CHAPTERS AND VERSES WHO PUT THEM IN THE BIBLE?

WHO ADDED THE VERSES?

Some 300 years later, in the middle of the 16th century, renowned French printer-scholar Robert Estienne made things even easier.  His aim was to popularize Bible study. He realized how valuable it would be to have a uniform system of both numbered chapters and numbered verses.

Estienne did not come up with the idea of dividing the Bible text into verses. Others had done that already. Centuries earlier, Jewish copyists, for example, had divided the whole Hebrew Bible, or the part of the Bible commonly called the Old Testament, into verses but not into chapters.  Again, as with the development of chapters, there was no uniform system.

Estienne divided the Christian Greek Scriptures, or what is called the New Testament, into a new set of numbered verses and combined them with those already in the Hebrew Bible.  In 1553, he published the first complete Bible (an editions in French) with basically the same chapters and verses that most Bibles use today.  Some people were critical and said that the verses broke the bible text into fragments, making it appear as a series of separate and detached statements. But his system was quickly adopted by other printers. 

Next time: CHAPTERS AND VERSES WHO PUT THEM IN THE BIBLE?/A BOON FOR BIBLE STUDENTS

From The Watchtower magazine