Who divided the Bible into chapters and verses? Why and when was it done?
Answered from the commentary of The Bible Treasury, Walter Scott and Morrish Bible Dictionary
The chapter divisions now in common use were made in the thirteenth century by Cardinal Hugo de Sancto Caro, while preparing a concordance to the Vulgate, to make references easier. The verse divisions came later: Rabbi Mordecai Nathan adopted Hugo’s chapters and marked verses in the Hebrew Bible in the fifteenth century for a concordance; Robert Stephens used those Old Testament divisions and added the New Testament verses, publishing them in his Greek Testament in 1551. These divisions were made to help readers find passages and compile concordances, and were soon copied into Bible editions and translations. The authors differ on the precise date and attribution of the chapters: most name Hugo and place the work around 1244–1248, while one passage says about 1248 and another also reports Stephen Langton as an attribution.
The above is AI generated summary based on the writers below.
What the commentators say
The passages the answer is drawn from, the most direct first, with the words that bear on the question marked.
But the division of the sacred books into chapters as in our English and all other Western Bibles is comparatively a modern one, and the introduction of verses still more so.
In the 13th century, and about the year 1244 or 1248, there lived a Dominican named Hugo de Sancto Caro, a very clever, learned, and ingenious man and who was made a Cardinal, the first of his order who was advanced to such a dignity. Cardinal Hugo conceived the happy idea of preparing a concordance to the Scriptures — the Vulgate or Latin Bible. We may just say in passing, as an interesting circumstance to Bible readers, that this was the first concordance of the kind ever produced, and the Latin Bible the first ever printed. It ought to be borne in mind that Latin and other copies of the Bible were only marked according to the divisions already referred to, and some in fact had no divisions at all, hence in order to facilitate an easy reference of the concordance to the Bible, he divided the latter into chapters, and these again into smaller sections of equal length, marked on the margin of the MS. by the letters A, B, C, D, E, F, G. Hugo's chapters were in course transferred to the Hebrew and Greek originals and to all English and other Bibles. The earliest editions of the Scriptures in the vernacular, as Wycliffe's and Tyndale's, were sectioned off according to the Cardinal's chapters at the top and letters on the margin of the page (see specimen pages).
Our present division into chapters and verses is really very modern. In the middle of the thirteenth century, i.e., during the reign of our Henry III., about the time when our first parliament sat, a certain Dominican, Cardinal Hugo De Sancto Caro, while preparing a concordance for the Vulgate (the first of that nature extant) divided the entire Bible into chapters, which were copied from him into all the subsequent editions and translations, and have remained unchanged to the present day. He did not subdivide into verses; but placed down the margin at equal distances the letters A. B. C. D. for convenience of reference.
The introduction of verses is still more modern, being unknown for 200 years after the division into chapters; and our own earlier English Bibles, such as Wycliffe's at the end of the fourteenth century, and Tyndal's and Coverdale's in the first half of the sixteenth century, have the chapters, but not the verses.
Thus the copies remained, marked in different manners, or not at all, until about A.D. 1248, when an index of words was attempted for the whole Bible, by Cardinal Hugo, and then the books were divided into the chapters which we now have; and these again were subdivided (or rather marked in the margin) with the letters A, B, C, etc. These chapters were adopted in the Latin Vulgate, and became afterwards common in Greek manuscripts and printed copies.
The plan of the Rabbi was still further improved by a member of the Hebrew persuasion. Athias, an Amsterdam Jew and printer, produced two editions of the Hebrew Bible, the first in 1661 and the second in 1667. Athias introduced numeral letters in those places omitted by Nathan. All the Latin, Greek, English, and other Bibles now in use throughout the known world, save in a very few exceptions, have the chapters of Hugo and the verses of Athias.
But we have not yet accounted for the verses in our New Testament. This was the work of Robert Stephens, a celebrated French printer, and a man of considerable scholastic attainments. Stephens in preparing a fourth edition of his Greek Testament — published in 1551 — found that the chapters of Hugo were too long for easy reference, and so subdivided them to assist him in compiling a concordance for his Testament, afterward printed by his son Henry. Stephens divided the chapters of the New Testament into verses while travelling from Paris to Lyons, and from him they have been copied into all English and other editions of the sacred Scriptures. Can any one reasonably suppose that a man on horseback, or even resting in the inconvenient inns in these days, was competent, under such circumstances, to break up the text of Scripture into 7959 verses? How much better were the Bible sectioned off into paragraphs, according to the evident sense of the Spirit in the respective portions. Yet the present arrangement is not without its merits. Our English Bibles thus have Hugo's chapters throughout, the Jew's arrangement of verses for the Old Testament, and Stephens' verses for the New Testament. The first of English Bibles thus chaptered and versed is the Bishop's Bible, that immediately preceding our authorised version.
It was Robert Stephens, the celebrated printer and editor of the Greek Testament, who, feeling with others, that for reference shorter divisions than those of Cardinal Hugo were needed, set to work to divide the chapters into short verses. This he did on a journey from Paris to Lyons — it is supposed at the various places at which he rested. Our present verses are the result of his labours. They were first published in Stephens's Greek Testament, 1551, and from thence copied almost universally.
The history of the verses is this. About the year 1450, near the time of the introduction of printing, when the Hebrew Bibles began to be much sought after, a certain Rabbi Mordecai Nathan, a learned Jew of Venice, published a concordance of the Hebrew Bible, and adopted Cardinal Hugo's chapters, which were found convenient. And he added the subdivision into verses, which, as far as the Old Testament is concerned, remained as at present. But for a century afterwards, that is till about 1550, this division into verses seems to have been unknown in the Christian Bibles. It is said to have been introduced by the celebrated French printer, Robert Stephens, who, adopting the Jewish verses for the Old Testament, added the verses now in use for the New. And this arrangement was speedily transferred to all Bibles and Testaments. The first English Bible in which verses appear, is that published by Archbishop Parker in 1568, commonly called the Bishop's Bible, and which immediately preceded our present, or King James' Bible.
There are many inconveniences attending our chapters and verses, as they appear to have been made quite arbitrarily, and often interrupt the sense. It should never be forgotten that they were originally intended solely for concordances, and for facility of reference. And every Bible student should accustom himself to get rid of the notion that they have any other use.
The history of our modern verses is on this wise. A celebrated Jewish Rabbi, Mordecai Nathan, about 1430 was engaged in frequent disputes with the Christians, and as they could readily find any word or passage in the Bible by the help of Hugo's concordance — the former being sectioned off into chapters, and smaller divisions noted by letters — it occurred to the Rabbi to prepare a similar work for Jewish use to the Hebrew Scriptures. He completed his task in seven years — from 1438-1445 — about the era of the invention of printing.
But the Rabbi, while availing himself of the Cardinal's labours in the division of the sacred books into chapters, improved in the arrangement of the smaller sections. Hugo, we have already remarked, divided his chapters into seven equal portions where they were long, and the shorter ones into a fewer number of parts, noting them on the margin by letters. But Nathan substituted Hebrew numeral figures, not letters, placing them in the margin at a distance equal to every fifth verse. Hebrew Bibles have both chapters and verses marked in the margin, and the text broken into sections for their synagogue lessons.
The Editions of STEPHEN, a printer in Paris, followed. The first in 1546, and his most renowned one in 1550 (the one generally reprinted in England as the commonly received text), it was the first to give readings of the MSS in the margin; a fourth edition was issued in 1551, in which he had divided the text into verses. This reminds one that there is no authority for the divisions of chapters and verses, though they are very useful for reference.
Our present division of chapters is of Christian origin, but the Jews have accepted it. It goes back to the thirteenth century, and has been variously attributed to Hugh de St. Cher — author of a Concordance to the Vulgate — and to Stephen Langton. Bomberg's Bible of 1526 was the first edition in which it was adopted. It will be seen that no kind of authority attaches to the chapter-division, which sometimes displays a most unhappy lack of discrimination. Dr. Payne Smith, speaking of Genesis 2 says, 'In the divisions of our Bible into chapters, with a carelessness only equalled by that perversity which has formed the ninth chapter of Isaiah out of the end and the beginning of two incongruous prophecies, the seventh day's rest is separated from the account of the six working days, and thus the very purpose of the narrative is concealed.' (Ellicott's 'Commentary,' Introduction to Genesis.)