CHAPTERS AND VERSES WHO PUT THEM IN THE BIBLE?

WHO ADDED THE CHAPTERS?

English cleric Stephen Langton, who later became Archbishop of Canterbury, is credited with adding the chapter divisions to the Bible. He did this early in the 13th century C.E., when he as a teacher at the University of Paris in France.

Before Langton's day, scholars had experimented  with different ways of dividing  the Bible into smaller sections or chapter, mainly, it seems for reference purposes. You can imagine how much easier it would have been for them to find a passage if they had to search through only one chapter rather than a whole book, such as he book of Isaiah with its 66 chapters.

All of that, however, created a problem.  The scholars produced many different and incompatible systems. In one of them, Mark's Gospel was divided into almost 50 chapters, not the 16 we have now. In Paris in Langton's day, there were students from many countries, and they brought with them Bibles from their native lands.  However, lecturers and students could not share references. Why? Because the chapter divisions in their manuscripts simply did not match.

So Langton developed new chapter divisions. His system "caught the imagination of readers and scribes," states The Book - A History of the Bible, and it "spread rapidly across Europe."  He gave us the chapter numbering we find in most Bibles today.

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

From The Watchtower magazine