Chapter and Verse, for better or worse

#62: “Chapter and Verse, for better or worse” by Brendon Wahlberg
You read the billboard as you speed past it on the highway. The words “John 3:16” are printed on it in enormous letters. It is a very brief, somewhat mysterious message, but of course you know what it means. It is an abbreviation that designates a Bible passage, from the gospel of John, Chapter 3, verse 16. If you didn’t know what that passage was, you could quickly find it by using the chapter and verse numbers. These numbers seem to us to be as much a part of the Bible as the words themselves. They are a convenience that we take for granted, allowing us to find any passage with ease. However, our current chapters and verses are a relatively recent invention. The Bibles of the ancient world did not have them. How, then, did we get our modern Bible chapter and verse numbers? Who added them, and why? And are they entirely a blessing to have?
To make a long story short, the chapter divisions that we use today were added by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, who lived between 1150 and 1228 CE. The verse numbers that we use today were added by a French printer, Robert Estienne, who lived between 1503 and 1559 CE. I’ll have more to say about them in a moment, but first we should look at how the Bible was divided before either of those men came along.
The first section of the Bible to really come together as a large unit was the first five books, the Torah. The Jews of antiquity had a basic need to divide the Torah into sections. Why? Because they had the custom of reading one section a week, out loud on the Sabbath. The 54 sections were planned out so that it would take one year to get through them all. (And an earlier system used 154 sections and took three years to complete.) Divisions in books of the Hebrew Bible appeared on paper as blank spaces or single Hebrew letters, inserted between sections. It was a start, but it was not as convenient as the modern system of having chapters.
Similarly, if you look at an ancient New Testament, you might well find it difficult to find the passage you wanted. The text was written in large letters with no spaces between them, and hardly any punctuation. And of course, no chapter and verse numbers. It looked like something analogous to this (except that it was in Greek):
ANDJUSTASMOSESLIFTEDUPTHESERPENTINTHEWILDERNESSSOMUSTTHESONOFMANBELIFTEDUPTHATWHOEVERBELIEVESINHIMMAYHAVEETERNALLIFEFORGODSOLOVEDTHEWORLDTHATHEGAVEHISONLYSONSOTHATEVERYONEWHOBELIEVESINHIMMAYNOTPERISH
Picture the entire gospel written like this. Now picture trying to find that passage about being born again, which you perhaps wanted to read. Wouldn’t you like some chapter numbers to help you? But no, the Bible was without them for about a millennium.
Enter Archbishop Langton, who is credited with giving us our modern chapter numbers. He was a great church writer, who composed many sermons and treatises. In 1227, a year before he died, he divided the Bible into chapters. In 1244, Langton’s contemporary, Cardinal Hugo, came up with his own chapter system. Hugo’s reason was that he was writing a concordance with his students, and he wanted a fast, easy way to quickly find any particular word in the Bible. But it ended up being the particular chapter numbering of Langton that we use today. However, there were still no modern verse numbers, and there would not be any for about another three hundred years.
Enter Robert Estienne, also known as Robert Stephens. He was a scholar and a famous printer who worked in Paris. A former Catholic, he became a Protestant and printed the entire Bible several times. In 1551, he printed the first Bible that contained the verse numbers which we use today. Legend has it that Estienne jotted down the verse numbers of the Bible while on horseback, on a trip from Paris to Lyons. This story is not taken seriously by historians, who say that he probably wrote down the verses while resting at inns along the road. But if you look at how haphazardly the verse numbers interrupt sentences, you can almost believe that they were placed by a man who was jouncing along on a horse.
And so, thanks to Langton and Estienne, whenever we open a Bible, we can use those convenient chapter and verse numbers to find our place. A scholar can simply refer to, say, Matthew 2:1 as he is writing, in a simple and efficient manner. Nowadays, we say that someone who is familiar with the Bible can quote it, “chapter and verse”. And that huge billboard can simply say on it, John 3:16. But are chapters and verses, as we have them, entirely a good thing? It turns out that the system has some flaws, to be sure.
You have to wonder what rationale was used by either Langton or Estienne when they decided exactly where to place a particular chapter or verse number. It would make sense to put the end of a chapter at a place where there is a natural break in the story, right? And to start a new chapter where a new part of the story begins. But Langton was not very concerned with that. Look at the first two chapters of Genesis. The first chapter ends before the first creation story is quite finished. Chapter 2, verses 1-3, has the conclusion of that story. The second creation account begins with Chapter 2, verse 4. There are many places where the end of a chapter is not the end of a story. But we have had this chapter numbering system for so long now, that we are kind of stuck with it. To help with the problem, some Bibles insert brief headings where a new story section begins, describing the contents of that section, regardless of where any chapter might begin or end.
Likewise, Estienne’s verses seem kind of random as to where they were inserted. Here is a brief passage with the verse numbers kept in it: “13 He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, 14 so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: 15 Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali…” (Matthew 4:13-15) You can see that the verse numbers often fall smack in the middle of a sentence, interrupting it, sometimes more than once.
It can get kind of ridiculous. Here is a passage with the shortest verse in the New Testament, made up of only 12 letters in Greek, in Luke 20:30: “27 Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him 28 and asked him a question, ‘Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; 30 then the second 31 and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless.” It was not as if the verses had to be short or anything. Look at Esther 8:9. That single verse is 84 words long in the NRSV translation!
The main problem with the illogical placement of chapter and verse numbers is what it does to readers. These numbers encourage a reader to start or stop reading in an arbitrary place, so that the reader doesn’t get the whole story. This allows many people to take verses out of context, to ignore the surrounding words, and to fail to understand the real meaning of a passage as it fits within the larger book. For a thousand and a half years or so, the Bible had no verse numbers. The verse divisions were made by a Frenchman, not dictated by God. They are not Holy Scripture, in other words.
When you read the Bible, try not to cherry pick verses out of context. Remember that when the words were written, they were not meant to be divided up into those verses in the first place. Always read more than just one small passage. Consider the book as a whole, and discern stories within it regardless of chapter numbers. Read what comes before and what comes after your passage. Use a study Bible and read the annotations that show you how your passage connects to other passages in other books of the Bible. Only then can you begin to really understand what you are reading in the Holy Bible.