CHAPTERS AND VERSES WHO PUT THEM IN THE BIBLE?

IMAGINE that you are a Christian living in the first century.  Your congregation has just received a letter from the apostle Paul. As you listen to it being read, you notice that Paul often quotes from  "the holy writings," that is, the Hebrew Scriptures.  (2 Timothy 3;15)  'I would really like to see the text he is quoting from,' you say to yourself.  But that would not have been easy.  Why not?

NO CHAPTERS OR VERSES

Consider what the manuscripts of "the holy writings" that were available in Paul's day looked like.  They are a portion of the book of Isaiah from the Dead Sea Scrolls.  They are solid blocks of text! No punctuation, and none of the numbered chapters and verses that we use today. 

Bible writers did not divide their message into chapters or verses.  They just wrote down the whole message, not just tiny parts of it.  Is that not what you want when you get an important letter, not just bits and pieces of it.  The lack of chapters or verses, however, did pose a problem. Paul could only identify his quotations with such words as "just as it is written" or "just as Isaiah had foretold." (Romans 3:10; 9:29) And it would have been difficult to find those quotations unless you were very familiar with all "the holy writings." 

Furthermore, those "holy writings" were not one simple message from God. By the end of the first century C.E., they consisted of a collection of 66 separate books!  That is why most Bible readers today are glad to have numbered chapters and verses that help them find specific information, such as the many quotations in Paul's letters.  'So,' you might ask, 'who put those chapter and verse  numbers in the Bible? 

Next time: CHAPTERS AND VERSES WHO PUT THEM IN THE BIBLE?/WHO ADDED THE CHAPTERS?

From The Watchtower magazine