TRANSLATING AND REVISING SCRIPTURE of As It is Translated Correctly. Part 3.

TRANSLATING AND REVISING SCRIPTURE of As It is Translated Correctly. Part 3. Of chapter 3.

1. Divisions and Sub-Divisions.

The division of the Bible into chapters and verses also has a negative result in some instances.

The various divisions and sub-divisions of the sacred Scripture into chapters, verses and members of sentences, are of human authority and to be regarded as such. Anciently all the books of the sacred Scriptures were written in one continuous manner–without a break, a chapter or a verse. The division into chapters, that now universally obtains in Europe, derived its origin from Cardinal Cairo, who lived in the twelfth century. The subdivision into verses is of no older date than the middle of the sixteenth century, and was the invention of Robert Stevens. Whatever advantages these divisions may have been in the way of facilitating references, they have so dislocated and broken to pieces the connection, as not only to have given the Scriptures the appearance of a book of proverbs, but have thrown great difficulties in the way of any of them. The punctuation, too, being necessarily dependent on these divisions, is far from accurate; and taken altogether it affords a demonstra-[32]tion that there is no more divinity in the chapters, verses, commas, semi-colons, colons and periods of the inspired writings, than there is in the paper on which they are inscribed, or in the ink by which they are depicted to our view. (Christian Baptism, Alexander Campbell, p. 39)