Professor Tom O’Loughlin explains that the familiar chapters and verses – found in every printed bible – are to be viewed solely as a means of finding passages and particular sentences. They do not represent the mind of the original authors (in this they are the exact opposite of the way we write in chapters and paragraphs), nor do the represent a logical analysis of the texts’ contents (such as one would find in a modern commentary). The chapters and verses we actually use is just one of many such systems used in the first millennium – and the one we have was invented around the year 1200 – it represents the biblical vision and scholarship of the early scholastic theologians!
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