament books of the Prophets immediately precede the Gospels. In “‘Spinning’ the Bible,” James A. Sanders considers how differences in the order of the books of the Christian Old Testament and the Hebrew Bible reflect different interpretations of these texts by Jews and Christians.