- Feb 5, 2002
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As modern-day readers, we're so accustomed to the ideas of chapter and verse that we can barely imagine the Bible without them. But as it happens, it took over a thousand years for Christians to divide the books of Scripture into bite-sized sections; and the Jewish people were using a chapterless, verseless Old Testament long before that!
One of the consequences of all this was that ancient Jews and Christians tended to be far better at memorizing Sacred Scripture than we are today. A figure like St. Paul, for example, appears to have memorized virtually the whole of the Old Testament. Throughout his letters, he quotes from the Jewish Scriptures with ease. In Romans 10, for instance, Paul writes:
We should remember, too, that the quotation marks are themselves a modern editorial addition. In fact, ancient manuscripts lack not just basic punctuation, but also paragraph division, and even spaces between words. This helps explain why the idea of splitting the Bible into individual verses never caught on in the early Church, since ancient authors simply didn't regard sentences as distinct entities in the way that we do today.
A 13th (and 16th) Century Innovation
Continued below.
stpaulcenter.com
One of the consequences of all this was that ancient Jews and Christians tended to be far better at memorizing Sacred Scripture than we are today. A figure like St. Paul, for example, appears to have memorized virtually the whole of the Old Testament. Throughout his letters, he quotes from the Jewish Scriptures with ease. In Romans 10, for instance, Paul writes:
The part in quotation marks comes from Joel 2:32, but since chapter and verse didn't exist yet, St. Paul had no way of saying Oh, by the way, Joel 2:32 supports what I'm saying here. Instead, his only choice was to write out in full the quotation which he had in mind.
We should remember, too, that the quotation marks are themselves a modern editorial addition. In fact, ancient manuscripts lack not just basic punctuation, but also paragraph division, and even spaces between words. This helps explain why the idea of splitting the Bible into individual verses never caught on in the early Church, since ancient authors simply didn't regard sentences as distinct entities in the way that we do today.
A 13th (and 16th) Century Innovation
Continued below.
