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A Brief History of Chapter and Verse Divisions

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A Brief History of Chapter and Verse Divisions HISTORY OF CHAPTER AND VERSE DIVISIONS • Pre-Babylonian Captivity (586 BCE): Bible divided into sections, with Pentateuch divided into 154 sections used in a 3-year reading cycle. • Pre-Dead Sea Scrolls (before 300 BCE—100 CE): Bible divided into sections now called parashoth. Larger sections were indicated by beginning a new line in the scroll, smaller sections by a space within the line. This practice is continued in Masoretic texts1 (oldest known Hebrew Bibles, from 7th-10th centuries CE). Samech (Hebrew <s>) between sentences = small paragraph; pe (Hebrew <p>) between sentences indicates a large paragraph. • Mishnaic period (ca. 200 CE): Verse divisions made within the parashoth when Aramaic translations were introduced into the Hebrew text; the amount of Hebrew that preceded the Aramaic translation became the verse division. After about 500 CE these were indicated by the soph pasuq, a cantillation mark resembling a colon used after the last word of every verse and indicated a full stop, or a period. (Mishnah is a kind of commentary in Judaism.) • Pre-Council of Nicea (325 CE): New Testament divided into kephalia (lit. headings, i.e., paragraphs) for reference; this system no longer survives. • Ca. 1205: Stephen Langton, an Englishman teaching at the University of Paris, later Archbishop of Canterbury, divides Vulgate Bible into modern chapters. In 1244-48, Hugh of St. Cher, a professor of theology at the University of Paris, produces the first Biblical concordance because chapter divisions now make it possible to search for passages in the Bible. In the 1205-1500’s, manuscript and printed bibles (after 1455, Gutenberg Bible) often use a system of letters A-G to further divide chapters into sections. • Ca. 1330: Jews first adopt Langton’s chapter-divisions. • 1509: First printed Masoretic text using numbered verses (Psalterium quincuplex by Faber Stapulensis, printed Paris: Henri Etienne). • 1528: The printer Santes Pagnino publishes a Latin bible (Lyon, 1528) with verses numbered according to Masoretic system. He also divided the NT into verses that were much longer than present verses. • Ca. 1550: Robert Etienne (a.k.a. Stephanus), a Parisian printer, divides Langton’s chapters into modern verses on basis of Hebrew Bible’s soph pasuq; according to legend, he did this while riding on horseback from Paris to Lyon, and therefore his verse-divisions fall occasionally in mid-sentence, occasionally between groups of sentences. However, scholars say that the Stephanian divisions clarify the meaning of the original NT Greek sentences. • 1551: First New Testament using Stephanus’s verse-divisions is printed in Greek and Latin. • 1560: Geneva Bible is first English New Testament using Stephanus’s verse-divisions. • 1571: Stephanus’s verse-divisions first used in a Hebrew Bible. THE OFFICIAL BIBLE OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH Nova Vulgata Bibliorum Sacrorum Editio (New Vulgate Edition of the Holy Bible), 2nd edition; ordained by Vatican II, certified by Paul VI, and published on the authority of John Paul II. Available online at: http://www.vatican.va/archive/bible/nova_vulgata/documents/nova-vulgata_index_lt.html SOURCES: • Aland, K., M. Black, B. Metzger, and A. Wikren, eds., The Greek New Testament. New York: American Bible Society, 1966. • Binz, Stephen J. Introduction to the Bible. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2007. • Gabel, John B., Charles B. Wheeler and Anthony D. York. The Bible as Literature. 4th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. • Metzger, B. The Text of the New Testament. Trans. by P. Ackroyd. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963. p. 27. • Jackson, Samuel Macauley, ed. The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. 13 vols. London/New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1908-14. Vol. 2, ed. Philip Schaff. See entry “Bible Text, III. Chapter and Verse Divisions,“ online at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/encyc02.html?term=Bible%20Text 1 The Masoretes were 6th-10th century Jewish scholars who established the text of the Hebrew Bible (OT). .
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