VII. Chapter and Verse. — Among the Jews, witli whom the only divisions of the Scripture was into books, according to authorship, references were made by citing the subject treated of near where the passage quoted was to be found. In this way Jesus referred the Sadducees to what we call Exodus iii, 6, as we see by Mark xii, 26. The meaning here is not that God spoke to Moses in the bush, for the text says that he spoke to him out of it- but rather, " Have ye not read in the Book of Moses, in The Bush, how God spake unto him?" that is, "in that part of the Book of Moses called The Bush." " I may observe," says Arch- bishop Trench, "that Romans xi, 2, is a quotation of the same kind. It can never mean 'of Elias,' as in our version, but is rather 'in [the history of] Elias,' in that portion of Scripture which tells of him." The Koran is quoted by this means now. Its chapters are called from their subjects by such names as "The Cow," "Thunder," "Smoke," "The Moon," "Di- vorce," "The Spider," "The Resurrection," "The Slanderer," and so on.
The division into chapters Avas made by a cardinal, Hugo de Sancto Caro, about the year 1250. He was employed in compiling a Latin Concordance, the first of which we have any account, and invented this divi- sion to facilitate his labor. The Boole of Psalms is naturally divided. Paul quotes " the second Psalm" and " another Psalm" in Acts xiii, 33, 35. The chap- ters having been marked, greater precision was ob- tained by putting capital A, B, C, and so on, at regu-
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lar distances down in the margin, so that any passage near the beginning of a chapter would be quoted; u% for example, "John, 10, A;" further down, "Jeremi- ah, 14, D," and so on. The early English versions all showed this arrangement, and Marbeck's Concordance, the first one in English, makes its references in this manner. These smaller divisions by letters were in- convenient, because they were not made by any sys- tem, and in different translations were of different lengths. The}' generally embraced about six or seven verses under one letter. The divisions into chapters were not uniform ; at least they are not so in our early English translations. Wj'cliffe, for instance, divides Jude into two chapters; and Coverdale makes thirty chapters in 1 Chronicles by dividing the fourth chap- ter into two. Very frequently in the Pentateuch and Job, and occasionally elsewhere, there is a difference of one to four verses in the beginning of a chapter. Where this is the case, too, our version often makes the division in the worst place.
The divisions into verses were made by several per- sons. About 1430 Rabbi Mordecai Nathan divided the Hebrew Bible thus, using Cardinal Hugo's chap- ters. In 1527 a Latin Bible was published at Lyons in which this division of the Old Testament Avas fol- lowed, and the New Testament also divided, but into verses averaging twice as long as ours. But our pres- ent arrangement in this part of the Scriptures was made about 1550, by Robert Stephens, a printer of Paris, who executed the work while making a horse- back journey from Lyons to Paris. This was done only as an advertisement for an edition of the Testa- ment he soon after published in Greek, with two Latin versions. The circumstances under which the work was done effectually prevented the exercise of any scholastic or critical care or ability. But, though the Old Testament was divided first, no edition of it in Hebrew was printed thus till 1661. The first English Scripture printed with verses was the Testament print- ed at Geneva, 1557, and in 1560 the whole Bible at the same place. The Bishops' Bible, next in order, pub- lished in 1568, had them, but also had the marginal guide letters, as in the earlier translations, and in its marginal references it uses the letters instead of the verses. In the next Protestant translation, King James's, or our present one, the letters are altogether omitted. It seems never to have been considered that the division into verses superseded chapters; but real- ly a reference to Luke 243 would be much shorter than to Luke xii, 13. The Psalms are, by their structure, naturally divided into verses. But yet our transla- tions are not uniform in this, even here. Psalm xlii, for instance, is in Coverdale's Bible made one para- graph; Matthew's, twelve verses ; Cranmer's, fifteen, Geneva and Bishops', eleven ; and the Douay, twelve. In Cranmer's Bible each of the alphabetical sections of Psalm cxix is numbered independently, 1 to 8.
From all this it appears that these divisions have no divine warrant whatever, were carelessly made, and should be disregarded in seeking the sense of any part of Scripture. Hence it follows that the best Bibles for common use are those called Paragraph Bibles, in which the matter is reduced to ordinary prose form, except in the poetical books, which are printed in short lines, so as to show their poetic structure. Un- fortunately, but few editions are thus published. The Religious Tract Society of London issue a few; one in 12mo, some thirty years ago, was the best. One they have recently got out, in royal 8vo, with notes and maps, has all the parallel passages, and, though very useful, is so encumbered with reference marks in the text as to distract the reader's attention constantly. Rev. T. W. Coit published a very good one in Cam- bridge, Mass., 1834. Before that, others had been got out at Oxford, chiefly objectionable as not showing the poetic form of some parts. One of the most useful Paragraph Bibles to the English student is that of