The Books of the Bible

I mentioned on Sunday night, there is a Bible now being printed without chapter, verse, or section headings. Here is a little about this Bible. I highly recommend that you get it and read, it will allow you to determine where you feel the change in subjects come. It will help us to be a little more dependent on the Holy Spirit and a little less dependent on what others have felt led to proclaim.

Chapters and verses in the New Testament were never intended to guide preaching or devotional reading. They were introduced so that reference works could be created. Chapters were added by Stephen Langton at the University of Paris around 1200 so passages could be cited in commentaries. Verses were put in around 1550 by Robert Estienne, a French scholar and printer who was working on a concordance to the Greek New Testament.

Chapters are designed to be about the same length. But the stories, oracles, poems and discussions that make up biblical books are of many different lengths. Chapters typically cut longer units into pieces. They add to the confusion by combining shorter units. In 1 Corinthians Paul discusses twelve different topics. His longer discussions have been cut up into chapters 1–4, 8–10 and 12–14. Shorter discussions are combined in chapters 6, 7, 11 and 16. Only two chapters (5 and 15) correspond accurately with a single discussion. This example shows why, in most cases, it’s difficult to make sense of a biblical book when reading or preaching through it chapter-by-chapter.

But if we eliminate chapter and verse numbers, won’t we be in a sea of unorganized type? Isn’t something better than nothing?

Actually, the alternative isn’t nothing. Far from it. The biblical authors built natural structures right into the text of their works. We can learn to recognize these structures and follow them as we read, study and preach. The biblical books follow the conventions of the literary genres of their day. And the biblical authors often reinforce these outlines by repeating key phrases. Paul typically begins a new discussion in 1 Corinthians with “now concerning” (peri de, περι δε). At the end of each major section in Acts, Luke writes something like “the word of God grew and multiplied.”

The Medieval imposition of chapters and verses on the biblical text inevitably leads to confusion. It’s unfortunate that a chapter-by-chapter approach is practically our default mode for expository preaching, home Bible studies, and devotional reading.

But there are alternatives. Using Bible software we can cut and paste without chapters and verses, or view the Bible text without paragraph divisions. In some printed versions, such as The New English Bible, the numbers are moved to the margins. The Books of The Bible from the International Bible Society presents the biblical text visually according to its natural literary outline. The text appears in a single column, with larger and smaller sections set off by white space of varying widths. Chapter and verse numbers are removed entirely from the text. (A traditional chapter and verse range is provided at the bottom of each page.) An introduction to each book describes how it is structured.

Check it out at IBS Books Of The Bible