World of the Bible Podcast, a Tyndale House Production
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World of the Bible Podcast, a Tyndale House Production
S5E8: How did chapter divisions get into the New Testament?
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In this episode, Nelson Hsieh, Research Associate in New Testament Text and Language at Tyndale House, discusses chapter divisions in Bible manuscripts with Tony Watkins. Nelson has been working on chapter divisions for the second edition of the Tyndale House Greek New Testament, and he explains how the approach he is taking is different to the method used in the first edition. They also reflect on how chapter divisions in our Bibles today can affect how we read the text.
TH ink articles mentioned in the podcast:
Where did the Bible's chapters come from? https://tyndalehouse.com/explore/articles/where-did-the-bible-s-chapters-come-from/
John 1 according to the paragraphing of Greek manuscripts https://tyndalehouse.com/explore/articles/john-1-according-to-the-paragraphing-of-greek-manuscripts/
Find out more about the host and guests here:
Tony Watkins: https://tyndalehouse.com/about/staff/tony-watkins/
Nelson Hsieh: https://tyndalehouse.com/about/staff/nelson-hsieh/
Edited by Tyndale House
Music – Acoustic Happy Background used with a standard license from Adobe Stock.
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Hello and welcome to the Tyndale House Podcast. In this episode, Nelson Shea, Research Associate in New Testament text and language at Tyndale House, talks to Tony Watkins about his work studying paragraphing divisions in Bible manuscripts and how that impacts the paragraph divisions we have in our Bibles today.
SPEAKER_02Hello and welcome to another episode of the Tyndale House Podcast. Today I am joined by Nelson Shea, who is research associate for Oh, get me help me with your job title again. Text and language? Why can I not get your job title right every time? I think so far in this series I've got it right once without being prompted by you. But um there we are. A major achievement of this podcast series will be that I finally learn what Nelson's job title is. Anyway, welcome back. Um we don't have dirt with us this time, but we are continuing in our series on um manuscripts of the New Testament, and today we are going to talk about um divisions in the text, textual divisions. Now, my understanding with the Tinderhouse Greek New Testament, um we have that out and published, but you're working on a second edition, and one of the changes between the first and the second editions, um, which we were talking a little bit about in our last episode, well, we were talking about the Greek New Testament as a whole in the last uh episode. Um, but but just at the end, I think we we talked a little bit about the the divisions, the paragraph divisions, and those kinds of things. How are you changing things between the first and the second editions of the Tinderhouse Greek New Testament?
SPEAKER_01So in the first edition of the Tinderhouse Greek New Testament, uh obviously the focus was on creating the new critical text, but they did set aside a few months' time to consider the issue of paragraph divisions. Uh, and largely the methodology that they followed was basically they picked the three earliest uh manuscripts that covered you know almost the whole New Testament and had paragraph divisions all throughout and not just a couple here and there. Uh so that would be Codex Anaticus, Vaticanus, and Alexandrinus from the fourth and the fifth centuries. So that's three manuscripts. And they just went through the whole New Testament and if like a majority vote. So if two out of the three or three out of the three of those manuscripts had uh a paragraph, then they would print a paragraph. Even if it was sort of in a strange or weird, different place than other editions and translations, they would print it to represent what the uh what the manuscripts were doing with paragraph divisions. Now there are some difficulties, like for example, what if all three have them in different places and they don't agree at all? Um sometimes the paragraph division might not be entirely clear. Uh so you get some difficulties, and then of course, that's only three manuscripts. Uh, if we consider the manuscripts that we have, let's say up to the sixth century, you know, then we have about 10 to, depending on the book of the Bible, we have about 10 to 15 manuscripts that we can draw from rather than just three. So in the second edition of the Tindahus Greek New Testament, the current research project has been to do a more systematic and comprehensive study of paragraphing in the earliest manuscripts and to use uh sort of a more uh refined methodology, more data from more manuscripts, each of them studied carefully for their own uh habits, how that the scribes did paragraph the habits, uh, and then to make adjustments and revisions to the paragraphing for the second edition. Sometimes they'll stay the same, um, and then other times there'll be some adjustments, taking out some, adding some. Um, but it's basically a more comprehensive and systematic study of paragraphing in the earliest manuscripts to make changes to the second edition.
SPEAKER_02Okay, that's great. Now, right back in episode two, uh, which was just with Dirk, uh, we talked uh about what manuscripts look like, and uh and I confessed in there that I had been brought up to believe that there were no paragraph divisions or word divisions or anything like that in in the Greek text, uh, and that's not quite true. Um, so that needs a little bit more nuance, but just talk us through uh uh uh Dirk introduce this a little bit, but just talk us through the ways that paragraphs are divided in these manuscripts. So when you can you're comparing these ten to fifteen manuscripts for the second edition of the Tindale House Greek New Testament, what are you actually looking for? How do you see those divisions?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so there there is uh if it's not carefully put, there's uh statement that kind of becomes like a myth to where uh the oldest manuscripts were written without spaces in between the words. And I mean that's generally that's generally true. But from time to time a scribe would leave a little blank space that's about the size of a letter with, let's say, you know, so a centimeter or something like that. Sometimes that might have just been uh I don't know, maybe that's a mistake, but sometimes it was probably more intentional to leave, you know, a good sized space because it's sort of like fish and water, right? You get so used to reading uh text with no spaces between words that when you do introduce a good size blank space, that something's happening there, right? That in those cases it becomes closer to maybe our modern full stop or our modern comma, uh, without obviously using our full stop and comma. So they become sense sense divisions. And we see this in, for example, P46 from the third century, a manuscript that contains most of Paul's epistles. So there's nothing like what we would call a paragraph division uh in that manuscript, but there are there are some rare punctuation marks, and there are these little spaces that are left. Now, in in other manuscripts, also from the third century, uh P66 and P75 contain portions of Luke and John. Uh in those manuscripts, we do have something that we would call ek-thesis, where ek is from the Greek word uh out, to take something out. Uh whereas today, when we create a new paragraph, right, we indent uh into the main text. Yeah uh here with ek thesis, they would in or outdent. Right. They would move the text out into the margin, into the left margin, uh, usually one letter out into the margin. Sometimes that one letter would be also be written much larger than the others uh to make it very clear that that's what's going on. So we see that in P66 and P75 from the third century, but it's not it's not yet systematically applied to every page of the manuscript. So, for example, in P66, over about a hundred pages of text uh encompassing John chapters one through fourteen, hundred pages of text, fourteen chapters of text, you get about twelve or thirteen paragraphs, which is not very many. And most of them are clustered earlier on in the in in the text. So you have some, but it's not very much. Uh it's not systematically applied at that time yet.
SPEAKER_02Any ideas why it's not systematic in that kind of way? Or I mean was it a change of scribe, or was he was he behind schedule and just didn't have to be able to do that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean it could be a couple of factors. Uh some scholars would guess that maybe they were you know copying these divisions from another manuscript, and initially, you know, the scribe was very attentive to copying all of them, and then maybe eventually he started just focusing on copying the text and was sort of ignoring the divisions. And that's why you have that's why maybe you have a a a lot of divisions early on, and then this starts to fade away. So it could be inconsistent copying of the divisions from so you know, just scrabal fatigue and just focused on the text rather than the textual divisions. Uh it could be that the scribe was creating them and would only pick places where, you know, sometimes the text itself guides us to structure, you know, first, second, third, um finally, you know, Paul will say something like that to where, you know, the structure is clear from the the words itself. And so a scribe felt like you don't really need to put a division there because the text kind of divides itself. And then in other places where it's not so clear that there's a a division or structuring of the text, and maybe they just pick and kind of like picking and choosing your battles. You pick where you think it's significant or there is a transition that's not so obvious from the words of the text uh itself.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. This may be a a red herring question, I'm not sure, but w one of the things I've noticed in Codex Syniaticus is that as well as the ecthesis, there are also some little lines just on the on the margin. Uh uh, what are the are those paragraph divisions or what are those lines doing?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so uh you had ecthesis, uh which is similar to what we do, it's just in the opposite direction, indenting, outdenting. Uh we have uh a manuscript of Deuteronomy, uh Septuagint Deuteronomy from the first century BC, so this is even before New Testament times. Uh we have this manuscript which yeah, adds these little horizontal lines sort of partly in the margin and partly within the text. We call this well, not to be confused with modern paragraphs, but the the Greek word for this little horizontal line is a paragraphos, uh marking.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01Um and that little line would indicate to the reader that okay, there's some sort of break um on this where I'm marking this line. So basically, yeah, that that Deuteronomy manuscript in the first century is already using that. Uh we have some examples from first century papyri that are using that. Uh the third century papyri that I mentioned, P46, 66, 75, they don't use paragraphoi. Uh well, that would be the plural. But yeah in the fourth century with Codex Vaticanus, the scribe who wrote the New Testament, uh the scribe who wrote the Old Testament preferred to use Ecthesis, and then the scribe that wrote the New Testament, and then some parts of the prophets in the Old Testament, um, he or she preferred to use this this paragraphoi mark. Okay. Where yeah, you draw a little bit, a little line. Codex Synaticus is a little bit different, it does mix the two, although from uh my look at it, a lot of times when the little lines will come in was the the main scribe used ecthesis, and then the little lines will come in if there's an old testament quotation. It will be marked off with a paragraph at the beginning or the end, uh, as well as little diplate carrot marks. Um in the Gospels, Codex Sinaticus includes this uh cross-referencing system among the four gospels called the the Eusebian canons and the Eusebian apparatus. And a lot of times you'll have uh a Eusebian section marker in the margin, and then I think the same scribe who added those section divisions also added the the paragraphos mark next to that section division just to make it clear that this is where the Eusebian section belongs. So in so each manuscript is different. Sinaticus, I think those paragraphos marks are more or less secondary to Ecthesis, whereas in Vaticanus it is primary, it's the main way that the scribe uses it to indicate paragraphs.
SPEAKER_02Okay. So just picking up on Eusebius, you mentioned his um dividing the gospels into sections, uh episode four, maybe, when we were talking about how the early church handled divisions between uh differences between manuscripts. Um is he the first person to kind of label chunks of text that enables you to to find your way around and to cross-reference things?
SPEAKER_01I don't think he would have been the first, but certainly he would have been very early, because this would basically be, you know, late third, early fourth century. Um now, of course, this is only the gospels, so not the Old Testament, not the rest of the New Testament, it's just the four Gospels. And it's Eusebia system is technically not really a structuring device as it is a cross-referencing device. And what I mean by that is sometimes you'll just have one little tiny detail in a gospel text, and it'll have a section, not because it it's really part of the literary structure. There's some movement, but just because it's a little detail in this gospel and another gospel also has that tiny little detail, and I want you to be able to define it. So a lot of his sections are more tied to cross-gospel relationships than it is necessarily to how is Mark himself or Luke himself, um, what's the literary flow of that um text itself? Eusebius is not really as concerned with that and creating his system. So some of them are, you know, they follow the contours of the text, but a lot of them are just little details. Um, but Codex Vaticanus from around the same time has probably the earliest system of numbered chapter divisions. So not just paragraphs, but but the paragraphs, you know, from time to time have numbers next to them so that you can, you know, reference and navigate to that section. And those divisions, um, Charles Hill has a book that he published recently entitled The Uh The First Chapters, and he argues that that's probably the earliest system in that it's probably drawing upon divisions that were created in the third century and is continuing that that uh textual tradition. So Codex Vaticanus probably has the earliest numbered uh divisions of the text.
SPEAKER_02Right. Wow. And what's the the story then between those first chapter divisions in Vaticanus? Through to the first kind of modern chapter and verse things to to today? I mean that's that's a massive question to ask you, isn't it? Um so uh well and let let's go from from Vaticanus to the the medieval period to start with. So mm the Paris Bibles you've written about in an article on the the Inc. Tindal House website in for Inc. magazine. We'll come back to that in a in a second. What's the story between uh Vaticanus and getting to the Paris Bibles?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I think first of all it's helpful just to start with the fact that we are like fish and water. We're so used to our modern Bibles and the way that they divide up the text for us, the chapter system. You know, in America there's this sort of trendy parachurch ministry where they called themselves Acts 29. You know, because the idea is Acts has 28 chapters, right? Um, you know, and we're continuing, you know, the apostolic uh, you know, missions. So Acts 29. Uh but there were other efforts at dividing up the tech that the text of scripture into numbered chapter divisions far earlier than that medieval system. So Codex Vaticanus is basically the earliest example. And some of these systems divide up Acts into like 60 chapters, so Acts 29 uh as a periturge ministry wouldn't wouldn't make sense. I think Acts 29 would probably be in something like Acts 5 or something like that, you know. Uh so that only works because we're so anchored to our current 28 uh Acts chapter system. So uh chapter numbered chapter divisions sort of split into a Greek tradition and a Latin tradition. So the Greek tradition starts with Codex Vaticanus, whose divisions are are quite good from looking at them.
SPEAKER_02Um what do you mean by good? That they're they're in sensible places.
SPEAKER_01They're in yeah, they're in good places, they're not excessively high to where it's closer to you know sentence divisions, um, and they make them in good places, sometimes uh interesting places. Uh unfortunately, Vaticanus doesn't cover the whole New Testament, Revelation, uh last part of Hebrews and the Pastor Epistles. Right. Philemon are missing, so that that's unfortunate. Uh but this Vaticanus system doesn't uh win the day, it doesn't get popular. As far as we know, there's only one or two other uh surviving manuscripts that have the same uh system, Codex Secinthius, can't remember from seventh century or something, Gospel of Luke has the same divisions, and and then a few in the Old Testament that have the same divisions. So it just never becomes popular, it doesn't win the day. Starting in the fifth century with Codex Alexandrinus, we have a system of divisions uh called the Old Greek divisions for the Gospels, and then for Acts, Catholic Epistles, Pauline Epistles. Um, a guy named Euthalius creates a system of chapters and titles to go along with them. So not just chapter divisions, but titles to summarize each of these chapters.
SPEAKER_02I assumed that was a really modern thing.
SPEAKER_01No, no, no. Yeah, this goes back to the fifth century titles. Some of them are really long that they would not fit uh, they wouldn't put these titles into the main body of text, they put it into the upper margin or the lower margin. So these could be really long. I mean, they could be 20 or 25 words long titles uh to summarize. Um of them are are kind of strange, some of them are interesting. Uh but so this is fifth century, and that that system by Euthalius and the old Greek system in the Gospels does end up permeating the Greek manuscript tradition, so that now we have, I mean, hundreds, probably we don't even actually we have so many manuscripts with this Euthalian old Greek chapter system that we don't even actually know exactly how many we have. It's basically, you know, hundreds, thousands of manuscripts have this. So that dominates the Greek tradition, and then therefore, uh among the Orthodox monasteries in which these manuscripts were held.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01So in the Greek tradition, yeah, we really just have two main systems, and one wins the day decisively. In the Latin tradition, Hugh Houghton uh wrote this article on the Gospel of John, where he documents 16 different division chapter systems for the Gospel of John that range uh in the number of chapters from about 36 chapters, which is already longer than our current, you know, 21 chapter John that we have now, up to like over 60 divisions, 60 chapter divisions. Uh so it becomes a bit of a confusing mess if you have all these different chapter systems and there's no one agreed upon way of referencing and navigating through scripture. So by the 13th century, you have a couple of different things happening to where it becomes basically really important and necessary to get onto one unified system. So in the 13th century, we have the rise of universities to where if you have a professor and you have students, if and you're gonna study scripture together, I mean, you literally need to be on the same page so that when the professor says uh turn to John chapter five, it's it needs to be the same John chapter five in everybody's Bible. Right. Right. Uh the other thing that we have happening is just the very luxury of every person in the classroom, every person in the pew having their own Bible. Um, that was not a luxury that that was afforded to people throughout most of church history. Most of church history just sort of had the church, the church's copy of the Bible, and then wealthier people might have a copy of the Bible, and that's it. But once everybody has a Bible, all the students, all the people on the pews, then again, it's the same issue of if if you're as the preacher or the teacher, are gonna say, today we're gonna study um John chapter 11. There's gotta be a unified way of that happening. Um so that and then the the third thing is with uh a Bible reference tool called a concordance. So concordance basically takes some word in scripture, it could be a person's name like Abraham, or it could be a concept like faith or grace or something like that. And if you wanted to know, let's say the name Abraham or the concept grace, what is every occurrence in the where does it occur? And if you're gonna give that kind of information, right, it helps to have some you know unified way to find all the passages with a single word.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you don't want to say somewhere about a third of the way into Romans, D, for the reference.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, that makes it difficult, especially when you're just looking at one word. Yep, right. Um so because of those factors, uh uh a professor at the University of Paris named Stephen Langdon, who eventually becomes the Archbishop of Canterbury, he created a system roughly in the early twelfth century, and that system ended up becoming popular and and winning the day. Uh and we still use it today.
SPEAKER_02Right. And that was first appearing in the Paris Bibles, which were the first kind of a single volume Bible. In general distributions?
SPEAKER_01Am I at a cheap, popular level? I mean, so like with Codex Sinaticus and Vaticanus, we have basically a very large, very expensive, it wouldn't be a pocket-sized sort of Bible. But yeah, the Paris Bibles become very popular, and and and that's often how you you win when if an idea or something becomes very popular, even if it's not necessarily good, uh you end up winning the day. And it was because the Paris Bibles adopted his chapter system that, yeah, largely he won't be able to do that.
SPEAKER_02So is Stephen Langton to blame for the fact that some of the chapter divisions are in the wrong place? I mean I'm always both amused and frustrated that the first chapter division you get to in the Bible. I mean, this is we're talking Old Testament. I know we're supposed to be talking about the New Testament. But Genesis 1 ends in the wrong place. Um, is is that Stephen Langton's fault?
SPEAKER_01Uh yes and no. I mean, he he claims to have gotten some of the divisions from from Latin Bibles from you know centuries earlier than himself, but obviously he's basically responsible for the final product. Now, it's not totally standardized. The the printers, the publishers are still kind of making small adjustments, and we have a number of lists where his chapters systems are written down, and there's still some final adjustments to be made. Um, like I think John has 20 chapters instead of 21 chapters on one of the lists. But yeah, I mean it's largely him, but he is taking from something before it. But I guess we could lay the blame at his feet.
SPEAKER_02And uh and other people have developed it further, that as you're saying. So what what the chapter divisions we use are not all Stephen Mangton's, presumably.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell But these were very small tweaks. You know, this is just one verse. Yeah, right. You know, and that could be a Scrabble era where you know Acts chapter 8 actually starts like one verse earlier or one verse later. Very small tweaks, not any major uh changes after that.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell Are there New Testament examples that strike you as being particularly egregious? This is not in the right place.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean I don't know if I necessarily say egregious, but uh that was a very loaded time. I think there's a a good example in Acts chapter six through well, uh Langdon's Acts chapter six through eight, where basically we have this extended story uh presented to us about Stephen, um who is is martyred and he gives this great long uh speech or sermon. And his story basically gets chopped up into three different parts, uh some of it in six, most of it in seven, and six is only fifteen verses, chapter six is only fifteen verses, chapter seven is sixty verses, so it's really long, and then chapter eight really just the first few verses are still part of his story. But but yeah, the Langdon divisions obviously chop it up so that for example, if you did a sermon series or you had a Bible reading plan or something like that, you would basically get his story in three separate days or three separate sermons because it gets all separated out. Both Codex who had a canis and the euthalian system, they actually keep Stephen's story all together as one basically from chapter our chapter six, verse eight to chapter eight, verse three. It keeps his whole story together into one division. Uh so it gives you much more unity of theme, topic, and and person. Whereas our division of Acts six, seven, eight really chops up uh his story.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. When I was a student worker, I used to do what we call manuscript Bible study with students a lot. So we'd I'd just print out the text with with no chapter divisions, no paragraph divisions, uh, and uh give people a big long chunk of text. And it w it was really interesting how people would see things in a different way for the first time because they that apparatus was was was taken away. So it the chapter divisions they they affect the way that we read the text, don't they?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, definitely. Uh unconsciously often, and we just we're like fish swimming in water, and we're not even yeah, we're not even sort of aware that this is happening. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So is it do you think it's really important that we we give more thought to to those divisions and what they're doing, or or should we actually find some new way of referencing and throw them all away?
SPEAKER_01It's c impractical to change at this point. Uh I mean, it just yeah, I mean, the system that we have, all of our commentaries and everything, I mean, it would just it it's really impractical at this point. I think it's just it's just helpful to be aware that, you know, it's this doesn't come from the biblical authors to where, you know, it has you know divine authority that that these chapters and verses we have to follow them. I think it's helpful just to realize that this this is the work of of biblical scholars, and they interpreted the text and tried to bring out the structure of the text based on their chapter and verse divisions. Uh, but like any biblical scholars, they can make mistakes or or not interpret it in the best way possible. So we should just feel comfortable with saying, hmm, appreciate what you've done, but let's look at some other systems and let's just study the text itself to see the structure that arises from the text itself.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, right. So let's just go back very briefly before we finish because we we're probably a little over time already. Um but just go back to what you're doing with the Greek New Testament, the Tyndale House Great New Testament. Um why is it why do you feel it's so important to go back to these early manuscripts and try and reflect their paragraph divisions in the light of what you've just been saying?
SPEAKER_01I think sometimes we have this uh C.S. Lewis calls chronological snobbery, where we sort of look back at, you know, a book published 50 years ago as sort of, oh, that's you know, that that scholarship is too old. Or a book published a hundred years ago, you know, God forbid it would probably be out of print. Uh and and as a as a scholar, why would you or commentaries and why would you consult something that old? And or going to manuscripts that, you know, in some cases are 1,500 years old. But I think there's a lot of value going back to older sources that are not of our time period where they saw things differently, um, they thought of things differently. And when we look at some of the divisions that these scribes were making, a lot of times when I've been studying them, initially I'll think, ah, this is kind of weird or awkward or strange. And then uh, you know, just to point people to a resource, I wrote an article on John chapter one in Inc. magazine, paragraphs in John chapter one. And when I first saw how the manuscripts were dividing up John chapter one, I I did think it was awkward and strange and struggled to make sense of it. But after I studied the text itself more carefully, I realized, no, the scribes were actually onto something in terms of uh if you read the article, I talk about John the Baptist's testimony, it gets brought out more emphatically by the way that that the scribes divided up uh John chapter one. And I think we realized, ah, these scribes were not, you know, they they were smart and and they studied scripture, they knew scripture well, and I think they were doing something that even if we still end up disagreeing with the manuscripts and the scribes, it's still worth giving them a seat at the table in these discussions. Let them speak, let them, you know, show what they're doing, and it's oftentimes different than what we're doing. Uh, and if we decide we're still not going to follow them, that's fine. But at least we gave them a seat at the table and we can have a conversation basically with them in terms of how we structure scripture and how we understand how it proceeds and flows.
SPEAKER_02Brilliant. Well, I think we better draw this to a close. Thank you very much, Nelson. We'll put the links to those two articles by you, one on the chapter divisions. We didn't really talk about verses, did we? But uh there's a bit about verses in your article and and the the more recent article about um dividing and John chapter one. We'll put those in the show notes so you can find those. Um you know what I'm about to say now. Please rate and review us and tell elders about us. Um, introduce the podcast to uh to all your menagerie of pets, uh, any aliens who come visiting, just let the world know about the podcast. Thank you very much, Nelson. It's been fun to do this series. Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for listening to this episode of the Tindale House Podcast. This is the last episode of series 5 of the podcast, but stay tuned for more interviews with scholars and staff at Tindale House.
