I referred you to BYU broadcast a few months ago, and I would like to now share something with you that I learned from a recent talk. The talk, entitled “Books, Paragraphs, Chapters, and Verses in the New Testament,” was given by David R. Seely during the Sperry Symposium. It was a bit difficult to follow because the speaker obviously had handouts to illustrate his point. Also, it was very academic and a touch dry. However, there was one point that really stuck out to me.
The point that Seely made was that the verse and chapter breaks we have in the Old and New Testament were not part of the original documents. These were inserted afterwards. This stood out was because there are times when I give far too much credence to the breaks in the scriptures. For instance, I might assume that when the chapter ends, Christ has finished speaking at that time. When the next chapter begins and He is still speaking, I either figure it is a different time or that He finished the subject He had previously been speaking on.
After listening to this talk, I realized that this belief is generally false. While the King James version doesn’t tend to interrupt obvious things, like parables, it does break up the Savior’s teachings, and not necessarily in the way He would have had it. I have found the thread from one chapter may continue on in the next, albeit not as obviously. As I have inspected surrounding chapters for content in the course of my scripture study, I feel that I have gotten a better idea of what He would have me learn.
I am not alone in giving too much credence to these artificial breaks. I think many times we tend to base our scripture study on “finishing this chapter” or “reading so many chapters a day.” In doing so, we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to take a full measure from the scriptures.
I challenge you to look for these artificial breaks in the Bible, and see how they affect your scripture study. I encourage you to study the scriptures for a defined period of time, not for a set number of chapters. And I beg you to remember that we believe in the Bible insofar as it is translated correctly – and that these breaks are part of the translation process.
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Delve Deeper into the Scriptures
LDS General Conference Scripture Citation Index