Do you realize that there once was no "John 3:16" in the Bible? Nor was their "John 1:1" or ANY other NUMBERED chapters or verses in English (or in other) Bibles. What, have I lost my mind? Tossed my belief in a God-inspired Bible?
Not at all! As many may not realize that BOTH testaments of the Bible, originally did not have the chapters and verses numbered. In fact, not until about the early 13th century did this development occur, as attributed to an Archbishop of Canterbury who developed it. And the Old Testament didn't receive a chapter / number system either until about the mid-16th century. Previously, parchments and scrolls had used spaces to divide Scriptural segments and passages. You can see more about this further below. Of course, even with these chapter and verse divisions developments, there were yet no PRINTED bibles, until Gutenberg's Bible was printed in 1455. And Gutenberg's Bible, was not translated into English or whatever language of the Christian masses, as it contains the Latin version of the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament. In 1525, William Tyndale's New Testament was translated from the Greek, and was the first New Testament to be printed in the English language on the printing press. And Myles Coverdale's Bible introduced the first Bible to be printed in the English Language, which was distributed in 1535 (80 Books: Old Testament and New Testament, including the Apocryphal books, which are non-canonical). And nearly 100 years after Gutenberg's Bible was printed, Parisian printer Robert Estienne produced a 1555 Vulgate that is the first Bible to include the verse numbers integrated into the text. Before this work, they were typically printed in the margins.
Prior to the above series of developments, except for medieval theologians and scholars, the common man would not yet have been aware of these chapter / verse divisions and until considerably later - as most would not have been able to read Hebrew, Latin, Greek, etc. And many of the lower classes would not have been able to read at all - meaning, most common people were at the mercy of pastors and priests to communicate the information found in Scripture. And the printing press changed all of that, particularly as literacy rates rose and Bibles begin to become available in the languages of the common people.
And not only did the Bible not originally have chapter and verse designations, but neither did it have modern punctuation either. And HOW a sentence is punctuated can drastically change its meaning, depending upon the accuracy of the punctuation applied. Read about this here: https://www.christianity.com/wiki/bible ... cided.html
Hope you enjoy the history lesson!
Philip
Who divided the Bible into chapters and verses? (from Gotquestions.org)
The chapter divisions commonly used today were developed by Stephen Langton, an Archbishop of Canterbury. Langton put the modern chapter divisions into place in around A.D. 1227. The Wycliffe English Bible of 1382 was the first Bible to use this chapter pattern. Since the Wycliffe Bible, nearly all Bible translations have followed Langton’s chapter divisions.
The Hebrew Old Testament was divided into verses by a Jewish rabbi by the name of Nathan in A.D. 1448. Robert Estienne, who was also known as Stephanus, was the first to divide the New Testament into standard numbered verses, in 1555. Stephanus essentially used Nathan’s verse divisions for the Old Testament. Since that time, beginning with the Geneva Bible, the chapter and verse divisions employed by Stephanus have been accepted into nearly all the Bible versions.