Ok, if you know anything about me at all you know that I love to read.
I don't mean your average garden-variety love, I mean your head-over-heels, have-to-get-my-fix kind of love. I will read almost anything (kids books, girls books, guys books, short stories, novels, fantasy, comic books, mystery, classics, war, etc. etc. etc.) there are very few genres that I haven't read.
Now as this relates to the Bible. As a piece of literature the Bible ranks up there in the classics. Regardless of whether you believe its true the Bible is an incredible piece of literature (and its being true only adds to its amazing-ness) So why did man go sticking his nose into inspired literature and have to arrange it with chapters and verses. I seriously hate chapter and verse. The text of the Scripture is where the meat is but because we had to have everything all nice and neat and orderly we divided up the paragraphs and sentences into easily palatable portions. Seriously, is there any other writing that man feels the need to go in and alter to fit his reading style? If I were to insert personal numerical divisions into the Iliad I would be torn up and shredded and then burned and my ashes put into an urn and dropped into the Mariana Trench attached to a bomb set to explode once the urn got to the bottom of the seven mile deep trench. But we can do this to the Bible and everybody goes "Oh that's cool"?
(Now in the spirit of attempting to offer a solution) I think there needs to be a Bible with no chapter and verse divisions. Put the text back into paragraph format with book divisions (which actually exist) and let us read the whole thought of the authors without having to pause every .3 seconds to change verses. Maybe everyone else out there can read without having the verse divisions mess you up but its completely beyond me.
So leave me a comment if a) you think you would like a Bible like that b) you think I'm a complete idiot and need to get my head examined, or c) you have a better idea.
Random Thought: You owe the government approximately $28,000 dollars. That's the amount every man, woman and child (and baby) would have to pay to completely payoff the national debt (its something like 8.4 trillion dollars - and you thought your school loan was a lot of money). So dig deep America and lets pay for the wastefulness of past generations.
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8 comments:
When I'm studying the Bible for my devotions, I like the divisions. Having things broken up allows me to think about little bits at a time. But when it comes to reading the Bible just to read (as in not for study purposes), it would be very cool to have an un-partitioned edition.
Very much in favor of a non partitioned version (The Message doesn't count(although if you want a good laugh you should take a look at the message)). I think divisions really detract from understanding complete thoughts.
My ESV is broken down into paragraphs and thoughts. While it still has chapters and verse numbers, the way it is broken down makes it much easier to read for personal devos.
I pose this question to you: if it is not broken up by chapter/verse, how then do we teach memorization of the bible? Right now it is easier to show people where a verse is to show what the Bible says, rather than just quote it. Does that make any sense?
One other thing that may/may not get you going: There are like 3.2 billion versions of the Bible (there are about 5 [only 3 with any consistency, the other 2 for sake of reference] which I actually use). But there is usually only about 1, maybe a second version if it gets a re-print 100 or so years later. Why do we continually make all these versions of the Bible? Just a thought. I'm looking at this from a literary stand point, not like a "its not inspired if it isn't a (name your version here) Bible."
I don't like the verse breaks because I stop too soon when I'm memorizing--before I get the complete thought. But I do like the ESV paragraph divisions. What if the Bible were written more Shakespeare style with the less distracting little stanza numbers on the side in order to help find specific passages...
Ok, couple things: When I read the Bible I need to get the whole thought. The only legitimate form of study is to study the thoughts of the author (in this case divine through the words of the human). Verse divisions break up the thought pattern into arbitrary segments. If we wanted to have the verses be a complete sentence or paragraph then I have less of a problem with that.
As far as memorization goes - I tend to approach memorization from a classic literary tradition so this may not make sense to people. See people have always memorized Greek, Roman, French, Spanish, English literary classics - these quotes permeate literature because the authors are permeated with the thoughts and words of the authors.
Memorization shouldn't be something we do it should be what happens because of the time we spend reading and thinking about what was said. Christians are trained (by S.S. tradition) that rote memorization is the only way to go (rote memorization is the WORST possible method of memorization because it rarely stays with you).
I'm glad that the ESV at least makes the numbers superscript but I would still rather have no numbers at all.
I really don't want any numbers at all.
Heather, the numbers on the side could work, although I would probably still prefer no numbers at all.
The numbers and sentence breakage messes me up too.
i think that your idea is a great one! i never really thought about chapters and verses being a "problem" if i can say it that way. i know that if the Bible was divided into books only I would get more out of it. cause I am always pausing to see what chapter and verse I am on and then i get distracted and all that. i think its a great idea! think anybody would do something like that?
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