(3.) The chief facts that remain to be stated as to the verse divisions of the Old Testament are that they were adopted by Stephens in his edition of the Vulgate, 1555, and by Frellon in that of 1556 ; that they appeared, for the first time in an English translation, in the Geneva Bible of 15G0, and were thence transferred to the Bish- ops' Bible of 15G8 and the Authorized Version of 1611. In Coverdale's Bible we. meet with the older notation, which was in familiar use for other books, and retain- ed, in some instances (e. g. in references to Plato), to the present times. The letters A B C D are placed at equal distances in the margin of each page, and the reference is made to the page (or, in the case of Scrip- ture, to the chapter) and the letter accordingly.
2. The Septuagint translation, together with the Latin versions based upon it, have contributed very little to the received division of the Bibles. Made at a time when the rabbinic subdivisions were not en- forced, hardly perhaps existing, and not used in the worship of the synagogue, there was no reason for the
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scrupulous oaro which showed itself in regard to the Hel rru t sxt. The language of TertulHan (Seorp. ii)
and Jerome (in Mir. vi, 9; Zeph. iii, 4) implies the existence of "capitula" of some sort; but the word does not appear to have been used in any more definite sense than "locus" or "passage." The liturgical use of portions of the Old Testament would lead to the employment of some notation to distinguish the dva- yvwafiara or "lectiones," and individual students or transcribers might adopt a system of reference of their own ; I nit we find nothing corresponding to the fully organized notation which originated with the Talmad- i-ts or Masoretes. It is possible, indeed, that the gen- eral use of Lectionaria— in which the portions read in the Church services were written separately — may have hindered the development of such a system. Whatever traces of it we find are accordingly scanty and fluctuating. The sticho-metric mode of writing (i. e. the division of the text into short lines generally with very little regard to the sense) adopted in the 4th or 5th centuries (see Prolegom. to Breitinger's Seplua- gint, i, 6), though it may have facilitated reference, or been useful as a guide to the reader in the half-chant commonly used in liturgical services, was too arbitrary (except where it corresponded to the parallel clauses of the Hebrew poetical books) and inconvenient to be generally adopted. The Alexandrian MSS. present a partial notation of KHpaXaia, but as regards the Old Testament these are found only in portions of Deuter- onomy and Joshua. Traces exist (Monum. Eccles. Cider, in Breitinger, Proleg. ut sup.) of a like division in Numbers, Exodus, and Leviticus, and Latin MSS. present frequently a system of division into "tituli" or " capitula," but without any recognised standards. In the 13th century, however, the development of theology as a science, and the more frequent use of the Scriptures as a text-book for lectures, led to the general adoption of a more systematic division, traditionally ascribed to Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury (Triveti Annal. p. 182, ed. Oxon.), but carried out by Cardinal Hugh de St. Cher(Gibert Genebrard, Chronol. iv, C44), and passing through his Commentary (Postil- la in Universa Biblia, and Concordance, cir. 1240) into general use. No other subdivision of the chapters was united with this beyond that indicated by the margin- al letters A B C D, as described above.
3. As regards the Old Testament, then, the present arrangement grows out of the union of Cardinal Hugo's capitular division and the Masoretic verses. It should be noted that the verses in the authorized English Bible occasionally differ from those of the Ilcb. Masoretic text, especially in the Psalms (where the Heb. reckons the titles as ver. 1) and some chap- ters of the Chronicles (perhaps through the influence of the Sept.). A tabular exhibit of these variations may be found at the end of the Englishman's Iltb. Con- cordance (Lond. 1843). Such discrepancies also (hut less frequently) occur in the N. T. The Apocnphal books, to which, of course, no Masoretic division was applicable, did not receive a versicular division till the Latin edition ofPagninus in 1528, nor die division now in use till Stephen's edition of the Vulgate in 1555.
4. The history of the New Testament presents some additional facts of interest. Here, as in the case of the Old, tbe system of notation grew out of the neces- sities of Btudy.
(1.) Tic comparison of the Gospel narratives gave ittempts to exhibit the harmony between them. Of these, the first of which we have any record was the Diatesgarm of Tatian in the 2d century (Euseb. //. A', iv, 29). This was followed by a work of like character from Ammonias of Alexandria in the 3d (Euseb. Epist.adCarpiammi). 'I he system adopted by Ammonius, however, thai of attaching to the Gospel of Matthew the parallel passages of the ether three, and inserting those which \\<re net parallel, destroyed tlie outward form in which the Gospel history had been
recorded, and was practically inconvenient. Nor did their labors have any direct effect on the arrangement of the Greek text, unless we adopt the conjectures of Mill and Wetstein that it is to Ammonius or Tatian that we have to ascribe the marginal notation of Ke^cl- \aia, marked by A B PA, which are found in the older MSS. The search after a more convenient method of exhibiting the parallelisms of the Gospels led Eusebius of Cassarea to form the ten canons (itavovtc, registers) which bear his name, and in which the sections of the Gospels are classed according as the fact narrated is found in one Evangelist only, or in two or more. In applying this system to the transcription of the Gos- pels, each of them was divided into shorter sections of variable length, and to each of these were attached two numerals, one indicating the canon under which it would be found, and the other its place in that canon. Luke, iii, 21, 22, e. g. would represent the 13th section belonging to the first canon. This division, howev- er, extended onljr to the books that had come under the study of the Harmonists. The Epistles of Paul j were first divided in a similar manner by the unknown bishop to whom Euthalius assigns the credit of it (cir. 396), and he himself, at the instigation of Athanasius, applied the method of division to the Acts and the I Catholic Epistles. Andrew, Bishop of Csesarea in Cap- padocia, completed the work by dividing the Apoca- l lypse (cir. 500). See Harmonies (of the Gospels). | Of the four great uncial MSS. extant prior to the recent discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus by Dr. Tis- chendorf, A presents the Ammonian or Eusebian nu- I merals and canons, C and D the numerals without the ! canons. B has neither numerals nor canons, but a notation of its own, the chief peculiarity of which is, that the Epistles of Paul are treated as a single book, and brought under a continuous capitulation. After passing into disuse and so into comparative oblivion, the Eusebian and Euthalian divisions have recently (since 1827) again become familiar to the English stu- dent through Bishop Lloyd's edition of the Greek Tes- tament, and other critical editions.