The current division of the Bible into chapters and the verse numbers within the chapters has no basis in any ancient textual tradition. Rather, they are medieval and early modern Christian inventions. They were later adopted by many Jews as well, as technical references within the Hebrew text.... The earliest extant Jewish manuscript to note the chapter divisions dates from 1330, and the first printed edition was in 1516. (Wikipedia article on "Chapters and verses of the Bible", 26-11-2014)
I understand "technical references" to mean that, whatever else their worth or significance may or may not be, the practical value of the conventional divisions of the text of Bible books into chapters and verses is that we can all be sure which spot in the original text we think we're at. When asked where in the Bible the Ten Commandments are to be found, if there were no chapters and verses (or some such system) we wouldn't be able to reply that the first place they are found is in the book of Exodus, chapter 20, versus 1 to 17 (Exodus 20:1-17). We'd have to say "somewhere in Exodus", or "on page 115", or open our bible and point to it and say "here." Footnotes in bibles would be more complicated, as would biblical commentaries, blogs like this one, and so on.
That is not so crucial when all we want to do is read. How do we know where we are at in any book? By keeping your eye on the place, or a finger if you're looking away, or placing a bookmark between the pages, bending down the corner of the page (God forbid), or just remembering! It is one component of reading skills, and we don't need a special numbering grid for it (although we do still think page numbers come in useful).
But chapters and verses are handy if you want to tell someone else where you are reading from (or which words you are arguing over). And in a translation, they are potentially useful too as a check that the translator hasn't skipped, altered or otherwise manipulated too much by providing a mapping of each translated verse onto the original, or to assist comparisons between translations. The same purpose is served in some secular books of a utilitarian or academic type by the section numbers employed in legal texts, grammars, technical manuals and so on. They provide a set of coordinates for the accurate and unique location of any part of the text. Whether they help or hinder the ordinary, casual reader is another matter.
That is not so crucial when all we want to do is read. How do we know where we are at in any book? By keeping your eye on the place, or a finger if you're looking away, or placing a bookmark between the pages, bending down the corner of the page (God forbid), or just remembering! It is one component of reading skills, and we don't need a special numbering grid for it (although we do still think page numbers come in useful).
But chapters and verses are handy if you want to tell someone else where you are reading from (or which words you are arguing over). And in a translation, they are potentially useful too as a check that the translator hasn't skipped, altered or otherwise manipulated too much by providing a mapping of each translated verse onto the original, or to assist comparisons between translations. The same purpose is served in some secular books of a utilitarian or academic type by the section numbers employed in legal texts, grammars, technical manuals and so on. They provide a set of coordinates for the accurate and unique location of any part of the text. Whether they help or hinder the ordinary, casual reader is another matter.
In this system, Genesis is divided into 50 chapters. The chapters don't have names, only numbers. Sometimes the chapter breaks correspond to changes of topic or reasonable points of articulation in longer stretches of text; other times they really don't and are a distraction. One of their purposes was probably to divide up the book into sections of roughly equal size, admittedly something we often tend to do in modern writings with chapters or sections, but we also try to make the divisions coherent for other reasons besides length alone. The "verses" into which each chapter is divided roughly correspond, or are supposed to correspond, to sentences, although that doesn't always quite work. Some traditional translations seem intent on making it work by treating each verse break as if it were a sentence break, whether that makes sense or not, which makes the resulting text a little bit more odd and artificial to read, but people can get used to anything!
Before the invention of the now standard chapters and verses there were other systems in place for dividing up the text, partly as a guide concerning how to read it (where to pause or stop, for example), and some of that paraphernalia is still in use and appears in some modern printed editions, particularly those used in Jewish circles. Of particular interest is the system of parashot or "portions" which govern the ceremonial reading of passages in front of the congregation but also provide a daily and weekly reading programme which lets you get through the whole of the Torah in exactly one year. Each weekly parasha has a name (based on the first one or two words of the section, or a word in the first sentence). Genesis consists of twelve weekly portions, as follows:
Name
|
Meaning of name
|
Genesis...
|
בראשׁית (b’reshit, Bereshit)
|
In the beginning
|
1:1 - 6:8
|
נח (nóax, Noach)
|
Noah
|
6:9 - 11:32
|
לך לך
(lekh l’kha, Lech Lecha)
|
Go!
|
12:1 - 17:27
|
וירא
(wayyera, Vayeira)
|
Appeared
|
18:1 - 22:24
|
חיי שׂרה (xayye sara, Chayei Sarah)
|
Sarah’s life
|
23:1 - 25:18
|
תולדת
(tol'dot, Toledot)
|
Generations or History
|
25:19 - 28:9
|
ויצא
(wayyetze, Vayetze)
|
Went out
|
28:10 - 32:3
|
וישׁלח
(wayyishlax, Vayishlach)
|
Sent
|
32:4 - 36:43
|
וישׁב
(wayyéshev, Vayeshev)
|
Stayed
|
37:1 - 40:23
|
מקץ
(miqqetz, Miketz)
|
At the end
|
41:1 - 44:17
|
ויגשׁ
(wayyiggash, Vayigash)
|
Approached
|
44:18 - 47:27
|
ויחי
(way’xi, Vayechi)
|
Lived
|
47:28 - 50:26
|
Each parasha is subdivided into eight passages, one for each of the seven days of the week and a "bonus" section.
Now undeniably the parashot, no less than the chapters invented by the Christians, aim to slice the text up into chunks of comparable length as one of their purposes at least, and yet, in my opinion, they work much better in terms of current literary sensibilities too. I don't think it works to consider each parasha as a "chapter" because a single parasha often contains several stories or deals with a series of unrelated topics. What I do find though is that the joints between parashot are very well chosen places to break off from a literary perspective although, also from a literary perspective, the resulting blocks of text need to be further divided into coherent shorter units.
Now undeniably the parashot, no less than the chapters invented by the Christians, aim to slice the text up into chunks of comparable length as one of their purposes at least, and yet, in my opinion, they work much better in terms of current literary sensibilities too. I don't think it works to consider each parasha as a "chapter" because a single parasha often contains several stories or deals with a series of unrelated topics. What I do find though is that the joints between parashot are very well chosen places to break off from a literary perspective although, also from a literary perspective, the resulting blocks of text need to be further divided into coherent shorter units.
Now in the case of some conventional (chapter-verse) Bible editions, another layer of section divisions has been added in an attempt to facilitate reading and lend coherence, although by no means all editions do this, and it should be made clear that these divisions are not authoritative and should really only be taken as "suggestions". Any "traditions" of this kind are therefore secondary. Bible commentaries usually also suggest such tentative divisions.
For example, E.A. Speiser's commentary Genesis. A new transalation with introduction and commentary in the Anchor Yale Bible series (1964) divides the book of Genesis into 62 sections of uneven length in accordance with what the author perceived as topics or text sections which "do not necessarily coincide with the customary division into chapters" (p. v). The first few, to give an example, are: "Opening account of creation" (1:1 - 2:4a), "The story of Eden" (2:4b-24), "The Fall of Man" (2:25 - 3:24), "Cain and Abel" (4:1-16), "The line of Cain" (4:17-26), "The patriarchs before the Flood" (5:1-32), "Prelude to disaster" (6:1-4), "The Flood" (6:5 - 8:22), "Blessing and covenant" (9:1-17), "Noah and his sons" (9:18-29), "The table of nations" (10:1-32), "The tower of Babel" (11:1-9), "Genealogies from Shem to Abraham" (11:10-32).
For example, E.A. Speiser's commentary Genesis. A new transalation with introduction and commentary in the Anchor Yale Bible series (1964) divides the book of Genesis into 62 sections of uneven length in accordance with what the author perceived as topics or text sections which "do not necessarily coincide with the customary division into chapters" (p. v). The first few, to give an example, are: "Opening account of creation" (1:1 - 2:4a), "The story of Eden" (2:4b-24), "The Fall of Man" (2:25 - 3:24), "Cain and Abel" (4:1-16), "The line of Cain" (4:17-26), "The patriarchs before the Flood" (5:1-32), "Prelude to disaster" (6:1-4), "The Flood" (6:5 - 8:22), "Blessing and covenant" (9:1-17), "Noah and his sons" (9:18-29), "The table of nations" (10:1-32), "The tower of Babel" (11:1-9), "Genealogies from Shem to Abraham" (11:10-32).
Let us compare this with another such ad hoc division in the 1977 edition of the Biblia Vulgata (the Latin Bible) by Colunga-Turrado, published in Madrid, where the beginning of Genesis is organised as follows:
LIBER GENESIS
· PARS PRIMA: HISTORIA TOTIUS GENERIS HUMANI (1:1 - 11:32)
· · Creatio caeli et terrae (1:1 - 2:3)
· · Plantatio paradisi in quo formantur primi parentes (1:4 - 2:25)
· · Protoparentum lapsus (3:1-13)
· · Inflictio poenae atque promissio redemptionis (3:14-24)
· · Cain et Abel (4:1-16)
· · Progenies Cain (4:17-24)
· · Seth eiusque progenies (4:25-26)
· · Generationes Adam (5:1-31)
· · Deus decernit diluvium (6:1-7)
· · Noe praeparat arcam (6:8-6:22)
· · Noe ingreditur in arcam (7:1-16)
· · Diluvium (7:17-24)
· · Cessat diluvium (8:1-14)
· · Noe egreditur de Arca (8:15-22)
· · Noe benedictus a Deo (9:1-7)
· · Dei pactum cum Noe (9:8-17)
· · Noe, maledicto Chanaan, Sem et Iapheth benedicit (9:18-29)
· · Generationes filiorum Noe (10:1-32)
· · Confusio linguarum et dispersio populorum (11:1-9)
· · Generationes Sem (11:10-26)
· · Generationes Thare (11:27-32)
Notice that section and subsection schemes like these rarely replace the conventional chapter-and-verse system which is still retained as a universal grid, allowing us to be sure at all times what corresponds to what. This makes for a more complicated format for the text, of course, since essentially two different text-organising schemes are being superimposed.
In the Nawat translation of Genesis the conventional chapters and verses are indicated in the usual way, but for the other layer of organisation (the one which is really oriented to facilitating reading by the general reader) I am experimenting with a hybrid solution which uses two levels, which I shall refer to now as "sections and passages". For the first six of the twelve sections of Genesis, the table of contents goes like this (remembering that the English is only an improvised rendering of the Nawat in my translation):
· WHEN HE BEGAN
How God built the sky and the land (1:1 - 2:4a)
Adam and Hava (2:4b - 3:24)
Kain, Habel and Shet (4:1-26)
The generations until Noah (5:1 - 6:8)
·· NOAH
The big flood (6:9 - 9:17)
The story about Noah and his sons after the flood (9:18-29)
The list of peoples (10:1-32)
The Babel pyramid (11:1-9)
Shem's descendants (11:10-32)
··· GO AWAY
God talks to Abram (12:1-9)
Abram and Saray in Egypt (12:10 - 13:4)
Abram and Lot split up (13:5-18)
The story of Abram and Malki-Tzedek (14:1-24)
The covenant (15:1-21)
Ishmael is born (16:1-16)
A new covenant (17:1-14)
What God said about Saray, Ishmael and Isaac (17:15-27)
···· APPEARED
When Sarah laughed (18:1-15)
The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (18:16 - 19:26)
Lot's daughters (19:27-38)
Abraham and Sarah in Gerar (20:1-18)
Yitzhak and Ishmael (21:1-21)
Abraham, Abimelech and the well (21:22-34)
God tests Abraham (22:1-19)
Nahor's family (22:20-24)
/ SARAH'S DAYS
Abraham buries Sarah (23:1-20)
Yitzhak and Rebecca (24:1-67)
How Abraham and Ishmael ended up (25:1-18)
·/ WHAT HAPPENED
Esaw and Yakov are born (25:19-34)
Yitzhak goes to Gerar (26:1-35)
Yakov tricks Yitzhak (27:1-45)
Yakov escapes to Laban's house (27:46 - 28:9)
The top-level divisions (here numbered with a stylized, typable modification of the ancient Maya numerals, just for fun!) follow the parashot or weekly portions of ancient Jewish tradition. The reason is simple: they work, or at least they seem to work to me, as literary constructs. I am also following the Hebrew tradition in the naming of these, by taking one of the first words of the first sentence of each section, and also trying to make it correspond to the Hebrew name (see above).
For the lower-level divisions (the passages) I am doing what others have done before me and improvising divisions and titles which seem to me to make sense mnemonically and as indications of the progress of the book as a literary work. Although exercising freedom to differ when I feel justified, I take my cue largely from the work of others before me in my understanding of what and where the main passages are, while I admit that there is sometimes room for differences of opinion, as shown by the divergences between editions in this regard.
See also my introductory article "When God began building the sky and the land" for a discussion of some of the criteria we can use to decide about things like where "passages" begin and end. Some sample passages may be seen in Nawat and rendered into English in the "Genesis sample translations" tab.
For the lower-level divisions (the passages) I am doing what others have done before me and improvising divisions and titles which seem to me to make sense mnemonically and as indications of the progress of the book as a literary work. Although exercising freedom to differ when I feel justified, I take my cue largely from the work of others before me in my understanding of what and where the main passages are, while I admit that there is sometimes room for differences of opinion, as shown by the divergences between editions in this regard.
See also my introductory article "When God began building the sky and the land" for a discussion of some of the criteria we can use to decide about things like where "passages" begin and end. Some sample passages may be seen in Nawat and rendered into English in the "Genesis sample translations" tab.
No comments:
Post a Comment