Bible Chapters and Verses

The chapter divisions commonly used today are attributed to Stephen Langton, an Archbishop of Canterbury, who put the modern chapter divisions into place in the Latin Vulgate around 1227. The Wycliffe English Bible of 1382 was then the first Bible to use this chapter pattern. Since the Wycliffe Bible, nearly all Bible translations have followed Langton's chapter divisions. Langton's chapter divisions were also adopted by Jewish scholars, for purposes of reference. Note, there were no verse divisions in the Vulgate. Instead, a system of letters (A-G) divided the chapters into sections.

From ancient times, possibly even before the time of Christ, verse divisions were marked in the Hebrew Old Testament by having accents under the last word of the verse, followed by two dots. The first use of verse numbers that followed these divisions were in a translation of the Latin Old Testament published in 1528 by Santes Pagninus in Lyons, France. He also created verse numberings for his Latin New Testament but these were much longer than our present verses.

In 1551 in Geneva, Robert Estienne from Paris (also known as Stephanus) divided his edition of the Greek New Testament into our present verse numbers. In 1560, also in Geneva, an Englishman William Whittingham produced the first English translation for Old and New Testaments with verse divisions. Known as the Geneva Bible, it employed Estienne's New Testament verse divisions.

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