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One of the most interesting things to happen to the scriptures is their balkanization into verses. We generally don't atomize other writings that way, and when

by wcarey 6y ago

One of the most interesting things to happen to the scriptures is their balkanization into verses. We generally don't atomize other writings that way, and when folks read the scriptures as a series of disconnected logical propositions all sorts of wackiness ensues. What would it look like to have an API for the collected works of Jane Austen that returned snippets (some of which are not even complete sentences)? How would that shape the way we read, say, Persuasion? That hermeneutic - texts are collections of independent logical propositions - was essentially unknown in the ancient world, and cedes immense epistemological ground to the project of the enlightenment that is diametrically opposed to a Christian reading of the Scriptures, which emphasizes their unity and their role in liturgical worship.

newacct583 6y ago
> That hermeneutic - texts are collections of independent logical propositions - was essentially unknown in the ancient world, and cedes immense epistemological ground to the project of the enlightenment that is diametrically opposed to a Christian reading of the Scriptures, which emphasizes their unity and their role in liturgical worship. I just had to quote that sentence construction without comment. But to reply to it more coarsely: who are you to define what a "Christian reading" of the bible is? As I see it, watching from outside the community, the piecewise selective quoting is very much a fundamental part of the practice of Christianity in the modern world -- especially of the evangelical Christianity that dominates in the USA. I mean, I agree it's dumb. I just don't see why it's not "Christian". Christians are what Christians do.
- wcarey 6y ago
  Sure - by "Christian reading", I mean something like the practice of the ancient church that canonized the scriptures. That there should be normative Christian practice and reading is, perhaps, controversial, but a claim I'm happy to make. Modern American evangelicals who read the scriptures that way are doing it wrong and should knock it off. The scriptures weren't atomized into verses until scholars of the 15th century wanted to work on them. The practice you see today is an outgrowth of that epistemology, and greatly to the detriment of Christian witness, theology, and practice.
- skissane 6y ago
  > I mean, I agree it's dumb. I just don't see why it's not "Christian". Christians are what Christians do. But American evangelical Protestants are a small minority of global Christianity. Catholics and Orthodox take a different approach, one which emphasises the binding role of church Tradition in interpreting the Bible, an idea which Protestants reject.
  - cheaprentalyeti 6y ago
    On the one hand, I think the Catholic approach is more correct than the Protestant one, but I think if the papacy hadn't been so authoritarian during the MIddle Ages and the period leading up to the Reformation that the Protestants wouldn't have felt the need to be able to argue scripture inch by inch by inch.
    - skissane 6y ago
      Counterargument: if they were upset by the behaviour of the Popes, there was always Eastern Orthodoxy – no papacy, and no arguing scripture inch by inch by inch either.
    - hajile 6y ago
      The real debate stems from information control. The Catholic church forbade the translation of the Bible from Latin into the local language (contrary to popular opinion, the majority of people could read even though spelling was not standardized). What happens when those people finally get a copy of the Bible based on the textus receptus and it has Jesus saying the Scripture is immutable and more important than tradition? What happens when they see clear and obvious contradictions between what He said and what their church was doing? When Luther nailed the famous arguments on the church door (in common German so everyone could read them), he wasn't wanting to start up a new church. He was just pointing out the ridiculousness of buying forgiveness and the insane corruption and tradition over Scripture that had caused it. Instead of fixing the problems, the Catholic church doubled down and claimed the right to supersede even Jesus Himself. When they couldn't justify with words, they went straight to force. Also keep in mind that the Catholic church was a political machine first and foremost. The Jesuit order in particular was so political that countries actually pushed the Pope so hard he issued Dominus ac Redemptor to completely suppress the entire order. It was rescinded 41 years later, but due to the internal political power of the Jesuit General, the cardinals refused to elect a Jesuit pope. Politically, the election of the first Jesuit pope in 2013 (199 years after the suppression was rescinded) hallmarked a very large political victory and unification of the Catholic church. With that in mind, the Protestant Reformation, while primarily religious, was also political in nature.
- memling 6y ago
  > Christians are what Christians do. This is generally not true. Try to replace "Christian" with "Atheist" or "Gnostic" and see how far this travels. While there are, I suppose, some distinctive practices that characterize various systems of belief (or disbelief), what distinguishes Christianity from, say, Judaism, is a set of irreconcilable beliefs (e.g., that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah). It is true that practices might distinguish religious groups (e.g., Orthodox Jews eat no pork, which is allowed to Christians), but those practices directly correlate to beliefs (Peter, citing Jesus, declares all meats clean in the New Testament). No, religions are not merely practice: they are creedal, too. One who rejects the virgin birth is per se not Christian, at least if the word "Christian" means anything.
  - goto11 6y ago
    Lots of Christians reject the virgin birth. You can say they are not "real Christians", but they could say the same about you.
    - memling 6y ago
      this sounds as plausible as saying that a lot of atheists believe in god. maybe it's a thing? but it's hard to imagine dropping someone in nicea in 380 and suggesting this. words mean things: Christians believe in more than the virgin birth but certainly not less.
      - keithnz 6y ago
        why not less? I think many see the "facts" as different. Their approaches to the texts are different, but "Christians" align themselves in someway with a entity called "Jesus". Different sects of Christianity tend to have their own definitions of what they think being a "christian" means and there are commonalities from sect to sect, and even some groups of sects have lots of strong commonalties, but there are still many ways they have incompatible beliefs as well. wikipedia has a reasonable list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denominations_by_number_of_members https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denomination... and I'm pretty sure some "christians" in one of the sects would go "They aren't christians!" when it comes to other sects in that list.
goto11 6y ago
The Bible was not written as single work the way novels like Persuasion are though. It is really a collection of books of very different origins and genre. Some books are laws where individual rules can be examined and there are collections of proverbs. But there are also parts which are longer narratives.
- wcarey 6y ago
  I think my point, though, that the unit of thought in the scriptures is not the atomic verse, still stands. If you'd like to emend "collected works of Jane Austen" to "collected works of 19th century authors", feel free.
  - goto11 6y ago
    I argue that in some cases the "units of thoughts" are verses (proverbs, laws), in other cases they are longer like psalms, sermons, chapters, letters or books. I totally agree taking a single verse out of a longer narrative rarely makes sense. But the bible is not like a novel or a collection of novels, although some of the books (like Job) is kind of like a novel.
    - wcarey 6y ago
      Proverbs is certainly the book most amenable to division into verses.
  - RobertRoberts 6y ago
    A few things to consider: 1. Many of the writings are letters, and therefore short. 2. Many of the writings, though grouped together by books, their chapters really are often distinct documents written at different times. (some are even historical logs like Kings and Chronicles) 3. There are _many_ sections that really do break down by lines and sections. The best examples are Proverbs and Psalms. 4. It's a huge document, and much of it is useful to reference later, and having a system in place for this (of any kind) is helpful for many reasons. Last, I agree with your general sentiment. The first time I read sections of the bible without the artificial breaks and numbers getting in the way gave me a completely different perspective on the _content_. So I make a point to read like this when I feel the numbers may be in the way of comprehension.
seemslegit 6y ago
Is "balkanization" really a general term for "dividing into parts" ? I think some sort of both internal and geopolitical strife needs to be involved. And verses are not disconnected logical propositions, they are a structure between a sentence and a chapter aka. a paragraph. If anything - the grouping of verses into chapters is far more arbitrary than that of sentences into verses.
- wcarey 6y ago
  I chose "balkanization" to connote the things you reference; the atomic quoting of verses of scripture does violence to the text. Verses are definitely not functionally paragraphs. Some aren't even complete sentences!
  - seemslegit 6y ago
    At least in the old testament verses range from sentences to paragraphs, have any interesting examples of a non-sentence verse ?
    - wcarey 6y ago
      Sure - take a look at the first chapter of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. The sentence: Jews demand signs and Greeks search for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. is divided into three (!) verses. That sort of thing is pretty common with the periodic structure of Paul's sentences. English readers, with our weak clause boundaries, struggle with those sorts of sentences anyway.
      - seemslegit 6y ago
        Corinthians is not part of the old testament so I'm afraid its versing might not be per the union standards. It is currently versed as: Jews demand signs and Greeks search for wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified - A stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Which seems like three complete sentences forming a paragraph to me even if not to any modern style guide. Alternatively it could have been: Jews demand signs and Greeks search for wisdom - but we preach [the words of] Christ crucified ! A stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. In both cases the logical structure remains the same and the three sentences form a larger idea.
HeckFeck 6y ago
Correct, its very seldom indeed any other work - ancient or modern - is quoted in this way. You have entire generations of Christians thinking only in isolated "memory verses". One wonders if this practice is connected to the degradation and commercialisation of worship and countless trivial splits. It just doesn't make for lucid thinking or deep understanding of any work. It is worth noting that the chapter divisions came long before the verse divisions. For reading, the chapters are as helpful as they are in any other book. I recall the verses were introduced around the time of the Geneva Bible and were intended to cross-reference for the purpose of arguing doctrine. Perhaps useful for scholars - who'd already be deeply familiar with the text as a unit - but hardly a method for comprehension of the books as a whole. Edit: This discussion reminds me of the so-called Reader's Bibles which were made a few years ago. They present the text as a flowing single-paragraph, with minimal distractions. One such example is the ESV Reader's Bible: https://www.bibledesignblog.com/2014/06/crossway-esv-readers-bible-cloth-bound-hardcover.html https://www.bibledesignblog.com/2014/06/crossway-esv-readers...
mxcrossb 6y ago
I agree that it is a very interesting topic. Even the chapter breaks can be a real issue for a theologian. I believe there are some stories in the gospels which are consecutive in multiple books, but split by a chapter break in others. There are arguments in the epistles which span multiple chapters. But to the modern reader a chapter break implies a stopping point. Which might lead you to misunderstand the author’s intent.
shampto3 6y ago
tldr; Why not both? I agree that it's odd that we have atomized the writings in the scriptures. You can find reader's editions if you want to remove the verses structure. However, I don't agree that the verses are "diametrically opposed to a Christian reading of the Scriptures". I believe that there is room for both reading whole books and reading short quotes. For instance, I don't think there's anything wrong with taking John 3:16 out of context because it is a very straightforward verse. It's really nice to be able to share verses easily by giving a <Book> <Chapter>:<Verse>. There is danger though when we do that with all verses of scripture, and we should be careful to study the context for verses before coming to any conclusion. The key is to actually study the scriptures, and not just take the easy route and find verses that make you feel good about yourself. But that's easier said than done.
- wcarey 6y ago
  So, having read the whole of what you wrote, the reason not to do both is that atomization promotes an epistemology that does grave violence to Christian belief. God's self revelation could have been a math textbook: a collection of independent propositions related by logical necessity. But it's not. His self revelation is a person who has a story and who tells stories. When we atomize the scriptures, we're implicitly constructing an argument against the epistemology that God has revealed in the scriptures. That's the thing that Satan does in the wilderness when he puts Jesus to the test. We ought not lead others into that time of trial. So the convenience of being able to cite a verse as quick shorthand comes at the price of a profound argument against the coherent truth of the scriptural witness.
  - shampto3 6y ago
    While I would not go as far to say that having verses in scriptures is a tactic of the devil (note that in the wilderness, Jesus also quotes snippets of scripture back to Satan as a rebuttal), I can see your point that it probably does more harm than good. I do wish that the standard was to not have verses, and have the verses version be the exception rather than the rule. I can see the benefit of having verses, but I think there is far more benefit from reading scripture as a whole instead.
karaterobot 6y ago
Good observation, but I think it's overstated. I don't know many people who read the bible as a series of disconnected logical propositions, they mainly read it in much longer sections covering some topic. Chapter and verse come in when you want to quote something, or shorthand something, or refer someone to a specific and narrow section. In this usage, it's very similar to the way we cite Shakespeare, Homer, Chaucer, Milton, etc. For example, the St. Crispin's day speech in Henry V is at IV.iii.18-67, and any Shakespearean actor, fan, or scholar knows what that means, but that notation doesn't force them to think of the play as merely a set of disconnected speeches.
- wcarey 6y ago
  I'm thinking, for example, of the RCL, which often breaks passages mid chapter and occasionally omits individual verses. What sort of Christian community do you mostly know? If you said "The St. Crispin's day speech" I'd immediately know what you mean. I'm definitely a Shakespeare fan, but would have no idea which act, scene, &c. that speech occupies. I'd wager that's much less true of the scriptures in many circles.
  - jfk13 6y ago
    To some extent probably, but I wonder if that's as true as you assume. I'd guess that many people in vaguely Christianized communities would be familiar, to some degree at least, with passages like "Daniel in the Lion's Den", "The Sermon on the Mount", "The Plagues of Egypt", "The Good Samaritan", and so on, without being able to tell you the chapter and verse (or even book) in which they're found.
    - wcarey 6y ago
      Perhaps! I've encountered lots of fellow Christians who construct arguments by taking individual verses from everywhere in the scriptures and arranging them into an argument assuming that all the terms are equivalent and that the context doesn't matter. It particularly perplexes me when someone will cite, say verse x and then immediately after it cite verse x-2, reordering them in a way that destroys the sense of the passage, but supports some argument. Perhaps there's an uncanny valley between people who are familiar with the broad strokes and people who argue contextually.
eeereerews 6y ago
> That hermeneutic - texts are collections of independent logical propositions - was essentially unknown in the ancient world On the contrary, the atomization and recombination of the text into new meanings is highly characteristic of Midrash. Of course, this isn't the same as the "prooftext" hermeneutic I think you're criticizing.
- wcarey 6y ago
  Fascinating! Do you have a good book recommendation that introduces that? It's not something I know much about.
  - eeereerews 6y ago
    Here is a typical example (from Genesis Rabbah) > And Cain rose up against his brother Abel. [...] With what did he kill him? R. Simeon said: He killed him with a staff: And a young man for my bruising (Gen 4:23) implies a weapon which inflicts a bruise. The Rabbis said: He killed him with a stone: For I have slain a man for wounding me (ibid) indicates a weapon which inflicts wounds. R. 'Azariah and R. Jonathan in R. Isaac's name said: Cain had closely observed where his father slew the bullock [which he sacrificed, as it is written], And it shall please the Lord better than a bullock (Ps 69:31), and there he killed him: by the throat and its organs. From a Christian perspective, a more interesting example might be the Gospel's atomization/recontextualizations of text as Messianic prophecy ("out of Egypt I have called my son", "behold, a virgin shall be with child").
- bjourne 6y ago
  Even Jesus himself often referred to specific verses in the Old Testament: "Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” (Matthew 4:7; cf. Luke 4:12)" "“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’” (Matthew 5:38)" So the Scripture must have been "Balkanized" before Christianity existed. Which is not so strange given that it served both as religion and as a code of law.
  - ars 6y ago
kijin 6y ago
It probably began as a reference scheme for scholars, by scholars. The same thing has happened to other ancient texts, like the works of Plato, Aristotle, and Homer. You can refer to The Republic 327a1, or Book 1 line 230 of The Odyssey, and people who study ancient Greek texts will immediately figure out which line you're talking about. Those references aren't complete sentences, either. Apparently it didn't matter to the people who first came up with the numbering scheme. The Plato reference format is actually nothing more than the page, column, and line number of a particular edition that happened to stick.
- wcarey 6y ago
  Indeed - and I'd say that the division of those sources has been broadly restricted to scholars, and that those scholars broadly also read those ancient texts in the enlightenmenty way that I'm suggesting does violence to them.
- mrozbarry 6y ago
  This is exactly it. The chunking of chapters and verses was so monks could verify their copies. Imagine a monastery, with 100 scholars who are tasked with copying the entire bible, with duplicates. The best way to verify that it was copied correctly is to do spot-checks where the source and transcribed documents are compared on certain chapters and verses. At this point, I don't think it's necessary to split them up for making copies. That said, a lot of churches have integrated chapter/verse look ups as part of their service/sermons/bible studies, so it would be very difficult to remove them now.
dilandau 6y ago
I wouldn't worry about it too much. Think of it as a map, and similarly, the map is not the territory.
smitty1e 6y ago
Shakespeare comes to mind for balkanization. The First Folio followed the KJV by a dozen years, and the two dominate English. In contrast to Jane Austen, both the KJV and the Folio are collections of other works. Thus they may lend themselves ore than novels to being served frgmentally.
yters 6y ago
The NT authors are constantly quoting snippets from the OT.
samirillian 6y ago
Well, some books of the bible are more aphoristic, like Proverbs or Ecclesiastes, as are plenty of other ancient texts like the Quran or the Sutras or the Tao te Ching. There's also Jewish numerology, and the mystical(?) idea that the arrangement of the letters in the Pentateuch is only one of many possible perfect combinations. The concept of divine infallibility definitely has a lot of weird implications, or semi-implications that people just run with. Conversely, the cipher-like quality of the scriptures is what makes them so hermeneutically fun, especially for all those violent little cults that have a way of taking over the world.
- humanrebar 6y ago
  Ecclesiastes is very easy to take out of context. Individual verses seem like nice aphorisms, but the book as a whole is actually quite skeptical and even critical, at least of certain worldviews. In some ways, it's a series of rejections of easy answers.
analog31 6y ago
This is pure speculation, but I wonder if the verse structure helped with copying, like some sort of primitive coding standard.
chooseaname 6y ago
> and when folks read the scriptures as a series of disconnected logical propositions all sorts of wackiness ensues. Most people reading the bible don't do this. This would be very very odd.

by wcarey 6y ago

newacct583 6y ago

> That hermeneutic - texts are collections of independent logical propositions - was essentially unknown in the ancient world, and cedes immense epistemological ground to the project of the enlightenment that is diametrically opposed to a Christian reading of the Scriptures, which emphasizes their unity and their role in liturgical worship. I just had to quote that sentence construction without comment. But to reply to it more coarsely: who are you to define what a "Christian reading" of the bible is? As I see it, watching from outside the community, the piecewise selective quoting is very much a fundamental part of the practice of Christianity in the modern world -- especially of the evangelical Christianity that dominates in the USA. I mean, I agree it's dumb. I just don't see why it's not "Christian". Christians are what Christians do.

wcarey 6y ago
Sure - by "Christian reading", I mean something like the practice of the ancient church that canonized the scriptures. That there should be normative Christian practice and reading is, perhaps, controversial, but a claim I'm happy to make. Modern American evangelicals who read the scriptures that way are doing it wrong and should knock it off. The scriptures weren't atomized into verses until scholars of the 15th century wanted to work on them. The practice you see today is an outgrowth of that epistemology, and greatly to the detriment of Christian witness, theology, and practice.
skissane 6y ago
> I mean, I agree it's dumb. I just don't see why it's not "Christian". Christians are what Christians do. But American evangelical Protestants are a small minority of global Christianity. Catholics and Orthodox take a different approach, one which emphasises the binding role of church Tradition in interpreting the Bible, an idea which Protestants reject.
- cheaprentalyeti 6y ago
  On the one hand, I think the Catholic approach is more correct than the Protestant one, but I think if the papacy hadn't been so authoritarian during the MIddle Ages and the period leading up to the Reformation that the Protestants wouldn't have felt the need to be able to argue scripture inch by inch by inch.
  - skissane 6y ago
    Counterargument: if they were upset by the behaviour of the Popes, there was always Eastern Orthodoxy – no papacy, and no arguing scripture inch by inch by inch either.
  - hajile 6y ago
    The real debate stems from information control. The Catholic church forbade the translation of the Bible from Latin into the local language (contrary to popular opinion, the majority of people could read even though spelling was not standardized). What happens when those people finally get a copy of the Bible based on the textus receptus and it has Jesus saying the Scripture is immutable and more important than tradition? What happens when they see clear and obvious contradictions between what He said and what their church was doing? When Luther nailed the famous arguments on the church door (in common German so everyone could read them), he wasn't wanting to start up a new church. He was just pointing out the ridiculousness of buying forgiveness and the insane corruption and tradition over Scripture that had caused it. Instead of fixing the problems, the Catholic church doubled down and claimed the right to supersede even Jesus Himself. When they couldn't justify with words, they went straight to force. Also keep in mind that the Catholic church was a political machine first and foremost. The Jesuit order in particular was so political that countries actually pushed the Pope so hard he issued Dominus ac Redemptor to completely suppress the entire order. It was rescinded 41 years later, but due to the internal political power of the Jesuit General, the cardinals refused to elect a Jesuit pope. Politically, the election of the first Jesuit pope in 2013 (199 years after the suppression was rescinded) hallmarked a very large political victory and unification of the Catholic church. With that in mind, the Protestant Reformation, while primarily religious, was also political in nature.
memling 6y ago
> Christians are what Christians do. This is generally not true. Try to replace "Christian" with "Atheist" or "Gnostic" and see how far this travels. While there are, I suppose, some distinctive practices that characterize various systems of belief (or disbelief), what distinguishes Christianity from, say, Judaism, is a set of irreconcilable beliefs (e.g., that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah). It is true that practices might distinguish religious groups (e.g., Orthodox Jews eat no pork, which is allowed to Christians), but those practices directly correlate to beliefs (Peter, citing Jesus, declares all meats clean in the New Testament). No, religions are not merely practice: they are creedal, too. One who rejects the virgin birth is per se not Christian, at least if the word "Christian" means anything.
- goto11 6y ago
  Lots of Christians reject the virgin birth. You can say they are not "real Christians", but they could say the same about you.
  - memling 6y ago
    this sounds as plausible as saying that a lot of atheists believe in god. maybe it's a thing? but it's hard to imagine dropping someone in nicea in 380 and suggesting this. words mean things: Christians believe in more than the virgin birth but certainly not less.
    - keithnz 6y ago
      why not less? I think many see the "facts" as different. Their approaches to the texts are different, but "Christians" align themselves in someway with a entity called "Jesus". Different sects of Christianity tend to have their own definitions of what they think being a "christian" means and there are commonalities from sect to sect, and even some groups of sects have lots of strong commonalties, but there are still many ways they have incompatible beliefs as well. wikipedia has a reasonable list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denominations_by_number_of_members https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denomination... and I'm pretty sure some "christians" in one of the sects would go "They aren't christians!" when it comes to other sects in that list.

goto11 6y ago

The Bible was not written as single work the way novels like Persuasion are though. It is really a collection of books of very different origins and genre. Some books are laws where individual rules can be examined and there are collections of proverbs. But there are also parts which are longer narratives.

wcarey 6y ago
I think my point, though, that the unit of thought in the scriptures is not the atomic verse, still stands. If you'd like to emend "collected works of Jane Austen" to "collected works of 19th century authors", feel free.
- goto11 6y ago
  I argue that in some cases the "units of thoughts" are verses (proverbs, laws), in other cases they are longer like psalms, sermons, chapters, letters or books. I totally agree taking a single verse out of a longer narrative rarely makes sense. But the bible is not like a novel or a collection of novels, although some of the books (like Job) is kind of like a novel.
  - wcarey 6y ago
    Proverbs is certainly the book most amenable to division into verses.
- RobertRoberts 6y ago
  A few things to consider: 1. Many of the writings are letters, and therefore short. 2. Many of the writings, though grouped together by books, their chapters really are often distinct documents written at different times. (some are even historical logs like Kings and Chronicles) 3. There are _many_ sections that really do break down by lines and sections. The best examples are Proverbs and Psalms. 4. It's a huge document, and much of it is useful to reference later, and having a system in place for this (of any kind) is helpful for many reasons. Last, I agree with your general sentiment. The first time I read sections of the bible without the artificial breaks and numbers getting in the way gave me a completely different perspective on the _content_. So I make a point to read like this when I feel the numbers may be in the way of comprehension.

seemslegit 6y ago

Is "balkanization" really a general term for "dividing into parts" ? I think some sort of both internal and geopolitical strife needs to be involved. And verses are not disconnected logical propositions, they are a structure between a sentence and a chapter aka. a paragraph. If anything - the grouping of verses into chapters is far more arbitrary than that of sentences into verses.

wcarey 6y ago
I chose "balkanization" to connote the things you reference; the atomic quoting of verses of scripture does violence to the text. Verses are definitely not functionally paragraphs. Some aren't even complete sentences!
- seemslegit 6y ago
  At least in the old testament verses range from sentences to paragraphs, have any interesting examples of a non-sentence verse ?
  - wcarey 6y ago
    Sure - take a look at the first chapter of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. The sentence: Jews demand signs and Greeks search for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. is divided into three (!) verses. That sort of thing is pretty common with the periodic structure of Paul's sentences. English readers, with our weak clause boundaries, struggle with those sorts of sentences anyway.
    - seemslegit 6y ago
      Corinthians is not part of the old testament so I'm afraid its versing might not be per the union standards. It is currently versed as: Jews demand signs and Greeks search for wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified - A stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Which seems like three complete sentences forming a paragraph to me even if not to any modern style guide. Alternatively it could have been: Jews demand signs and Greeks search for wisdom - but we preach [the words of] Christ crucified ! A stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. In both cases the logical structure remains the same and the three sentences form a larger idea.

HeckFeck 6y ago

Correct, its very seldom indeed any other work - ancient or modern - is quoted in this way. You have entire generations of Christians thinking only in isolated "memory verses". One wonders if this practice is connected to the degradation and commercialisation of worship and countless trivial splits. It just doesn't make for lucid thinking or deep understanding of any work. It is worth noting that the chapter divisions came long before the verse divisions. For reading, the chapters are as helpful as they are in any other book. I recall the verses were introduced around the time of the Geneva Bible and were intended to cross-reference for the purpose of arguing doctrine. Perhaps useful for scholars - who'd already be deeply familiar with the text as a unit - but hardly a method for comprehension of the books as a whole. Edit: This discussion reminds me of the so-called Reader's Bibles which were made a few years ago. They present the text as a flowing single-paragraph, with minimal distractions. One such example is the ESV Reader's Bible: https://www.bibledesignblog.com/2014/06/crossway-esv-readers-bible-cloth-bound-hardcover.html https://www.bibledesignblog.com/2014/06/crossway-esv-readers...

mxcrossb 6y ago

I agree that it is a very interesting topic. Even the chapter breaks can be a real issue for a theologian. I believe there are some stories in the gospels which are consecutive in multiple books, but split by a chapter break in others. There are arguments in the epistles which span multiple chapters. But to the modern reader a chapter break implies a stopping point. Which might lead you to misunderstand the author’s intent.

shampto3 6y ago

tldr; Why not both? I agree that it's odd that we have atomized the writings in the scriptures. You can find reader's editions if you want to remove the verses structure. However, I don't agree that the verses are "diametrically opposed to a Christian reading of the Scriptures". I believe that there is room for both reading whole books and reading short quotes. For instance, I don't think there's anything wrong with taking John 3:16 out of context because it is a very straightforward verse. It's really nice to be able to share verses easily by giving a <Book> <Chapter>:<Verse>. There is danger though when we do that with all verses of scripture, and we should be careful to study the context for verses before coming to any conclusion. The key is to actually study the scriptures, and not just take the easy route and find verses that make you feel good about yourself. But that's easier said than done.

wcarey 6y ago
So, having read the whole of what you wrote, the reason not to do both is that atomization promotes an epistemology that does grave violence to Christian belief. God's self revelation could have been a math textbook: a collection of independent propositions related by logical necessity. But it's not. His self revelation is a person who has a story and who tells stories. When we atomize the scriptures, we're implicitly constructing an argument against the epistemology that God has revealed in the scriptures. That's the thing that Satan does in the wilderness when he puts Jesus to the test. We ought not lead others into that time of trial. So the convenience of being able to cite a verse as quick shorthand comes at the price of a profound argument against the coherent truth of the scriptural witness.
- shampto3 6y ago
  While I would not go as far to say that having verses in scriptures is a tactic of the devil (note that in the wilderness, Jesus also quotes snippets of scripture back to Satan as a rebuttal), I can see your point that it probably does more harm than good. I do wish that the standard was to not have verses, and have the verses version be the exception rather than the rule. I can see the benefit of having verses, but I think there is far more benefit from reading scripture as a whole instead.

karaterobot 6y ago

Good observation, but I think it's overstated. I don't know many people who read the bible as a series of disconnected logical propositions, they mainly read it in much longer sections covering some topic. Chapter and verse come in when you want to quote something, or shorthand something, or refer someone to a specific and narrow section. In this usage, it's very similar to the way we cite Shakespeare, Homer, Chaucer, Milton, etc. For example, the St. Crispin's day speech in Henry V is at IV.iii.18-67, and any Shakespearean actor, fan, or scholar knows what that means, but that notation doesn't force them to think of the play as merely a set of disconnected speeches.

wcarey 6y ago
I'm thinking, for example, of the RCL, which often breaks passages mid chapter and occasionally omits individual verses. What sort of Christian community do you mostly know? If you said "The St. Crispin's day speech" I'd immediately know what you mean. I'm definitely a Shakespeare fan, but would have no idea which act, scene, &c. that speech occupies. I'd wager that's much less true of the scriptures in many circles.
- jfk13 6y ago
  To some extent probably, but I wonder if that's as true as you assume. I'd guess that many people in vaguely Christianized communities would be familiar, to some degree at least, with passages like "Daniel in the Lion's Den", "The Sermon on the Mount", "The Plagues of Egypt", "The Good Samaritan", and so on, without being able to tell you the chapter and verse (or even book) in which they're found.
  - wcarey 6y ago
    Perhaps! I've encountered lots of fellow Christians who construct arguments by taking individual verses from everywhere in the scriptures and arranging them into an argument assuming that all the terms are equivalent and that the context doesn't matter. It particularly perplexes me when someone will cite, say verse x and then immediately after it cite verse x-2, reordering them in a way that destroys the sense of the passage, but supports some argument. Perhaps there's an uncanny valley between people who are familiar with the broad strokes and people who argue contextually.

eeereerews 6y ago

> That hermeneutic - texts are collections of independent logical propositions - was essentially unknown in the ancient world On the contrary, the atomization and recombination of the text into new meanings is highly characteristic of Midrash. Of course, this isn't the same as the "prooftext" hermeneutic I think you're criticizing.

wcarey 6y ago
Fascinating! Do you have a good book recommendation that introduces that? It's not something I know much about.
- eeereerews 6y ago
  Here is a typical example (from Genesis Rabbah) > And Cain rose up against his brother Abel. [...] With what did he kill him? R. Simeon said: He killed him with a staff: And a young man for my bruising (Gen 4:23) implies a weapon which inflicts a bruise. The Rabbis said: He killed him with a stone: For I have slain a man for wounding me (ibid) indicates a weapon which inflicts wounds. R. 'Azariah and R. Jonathan in R. Isaac's name said: Cain had closely observed where his father slew the bullock [which he sacrificed, as it is written], And it shall please the Lord better than a bullock (Ps 69:31), and there he killed him: by the throat and its organs. From a Christian perspective, a more interesting example might be the Gospel's atomization/recontextualizations of text as Messianic prophecy ("out of Egypt I have called my son", "behold, a virgin shall be with child").
bjourne 6y ago
Even Jesus himself often referred to specific verses in the Old Testament: "Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” (Matthew 4:7; cf. Luke 4:12)" "“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’” (Matthew 5:38)" So the Scripture must have been "Balkanized" before Christianity existed. Which is not so strange given that it served both as religion and as a code of law.
- ars 6y ago

kijin 6y ago

It probably began as a reference scheme for scholars, by scholars. The same thing has happened to other ancient texts, like the works of Plato, Aristotle, and Homer. You can refer to The Republic 327a1, or Book 1 line 230 of The Odyssey, and people who study ancient Greek texts will immediately figure out which line you're talking about. Those references aren't complete sentences, either. Apparently it didn't matter to the people who first came up with the numbering scheme. The Plato reference format is actually nothing more than the page, column, and line number of a particular edition that happened to stick.

wcarey 6y ago
Indeed - and I'd say that the division of those sources has been broadly restricted to scholars, and that those scholars broadly also read those ancient texts in the enlightenmenty way that I'm suggesting does violence to them.
mrozbarry 6y ago
This is exactly it. The chunking of chapters and verses was so monks could verify their copies. Imagine a monastery, with 100 scholars who are tasked with copying the entire bible, with duplicates. The best way to verify that it was copied correctly is to do spot-checks where the source and transcribed documents are compared on certain chapters and verses. At this point, I don't think it's necessary to split them up for making copies. That said, a lot of churches have integrated chapter/verse look ups as part of their service/sermons/bible studies, so it would be very difficult to remove them now.

dilandau 6y ago

I wouldn't worry about it too much. Think of it as a map, and similarly, the map is not the territory.

smitty1e 6y ago

Shakespeare comes to mind for balkanization. The First Folio followed the KJV by a dozen years, and the two dominate English. In contrast to Jane Austen, both the KJV and the Folio are collections of other works. Thus they may lend themselves ore than novels to being served frgmentally.

yters 6y ago

The NT authors are constantly quoting snippets from the OT.

samirillian 6y ago

Well, some books of the bible are more aphoristic, like Proverbs or Ecclesiastes, as are plenty of other ancient texts like the Quran or the Sutras or the Tao te Ching. There's also Jewish numerology, and the mystical(?) idea that the arrangement of the letters in the Pentateuch is only one of many possible perfect combinations. The concept of divine infallibility definitely has a lot of weird implications, or semi-implications that people just run with. Conversely, the cipher-like quality of the scriptures is what makes them so hermeneutically fun, especially for all those violent little cults that have a way of taking over the world.

humanrebar 6y ago
Ecclesiastes is very easy to take out of context. Individual verses seem like nice aphorisms, but the book as a whole is actually quite skeptical and even critical, at least of certain worldviews. In some ways, it's a series of rejections of easy answers.

analog31 6y ago

This is pure speculation, but I wonder if the verse structure helped with copying, like some sort of primitive coding standard.

chooseaname 6y ago

> and when folks read the scriptures as a series of disconnected logical propositions all sorts of wackiness ensues. Most people reading the bible don't do this. This would be very very odd.