Paul didn’t number his sentences.

24Oct
by Jon Swanson

1 When Paul was writing to Timothy, a friend, a mentee, a disciple, he just wrote a letter. Just like I’m writing to you. 2 He didn’t number his sentences. The verse numbers and the chapter divisions and the section headings are interpretive. 3 They make it easy to find things. But they are also distracting. Because 4 sometimes they come in the middle of a sentence. 5 Or the middle of a thought. And when we quote verses rather than sentences or thoughts, we can get in trouble. Because we are putting 6divisions where they weren’t intended.

Chapter 2

In the same way, he didn’t have chapter numbers. He was writing a letter. Letters don’t have chapters. At least none of the letters I’ve ever written.

When we read, we assume that chapters are units of thought. They are often discrete thoughts. But Paul and the rest of the writers of the Bible didn’t divide their letters and histories into chapters. When we read the Bible, we assume that verses are units of thought. But Paul didn’t write that way. The numbers were added later.

Paul certainly didn’t write

“Instructions to Timothy”

at the beginning of a paragraph, followed by “care of widows.” Those headers are inserted as study helps, but they decide for you ahead of time how to think.

So what can you do?

  • You can go to Biblegateway.com. when you look at a passage, turn off the verse numbers and headers. This is a new feature.
  • Or you can use as “unstudy” a Bible as you can find.
  • You can copy pages out of an online Bible into a document and clean out the verse numbers and print it.

Or you can just be aware that the thinking isn’t divided into verse and sections and chapters and instead, read sentences and paragraphs.

8 thoughts on “Paul didn’t number his sentences.”

  2. jeffabel's avatar

    jeffabel

    Love how you wrote this Jon. I’ve found that reading scripture without the chapters and verses is very helpful in understanding the context of the passage. Often times we separate the passages and sometimes miss the point.

    My favorite option for reading this way is “The Books of the Bible” from Biblica. It presents the Bible without the chapters, verses and commentary and I really enjoy reading it. You can check it out at (http://biblica.com/thebooks). Caution – you may end up reading more of the Bible than you intended, because there is no end of the chapter to tell you to stop your reading for the day.

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  3. Josue Sierra's avatar

    Josue Sierra

    Jeff, last night I started reading the books of Acts and got carried away in the story such that I read much more than my “reading plan” intended. I wonder how much more Christians would read if we didn’t have chapter and verses? Good post and an encouraging idea just when I’m trying to revive my Scripture reading habit.

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