TOPICS FROM PRACTICE: Chapters & Verses

The last couple of chapters, you may have noticed that the break between chapters doesn't quite follow the action.  In both chapter 21 and chapter 22, the first section would probably fit better in the chapter before.  (Although, for quizzers, you're probably just as happy not to have another dozen verses to add to your study total!)

So where did the chapters and verses come from?  Did the Biblical writers actually insert them into their original writings?  Wouldn't it have been weird to read a letter from your buddy Paul and see him break it up into "verses"?

There's an old joke among Bible scholars that the chapters and verses of scripture were chosen by "a drunk monk on horseback".  But the process was a little bit more scholarly than that.

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.