The Bible has been a foundational text of Christianity, and highly relevant in other systems of belief, for thousands of years. However, this famous book has not always looked the way it does now.
Translations have taken the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek and converted them into thousands of varieties, from the classic King James Version to modern speak, but these are not the only elements that have changed.
In the scope of the Bible’s lifespan, verse numbers are a recent invention. But why did a document with such a long-standing history suddenly find itself split to pieces?
The demands of specific historical periods, growing church leadership influence, and more all pressed toward the introduction of numbers. And by doing so, they revolutionized Bible reading itself.
Breaking Apart the Bible
While no uncontestable numbers exist, many scholars argue that the Old Testament was written between the fifth and second centuries BC. Combined with the New Testament works in the first and second centuries AD, the Bible circulated as a continuous piece: one long story read from beginning to end.
However, while this may have suited the local biblical scholars, it posed a greater problem when the biblical works began to disseminate into the hands of the general populace. Jewish rabbis had already identified the problem (that finding specific information was difficult among scrolls upon scrolls of text) and sought a solution.
Lexical divisions
Rabbis divided the Old Testament into parashah petuchah (large sections, called “open paragraphs”) and parashah setumah (smaller sections, called “closed paragraphs”). As part of the rabbinic-scribal tradition, these markers were implemented to help segment the text into more easily digestible portions.
By the time of the Masoretes, whose role was to standardize the text, this style of separation was becoming stable. By the 1200s, Maimonides (a Jewish scholar) created halakhic requirements, or rules for how Torah passages should be written. This timeline demonstrated the first attempts to segment the Bible.
Chapter divisions
At around the same time as Maimonides was doing his work with the Torah (the 1200s AD), Stephen Langton, who worked as a professor at the University of Paris, introduced the concept of dividing the Bible into chapters. By this point, the Bible was in more hands than ever, and both church leaders and the public needed a more effective means of navigating its contents. It is Langton’s chapter divisions that remain in use now, more than 800 years later.
Verse numbers
While dividing the Bible into chapters proved useful for overarching church ideas, such as sermons on a particular passage, the Bible quickly became ubiquitous, and such markings were no longer sufficient. By the 16th century’s Protestant Reformation, the Bible had more new readers than at any other time in history.
From the newly literate to the Catholic clergy debating the Protestants, everyone needed a clearer way to cite specific points and locate the information they wanted.
Thus, Robert Estienne (Stephanus) stepped in to help. Focusing on the 1551 Greek New Testament first, Stephanus added verse numbers to break apart the text, moving on to the 1557 Old Testament later. Those verse breaks remained until they became standardized in the King James Bible.
How Verse Numbers Revolutionized Bible Reading
The contributions of Maimonides, Langton, and Stephanus all played pivotal roles in shaping how people’s understanding of the Bible transformed over time. However, not everyone was happy with the change. Some people, all the way through the current day, have claimed that the introduction of verses into the Bible interferes with its original intent: to be read as a single, continuous document.
Instead, they argue that verse separations contribute to cherry-picking and the gradual dispersion of Christians into numerous subgroups, which in turn arise from value and belief shifts related to such cherry-picking.
Despite this, the majority of history has treated verse separation as a form of progress. It provided numerous benefits when it first occurred, many of which scholars and religious groups continue to affirm.
Standardizing expectations
One of the most impactful changes introduced by verse breaks was their simplification of using the Bible. Anyone could turn to a specific verse to see exactly what someone else was talking about. For the purposes of personal study, listening to sermons, and doing research, this was invaluable as a means of “citing sources.”
Of equal significance, pointing someone to a passage became logistically simpler. It is easier to explain that a passage is marked “Hebrews 1:4” than to say that it is located “toward the bottom of the page on the left, about halfway through the stack.”
Scholarship
For scholars, verse divisions proved invaluable. Comparing concepts became simpler, and organizing their thoughts to convey them to others was made easier by clearly labeled segments of text.
This facilitated an increase in biblical scholarship, as claims could be more easily engaged with, all without the burden of an individual needing to remember a specific passage or go hunting for it again, sometimes for an extended period, before finding it.
Memorization
Among the general public, verse divisions pushed the spread of Christianity toward the majority opinion. Memorizing specific verses became simpler when they became “verses” rather than isolated paragraphs. This memorization was of particular use to the newly literate or still illiterate, for whom memorization served as an essential element of religious practice in lieu of reading.
However, pastors also reaped the benefits. By being able to cite verses during sermons, they not only strengthened their claims but also equipped listeners with the means to study those same contents when they returned home.
