Bible division

[Andrew Wabomba]

I understand the chapter and verse

divisions in the Bible are not part of the original text.

When were these divisions

made, and who madethem?

[TsukinoRei]

I understand the chapter and verse

divisions in the Bible are not part of the original text.

When were these divisions

made, and who madethem?

 

Cool question Andrew!  When I read the Bible I try to ignore the Chapter and verse divisions for this reason.  The answers to your quesiton are highlighted in red.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapters_and_verses_of_the_Bible

 

 

The Bible is a compilation of many shorter books written at different times and later assembled into the biblical canon. All but the shortest of these books have been divided into chapters, generally a page or so in length, since the early 13th century. Since the mid-16th century, each chapter has been further divided into "verses" of a few short lines or sentences. Sometimes a sentence spans more than one verse, as in the case of Ephesians 2:8-9, and sometimes there is more than one sentence in a single verse, as in the case of Genesis 1:2. As the chapter and verse divisions were not part of the original texts, they form part of the paratext of the Bible.

The Jewish divisions of the Hebrew text differ at various points from those used by Christians. For instance, in Jewish tradition, the ascriptions to many Psalms are regarded as independent verses, making 116 more verses, whereas the established Christian practice is to count and number each Psalm ascription together with the first verse following it. Some chapter divisions also occur in different places, e.g. 1 Chronicles 5:27-41 in Hebrew Bibles is numbered as 1 Chronicles 6:1-15 in Christian translations.

 

 

 

Chapters[edit source | editbeta]

The original manuscripts did not contain the chapter and verse divisions in the numbered form familiar to modern readers. In antiquity Hebrew texts were divided into paragraphs (parashot) that were identified by two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Pe indicated an "open" paragraph that began on a new line, while Samekh indicated a "closed" paragraph that began on the same line after a small space.^[1] The earliest known copies of the Book of Isaiah from the Dead Sea Scrolls use these two Hebrew letters for their paragraph divisions, although they differ slightly from theMasoretic divisions.^[2] (This is different from the use of consecutive letters of the Hebrew alphabet to structure certain poetic compositions, known as acrostics, such as several of the Psalms and most of the Book of Lamentations.)

The Hebrew Bible was also divided into some larger sections. In Israel the five books of Moses were divided into 154 sections so that they could be read through aloud in weekly worship over the course of three years. In Babylonia the Torah was divided into 53 or 54 sections (Parashat ha-Shavua) so it could be read through in one year.^[2] The New Testament was divided into topical sections known as kephalaia by the fourth century. Eusebius of Caesarea divided the gospels into parts that he listed in tables or canons. Neither of these systems corresponds with modern chapter divisions.^[3] (See fuller discussions below.)

Archbishop Stephen Langton and Cardinal Hugo de Sancto Caro developed different schemas for systematic division of the Bible in the early 13th century. It is the system of Archbishop Langton on which the modern chapter divisions are based.^[4][5][6]

While chapter divisions have become nearly universal, editions of the Bible have sometimes been published without them. Such editions, which typically use thematic or literary criteria to divide the biblical books instead, include John Locke's Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St. Paul(1707),^[7] Alexander Campbell's The Sacred Writings (1826),^[8] Richard Moulton's The Modern Reader's Bible (1907),^[9] Ernest Sutherland Bates' The Bible Designed to Be Read as Living Literature (1936),^[10] and The Books of the Bible (2007) from the International Bible Society (Biblica).

Verses[edit source | editbeta]

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.^{[citation needed]} One of the most frequent of these was a special type of punctuation, the sof passuq, symbol for a full stop or sentence break, resembling the colon ( 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. Most attribute these to Rabbi Isaac Nathan ben Kalonymus's work for the first Hebrew Bible concordance around 1440.^[5]

The first person to divide New Testament chapters into verses was Italian Dominican biblical scholar Santi Pagnini (1470–1541), but his system was never widely adopted.^[11] Robert Estienne created an alternate numbering in his 1551 edition of the Greek New Testament ^[12] which was also used in his 1553 publication of the Bible in French. Estienne's system of division was widely adopted, and it is this system which is found in almost all modern bibles.

The first English New Testament to use the verse divisions was a 1557 translation by William Whittingham (c. 1524-1579). The first Bible in English to use both chapters and verses was the Geneva Bible published shortly afterwards in 1560. These verse divisions soon gained acceptance as a standard way to notate verses, and have since been used in nearly all English Bibles and the vast majority of those in other languages. (Nevertheless, some Bibles have removed the verse numbering, including the ones noted above that also removed chapter numbers; a recent example of an edition that removed only verses, not chapters, is The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language by Eugene H. Peterson.)^[13]

[Andrew Wabomba]

What I don't know is whether these sect of people did that through God's inspiration or their own invention .

[Guest AFlameOfFire]

Acts 13:33 God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again; as it is also written in the second psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.

 

There's one where he refers to the number of a psalm, probably just making an easy reference.  I have no clue when they were written in myself but it sure beats trying to find where something is written. I see them referring to books more often though, or the books writer.

[Willa]

These divisions and numbers are purely for our convenience. Different translations may phrase a portion differently than King James, for instance, while the meaning is exactly the same. So a portion of a sentence may appear in a verse prior or after in another translation. This does not make it wrong. It means that our western way of making sentences often differs from the Greek. Their grammar is different. A Bible translated into Chinese might be much different in its divisions as well. The words themselves can be very difficult to translate directly. The Greek has several more tenses than English.

[TsukinoRei]

These divisions and numbers are purely for our convenience. Different translations may phrase a portion differently than King James, for instance, while the meaning is exactly the same. So a portion of a sentence may appear in a verse prior or after in another translation. This does not make it wrong. It means that our western way of making sentences often differs from the Greek. Their grammar is different. A Bible translated into Chinese might be much different in its divisions as well. The words themselves can be very difficult to translate directly. The Greek has several more tenses than English.

 

The way our minds work, though, there is the danger of drawing meaning from the divisions particularly in terms of context.  A great example is the passages about women obeying their husbands and husbands serving their wives.  The man-made divisions place the verse that says, 'Obey one another', in the previous chapter.  Arguably this has allowed an already patriarchal society to subjugate women in the home for many years while pointing to scripture for support as they conveniently ignored the one little verse which, if included with the whole, would have created an entirely different context and so a much more balanced meaning.  Our minds group words into sentences to convey whole ideas, and sentences into paragraphs to convey complete arguments, and paragraphs into chapters to convey whole themes.  Each separate chapter is then treated as a unit and strung together with other chapters to create an ordered narrative.  The divisions matter.  No writer would suggest that a sentence or paragraph of their work holds the same meaning, the same impact, or conveys the same theme/mood in the same way if it is pushed into the next chapter, or broken in the middle with a number to be then partially attached to another sentence.

[Willa]

I use NKJV. I found submit to one another in the 5th chapter only. Much of the theme of 1 Peter seems to be about suffering, submission, and humility, which all go together. Suffering, especially suffering for obeying Christ, produces humility and humility enables us to submit to each other and to God out of love. You may not like the idea that God has placed our husbands in authority over us. But everyone needs to submit to authority or there will be anarchy. We need to submit to unrighteous governments and employers, which I don't really like to hear either. We also need to submit to husbands even while they are unrighteous; when we suffer for doing right as Christ did, we thereby partake of the sufferings of Christ.

Finally the pastors are to be examples, and younger people are to submit to older, and all are to submit to each other and be clothed with humility. This serves to perfect us, establish us and strengthen us. Jesus submitted to our Father, and even to death on the cross. We are following His example in submission and suffering.. So it helps to study a whole book to see the big picture.

Still, it helps to find a subject or where something is mentioned by finding a chapter and verse.

I have Wuest's Expanded Translation which rearranges the paragraphs a little and leaves out verses numbers. I like it for a devotional because it forces me to think about what is being said. Phillips is a little more of a paraphrase but it does the same thing. They are quite hard to use for Bible study. They are also difficult to use to tell you where I found something mentioned. For this reason they are not widely used.

[TsukinoRei]

I use NKJV. I found submit to one another in the 5th chapter only. Much of the theme of 1 Peter seems to be about suffering, submission, and humility, which all go together. Suffering, especially suffering for obeying Christ, produces humility and humility enables us to submit to each other and to God out of love. You may not like the idea that God has placed our husbands in authority over us. But everyone needs to submit to authority or there will be anarchy. We need to submit to unrighteous governments and employers, which I don't really like to hear either. We also need to submit to husbands even while they are unrighteous; when we suffer for doing right as Christ did, we thereby partake of the sufferings of Christ.

Finally the pastors are to be examples, and younger people are to submit to older, and all are to submit to each other and be clothed with humility. This serves to perfect us, establish us and strengthen us. Jesus submitted to our Father, and even to death on the cross. We are following His example in submission and suffering.. So it helps to study a whole book to see the big picture.

Still, it helps to find a subject or where something is mentioned by finding a chapter and verse.

I have Wuest's Expanded Translation which rearranges the paragraphs a little and leaves out verses numbers. I like it for a devotional because it forces me to think about what is being said. Phillips is a little more of a paraphrase but it does the same thing. They are quite hard to use for Bible study. They are also difficult to use to tell you where I found something mentioned. For this reason they are not widely used.

 

And there you see how something so innocent seeming as a chapter division can divide us on a doctrine-creating interpretation of the Bible.  You may not like that the actual command is to submit to one another in love, or that Christ submitted even unto death on a cross and that is the level of servant-hood which a husband is told to show his wife.  When this is done a marriage becomes a blessed symbol of perfect unity.  The same perfect unity that the Son has with the Father and that believers are called to have with one another so that the world will see Christ in us.  We gladly submit to Christ because he has submitted even unto death on a cross, ultimately serving our greatest need.  When husbands and wives do not submit to one another in love, their relationship becomes unbalanced, damaging, it is not longer a partnership.  A great intimacy is lost without the confidence and trust that when one submits their needs and wants to the other their partner will do the same for them in all things.  If the husband sacrifices everything and the wife is interested only in her own happiness and her own will then the husband left in miserable servitude.  If the wife sacrifices everything and the husband is interested only in his own happiness and her own will then the wife is left is miserable servitude.

[clark thompson]

The Geneva bible was the first English bible to put verses and chapters in it.

[Willa]

[quote name="Willamina" post="1993688"

 

And there you see how something so innocent seeming as a chapter division can divide us on a doctrine-creating interpretation of the Bible.  You may not like that the actual command is to submit to one another in love, or that Christ submitted even unto death on a cross and that is the level of servant-hood which a husband is told to show his wife.  When this is done a marriage becomes a blessed symbol of perfect unity.  The same perfect unity that the Son has with the Father and that believers are called to have with one another so that the world will see Christ in us.  We gladly submit to Christ because he has submitted even unto death on a cross, ultimately serving our greatest need.  When husbands and wives do not submit to one another in love, their relationship becomes unbalanced, damaging, it is not longer a partnership.  A great intimacy is lost without the confidence and trust that when one submits their needs and wants to the other their partner will do the same for them in all things.  If the husband sacrifices everything and the wife is interested only in her own happiness and her own will then the husband left in miserable servitude.  If the wife sacrifices everything and the husband is interested only in his own happiness and her own will then the wife is left is miserable servitude.

You will find that the Son came to glorify the Father. On earth He did and said nothing but what the Father told Him to say and do. This is repeated throughout the book of John. The Son is/was in perfect submission to the Father, not one to another. The Father was in the Son just as the Holy Spirit is in us. They are one God. So we are to be in submission to our husbands and to be of one accord. We are to give input soas to be a helpmeet, but the final call is theirs. Or the husband can delligate responsibilities to us or freedoms, but he is in charge. He is also to lay his life down for us and love us as Christ does the church, His Bride.

This is coming from a person who was raised to be extremely independant and was more interested in conversing with men than with women talking about fashions or who's got talent. I still have to check my attitude about this occasionally. I can tell how submitted I am to God by my admiration for my husband and my submission to my husband's will, or sometimes by my willingness to go the speed limit. Perhaps this is part of the reason that my husband chooses to humble himself and serve me as Christ serves the Church. He spoils me rotten. It hasn't always been this way. I had to learn to submit to an unrighteous unbeliever who physically prevented me from going to church, and somehow God has modified me to be more like the woman of 1Peter 3. When I was first told about that verse I said: "Who me? Gentle and quiet? You've got to be kidding!!" I can't say that I've been perfected in this, just modified. 1 Peter 5 sums up the book. There are times that my hubby does submit to my instinct, especially when it is the leading of the Holy Spirit, but normally we discuss things and find we are in agreement because we are both seeking to do God's will. We both want what is best for each other. That is love. We just celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary.

Back to the divisions of 1Peter. I believe the Bible to be inspired by the Holy Spirit and the summing of 1Peter by putting the verse to submit to each other at the back had the purpose that you elaborated upon in the way you discribed litterary construction. It is in the place it was meant to be..."and be clothed with humility, for God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. Therefore humble yourselves then under the mighty hand of God that He my exalt you in due time," 1 Peter 5:5b-6. When there is a therefore you must look back to see what it is there for. The whole purpose of submission is to humble ourselves. We submit to our husbands as unto the Lord. We all need to regard one another in lowliness with genuine respect.

Blessings,

Willa