Chapters and Verses

I think I’ve said a time or two lately that the author picked up where he left off.  It’s a silly thing to say and I thought I’d better correct myself before leading you astray.  You see, when these letters and sermons were originally written, they were not split up into chapters and verses.  

As a matter of fact, we didn’t get chapters and verses until relatively recently.  According to blueletterbible.org, A man named Stephen Langton divided the Bible into chapters in the year A.D. 1227. The Bible he used was the Latin Vulgate. Langton was a professor at the University of Paris at the time. Later, he became the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Two hundred years later, the chapter divisions were added to the Hebrew Bible, but they don’t line up exactly with the English Bible.

Interestingly, verses came before chapters, at least for the Old Testament and were standardized around 900 AD.  The New Testament, however, was quite a bit later in 1551.  All of the chapter and verse divisions came before the Latin Vulgate in 1555.

Several reasons are given for these divisions, the first being just sheer convenience.  They also make it easier to quote and reference. 

Proper Interpretation

However, there are warnings that these divisions are of human origin.  They can be a distraction, and even interfere in proper interpretation.  In our reading together, there have been several times when a verse continued into the next chapter and probably should have remained in the chapter before.  Even splitting the text into verses can have an adverse effect on our understanding if we’re not careful.  In other words, we can too easily take a statement out of context if we do not discipline ourselves to read the verses before and after.  

It’s an interesting exercise to read without chapters and verses. A quick Google search will give you some options to do just that.  I even put a link in the show notes if you are of a mind.  

As if no chapters and verses isn’t enough of a challenge to our sense of familiarity, let me just add to this that, in Biblical Hebrew, there is no punctuation.  I would feign shock, but we just finished reading Paul’s letters and you all know by now that some of his sentences can rival paragraphs.  

I tell you this for one primary reason.  We need to always be aware of how we are interpreting Scripture.  We want to strive to glean the meaning that the original writer wanted to convey. 

Have you ever tried to read without the divisions of chapters, verses, or punctuation?  Let me know at Lifting Her Voice, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.