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Chapters and verses of the Bible

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''For chapters and verse numbers in the Jewish tradition, see Tanakh.

The Bible is traditionally divided into 66 books for Protestants, 73 for Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox. Each further divided into chapters and verses. In today's English Bible, there are 929 chapters in the Old Testament and 260 chapters in the New Testament. This gives a total of 1,189 chapters (on average 18 per book). Not including deuterocanonical books, there are 23,145 verses in the Old Testament and 7,957 verses in the New Testament. This gives a total of 31,102 verses, which is an average of a little more than 26 verses per chapter. If, following Jewish tradition, the ascriptions to the Psalms are regarded as independent verses, there would be 116 more verses, but there is a well established practice of counting and numbering each Psalm ascription together with the next verse following it in the English Bible. As is noted below, a few other Hebrew Old Testament verse divisions differ in minor ways from those of the English. See also [number of chapters for each book].

Contents

History

Although some portions of the original texts were logically divided into parts following the Hebrew alphabet, the original manuscripts did not contain the chapter and verse divisions in the present, numbered, form that modern readers are familiar with. Examples of texts divided into parts using the Hebrew alphabet include Psalm 119 and the book of Lamentations. The earliest known copies of the book of Isaiah use letters of the Hebrew alphabet for paragraph divisions. There are other divisions from various sources which are different from what we use today.

The Old Testament began to be put into sections before the Babylonian Captivity (586 B.C.) with the five books of Moses being put into a 154 section reading program to be used in a three-year cycle. Later (before 536 B.C.) the Law was put into 54 sections and 669 sub-divisions for reading.

Before the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D., the New Testament was divided into paragraphs which were different from our current divisions.

An important canon of the New Testament was proclaimed by Pope Damasus I in the Roman synod of 374. Pope Damasus also induced Saint Jerome, a priest from Antioch, to undertake his famous translation of the entire Bible, both New Testament and Old Testament into the common language of the time. The Church continued to finance the very expensive copying and translate and provide copies of the Bible to local churches and communities from that point up to and beyond the invention of the printing press, which then greatly reduced the cost of producing copies of the Scriptures.

Churchmen Archbishop Stephen Langton and Cardinal Hugo de Sancto Caro determined different schemas for systematic division of the Bible between 1227 and 1248. It is the system of Archbishop Langton on which the modern chapter divisions are based.

In the New Testament, the verse divisions were first added by Robert Estienne in his 1551 edition of the Greek New testament. In 1557, the first English New Testament with verse divisions were used in a translation by William Whittingham (c. 1524-1579). These divisions have been used by nearly all English Bibles since then. Unlike the Hebrew of the Old Testament, the structure of the Greek language makes it highly susceptible to being broken up syntactically into inappropriate and even sense-contrary divisions. Inexact apportionment of Greek into verses therefore could easily have obscured the intent, relation, emphasis and force of the words themselves, and thus elicited the most strenuous objections of theologians. The retention of Robert Estienne's verse divisions essentially without alteration is a tribute not only to the inherent utility of his contribution to Bible study, but also to his excellent knowledge of the scriptures and grasp of the fine points of the ancient Greek language. The first Bible in English to use both chapters and verses was the Geneva Bible in 1560, coming soon after Estienne's introduction of New Testament verse numbers, and quickly rising to acceptance as a standard way to notate them.

Trivia

The following applies only to Protestant Bibles: It is presently unknown how early the Hebrew verse divisions were part of the books that were later chosen as part of the Biblical canon. However, it is beyond dispute that for at least a thousand years the Tanakh has contained an extensive system of multiple levels of section, paragraph, and phrasal divisions that were indicated in Masoretic vocalization and cantillation markings. One of the most frequent of these was a special type of punctuation, the sof passuq, symbol for a full stop, or sentence break, that resembles the colon mark (:) of English and Latin orthography. With the advent of the printing press and the translation of the Bible into English, Old Testament versifications were made that correspond predominantly with the existing Hebrew full stops, with a few isolated exceptions. A product of meticulous labour and unwearying attention, the Old Testament verse divisions stand today in the English Bible in essentially the same places as they have been passed down since antiquity.

Pitfalls

Versification exists as a convenience to the reader. As an aide to memorization, or as a means of finding the same lines during a discussion, versification may be useful. However, it may also lead toward the conclusion that only a few lines need be taken together in order to interpret them. The impulse to conceive of verses as independent, isolated units of meaning is strong, despite efforts on the part of Biblical scholars to discourage this.

As much as any sentence in any book, any statement in the Bible is designed to be understood in its own context. Interpretation of isolated verses often leads to misunderstandings that would be clear if the same words were studied in context.

A fortiori this applies for parts of verses. For example, an oft-quoted phrase from the Bible says: "There is no God."

The complete sentence, from Psalm 14:1, reads, "The fool hath said in his heart, 'There is no God.'" The meaning, in context, is quite different from the meaning, in isolation, of the last four words.

It may be tempting to assume that short quotations and quick snippets can be interpreted, applied, and utilized independently of their context. However, when the Bible was written, it was meant to be deeply pondered, sequentially studied, and fully considered.

See also

External links

 

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