I love Bible school. This week has been the week that many of us from Bethlehem College and Seminary students have volunteered at the Gospel Coalition Conference ’11 in Chicago. Earlier this week, I was having conversation with one of the seminarians, and we were talking about whether or not the advent of chapters and verses in the Bible are truly helpful. We both agree that it is convenient to have chapters and verses in order to reference different parts of this massive 66 book anthology, but because of chapters/verses, there have been some pretty detrimental consequences that have come about as a consequence of diving the Bible into chapters and verses. It also may be helpful to note that these demarcations of the text were instituted within the last 600 years, so they certainly not inspired by a long shot.
With some publications of the Bible, which were most of the Bibles that I grew up reading, the passages are printed with each verse parsed out as each its own beginning of a new paragraph. Reading and studying these Bibles can be dangerous, because it is very easy to look at each verse as its own thought, independent from its wider context. This can be especially dangerous when studying one particular doctrine, when one or two verses jump off the page; and being their own entity, they can be used to manipulate the intent of the passage to something that the author was not actually intending at all.
On the other hand, for someone to argue that verse delineations are not helpful at all is out of his mind. However, while there is much more to say on this, I believe there is a strong case to be made that in the realm of theological study, verses have not ultimately been helpful in understanding each passage for the message that it was originally intended to be read. It would be more time-consuming to consistently read larger portions of Scripture, but I would be interested to see if taking such an approach to Scripture reading would affect us differently? Who knows. Just some thoughts from a young Bible school student. I would love to read thought/opinions in the comment section below. Please share!
Deus Spes Nostra
Ya, I definitely agree with you. The verses, and even chapters sometimes, split up the continuity of the passage, but make it easier to find the same place as others. One of the reasons why I like my ESV is because they put it into paragraph form (and because it is easier to read!). It is easier to get the flow of the passage and also the context.
ReplyDeleteI agree that verses and chapters may not be entirely helpful. I think that it would be good for students of the Word to read from a Bible that is unformatted text [No indents or paragraph markers]. On the other hand, we need to be careful not to reinvent the wheel. We will end up splitting thoughts into groups as well in order to understand what the author is saying.
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