Colleen M. Conway - A Contemporary Introduction to the Bible

When books and articles cite biblical passages by chapter and verse, they usually follow this order: abbreviation for the biblical book, followed by the chapter number, a colon (:), followed by the verse. An example is Isa 44:28 (chapter 44, verse 28). If more than one verse is cited, dashes and commas can be used: Isa 44:20, 28 or Isa 44:10–13, 28. When scholars want to refer to the bulk of a passage without detailing specific verses left out, they will add an asterisk to indicate that some verses are not meant to be included in the reference, e.g. Genesis 28*. Occasionally, you will also see scholars refer to half-verses, e.g. 2:4a or 2:4b, following accent divisions found in their Hebrew Bibles. Such notations will be used in this book only to label citations that begin or end in a half-verse.

Here are some standard abbreviations for biblical books shared by Jewish and Christian Bibles (given in the order followed by most Christian Bibles). Sometimes these are further shortened by just giving the first two letters (e.g. Ex instead of Exod) or removing a vowel (e.g. Jdg for Judges):

Here are the abbreviations for books in the New Testament:

The earliest Hebrew and Greek manuscripts of the Bible lack any chapter or verse numbering (see Figure 0.2). The Hebrew Bible was divided into sections for reading in the synagogue, and the Greek New Testament was divided into sections as well, but there were no numbers in these early manuscripts.

Verse divisions were first added into the Hebrew Bible (without numbers) by the Masoretes, a group of Jewish scholars who worked in the seventh to tenth centuries CE and produced the standard edition of the Hebrew Bible now used in Judaism. The chapter divisions we now have were developed in 1205 by Stephen Langton, a professor in Paris and eventually an archbishop of the Church of England. He introduced them into his edition of the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible, and these divisions were later adopted by Jewish scholars as they became popular means to refer to biblical passages.

The first Old Testament and New Testament Bible with numbered verses was produced in 1555 by a Parisian book seller, Robert Estienne (also known as Stephanus). He is reported to have divided a copy of his New Testament into the present 7,959 verses while riding on horseback from Paris to Lyon. He also numbered the chapters and verses of both the Old and New Testament. Now these verses are found in scholarly editions of the Hebrew Bible (see Figure 0.1 on p. 8) and in translations of the Bible.

This chapter just starts to indicate how every page of your Bible, whether a Jewish Tanakh or a particular Christian Bible, is the product of an intense process of textual criticism, analysis of the original language of biblical passages, and packaging of the particular translation of such passages through elements like chapter and verse numbers. Ancient manuscripts were often divided into longer, unnumbered reading sections (for use in worship and study), and they sometimes included marginal comments or additional verses here or there (see Figure 0.2 below). Nevertheless, they did not have the numbering, headings, or reader guides now in the Bible before you. Take note of every element on a given page of your contemporary Bible that helps frame the biblical text and present it to you. Your first step as a critical reader of the Bible is become more conscious of these elements and more familiar with their characteristics.

1 Know the meaning and significance of the following terms discussed in this chapter:apocryphacanon and canonicalconjectural emendationdeuterocanonical booksdynamic equivalence translationformal correspondence translationHebrew BibleKing James VersionLXXmanuscript witnessMasoretic text (MT)Old TestamentQur’anPentateuchSeptuagintsupersessionismTanakh or TaNaKtextual criticismTorah

2 What are the main differences between the Christian Old Testament and the Jewish Tanakh?

3 How is the Islamic Qur’an related to the Jewish and Christian Bibles?

Editions of Translations

1 The New Jerusalem Bible. New York: Doubleday, 1985. This is the NJB.

2 The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha (5th edition), eds. Michael Coogan et al. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. This contains the NRSV.

3 The Jewish Study Bible, eds. A. Berlin et al. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. This contains the NJPS.

4 The HarperCollins Study Bible (fully revised and updated), eds. Harold W. Attridge et al. San Francisco, CA: Harper-SanFrancisco, 2006. This contains the NRSV.

One-Volume Commentaries

1 Mays, James L., ed. HarperCollin’s Bible Commentary (revised edition). San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 2000.

2 Newsom, Carol A., and Ringe, Sharon H. The Women’s Bible Commentary (3rd edition). Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012.

Technological Resources

1 Bible Software: Accordance Bible Software. It is recommended that you purchase the NRSV, NJB, or other up-to-date translation. As of the writing of this Introduction, you are given the King James Version (outdated for academic study of the Bible) as part of the initial package.

2 You can also obtain free software for searching and reading the Bible at www.crosswire.org.

Useful Websites for Translation Comparison

1 The Bible Gateway (mostly Christian translations) – www.biblegateway.com

2 Bible Study Tools (mostly Christian translations) – https://www.biblestudytools.com/compare-translations

3 Sefaria (access to the New Jewish Publication Society version and other Jewish texts) – www.sefaria.org