The bible originally was not written with chapters and verses.The use of verse numbering was something introduced much later, shortly after the invention of printing. The early, handwritten copies of the Bible were written in Greek on papyrus scrolls without the use of punctuation or spacing. In time, the codex formed with pages as we know it today, was developed and printed by Guttenberg on the very first printing press with moveable type around the year 1455.
As printers worked on producing editions of the bible they found it convenient to locate and mark sections of text by putting numbers beside the sections of type. This proved to be not only an enormous convenience for the printers but also for others who read the Bible. The numbering was not placed with anything other in mind than to help locate sections of text. You might say that it was like having latitude and longitude lines on a map. History tells us that Stephen Langton, a cardinal and archbishop of Canterbury, constructed the division of the books of the Bible into chapters in the year 1226. |
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