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Chapter and verse divisions did not appear in the original texts of Jewish or Christian bibles; such divisions form part of theparatext of the Bible. Since the early 13th century, most copies and editions of the Bible have presented all but the shortest of thescriptural books with divisions intochapters, generally a page or so in length. Since the mid-16th century, editors have further subdivided each chapter into verses – each consisting of a few short lines or of one or more sentences. Sometimes a sentence spans more than one verse, as in the case ofEphesians 2:8–9, and sometimes there is more than one sentence in a single verse, as in the case ofGenesis 1:2. And sometimes a verse starts in mid–sentence, as in1 Corinthians 12:9. The Jewish divisions of theHebrew text differ at various points from those used byChristians. For instance, Jewish tradition regards theascriptions to manyPsalms as independent verses or as parts of the subsequent verses, whereas established Christian practice treats each Psalm ascription as independent and unnumbered, resulting in 116 more verses in Jewish versions than in the Christian texts. Some chapter divisions also occur in different places, e.g.Hebrew Bibles have1 Chronicles 5:27–41[1] where Christian translations have1 Chronicles 6:1–15.[2][3]
Early manuscripts of the biblical texts 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 theHebrew alphabet.Peh (פ) indicated an "open" paragraph that began on a new line, whilesamekh (ס) indicated a "closed" paragraph that began on the same line after a small space.[4] These two letters begin the Hebrew words open (patuach) and closed (satum), and are, themselves, open in shape (פ) and closed (ס). The earliest known witnesses of theBook of Isaiah from theDead Sea Scrolls used parashot divisions, which differ slightly from theMasoretic divisions.[5]
TheHebrew Bible was also divided into some larger sections. In Israel, theTorah (its first five books) were divided into 154 sections so that they could be read through aloud in weekly worship over the course of three years. In Babylonia, it was divided into 53 or 54 sections (Parashat ha-Shavua) so it could be read through in one year.[5] TheNew 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 orcanons. Neither of these systems corresponds with modern chapter divisions.[6] (See fuller discussions below.)
Chapter divisions, with titles, are also found in the 9th-century Tours manuscript Paris Bibliothèque Nationale MS Lat. 3, the so-called Bible of Rorigo.[7]
Cardinal archbishopStephen Langton and CardinalHugo 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.[8][9][10]
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, includeJohn Locke'sParaphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St. Paul (1707),[11]Alexander Campbell'sThe Sacred Writings (1826),[12]Daniel Berkeley Updike's fourteen-volumeThe Holy Bible Containing the Old and New Testaments and the Apocrypha,Richard Moulton'sThe Modern Reader's Bible (1907),[13]Ernest Sutherland Bates'sThe Bible Designed to Be Read as Living Literature (1936),[14]The Books of the Bible (2007) from theInternational Bible Society (Biblica), Adam Lewis Greene's five-volumeBibliotheca (2014),[15][16] and theESV Reader's Bible[17] (2016) fromCrossway Books.
Since at least 916 theTanakh has contained an extensive system of multiple levels of section, paragraph, and phrasal divisions that were indicated inMasoretic vocalization andcantillation markings. One of the most frequent of these was a special type of punctuation, thesof passuq, symbol for a period or sentence break, resembling thecolon (:) of English and Latin orthography. With the advent of the printing press and the translation of theHebrew Bible into English, versifications were made that correspond predominantly with the existing Hebrew sentence breaks, with a few isolated exceptions. Most attribute these to RabbiIsaac Nathan ben Kalonymus's work for the first HebrewBible concordance around 1440.[9]
The first person to divide New Testament chapters into verses was the Italian Dominican biblical scholarSantes Pagnino (1470–1541), but his system was never widely adopted.[18] His verse divisions in the New Testament were far longer than those known today.[19] The Parisian printerRobert Estienne created another numbering in his 1551 edition of the Greek New Testament,[20] 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. Estienne produced a 1555 Vulgate that is the first Bible to include the verse numbers integrated into the text. Before this work, they were printed in the margins.[19]
The first English New Testament to use the verse divisions was a 1557 translation byWilliam Whittingham (c. 1524–1579). The first Bible in English to use both chapters and verses was theGeneva Bible published shortly afterwards bySir Rowland Hill[21][failed verification] 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.
TheMasoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible notes several different kinds of subdivisions within the biblical books:
Most important are the verses, orpassukim (MH spelling; now pronouncedpesukim by all speakers). According toTalmudic tradition, the division of the text into verses is of ancient origin.[22] In Masoretic versions of the Bible, the end of a verse, orsof passuk, is indicated by a small mark in its final word called asilluq (which means "stop"). Less formally, verse endings are usually also indicated by two vertical dots following the word with asilluq.
TheMasoretic Text also contains sections, or portions, calledparashot orparashiyot. The end of aparashah is usually indicated by a space within a line (a "closed" section) or a new line beginning (an "open" section). The division of the text reflected in theparashot is usually thematic. Unlike chapters, theparashot are not numbered, but some of them have special titles.
In early manuscripts (most importantly inTiberian Masoretic manuscripts, such as theAleppo Codex), an "open" section may also be represented by a blank line, and a "closed" section by a new line that is slightly indented (the preceding line may also not be full). These latter conventions are no longer used in Torah scrolls and printed Hebrew Bibles. In this system, the one rule differentiating "open" and "closed" sections is that "open" sections mustalways start at the beginning of a new line, while "closed" sectionsnever start at the beginning of a new line.
Another division of the biblical books found in the Masoretic Text is the division intosedarim. This division is not thematic, but is almost entirely based upon thequantity of text.[citation needed] For theTorah, this division reflects the triennial cycle of reading that was practiced by the Jews of the Land of Israel.[citation needed]
Christians also introduced a concept roughly similar to chapter divisions, calledkephalaia (singularkephalaion, literally meaningheading).[23]
CardinalHugo de Sancto Caro is often given credit for first dividing theLatin Vulgate into chapters in the real sense, but it is the arrangement of his contemporary and fellow cardinalStephen Langton who in 1205 created the chapter divisions which are used today. They were then inserted into Greek manuscripts of the New Testament in the 16th century.Robert Estienne (Robert Stephanus) was the first to number the verses within each chapter, his verse numbers entering printed editions in 1551 (New Testament) and 1553 (Hebrew Bible).[24]
Several modern publications of the Bible have eliminated numbering of chapters and verses.Biblica published such a version of theNIV in 2007 and 2011. In 2014,Crossway published theESV Reader's Bible andBibliotheca published a modified ASV.[25]