P042 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE.
P042 A SHORT HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE.
Instead of referring to chapter and verse, it was chapter and letter, each letter taking in about as much space as six of our verses.
Robert Stephens introduced numerals instead of letters in his Greek and Latin Testament published at Geneva in 1551, but he placed the numerals in the margin. Whittingham changed this to the plan we now have.(1)
Whittingham’s Testament is beautifully printed in Roman type instead of black letter, in 12mo., with this title:— The | Nevve Testa- | ment of ovr Lord Ie- | sus Christ. | Conferred diligently with the Greke, and best ap- | proued translations. | VVith the arguments, aswel before the chapters, as for euery Boke | & Epistle, also diversities of readings, and moste proffitable | annotations of all harde places : whereunto is added a copi- | ous Table | At Geneva | Printed By Conrad Badius | M. D. LVII. | -------------------------------------------
XI THE GENEVAN BIBLE.
Three years after Whittingham’s Testament appeared the Genevan Bible, a beautiful small 4to. volume in Roman type. This Bible was the joint production of a number of the scholarly and pious English refugees in Geneva, among whom was their pastor, Whittingham, already noticed.
John Bodleigh, Miles Coverdale, Thomas Cole, Anthony Gilby, Christopher Goodman, John Knox, John Pullain, Thomas Sampson, and William Whittingham have been named as the co-laborers in this work; but some of them could have had very little, if any thing, to do with it.
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(FN1)The books of the Hebrew Bible have, from an unknown period, been divided into verses as at present, but in former times these were not numbered. The division into chapters in both Old and New Testaments was made about the year 1250, by Cardinal Hugo de Sancto Caro, to help him in the preparation of a concordance to the Vulgate Bible.
He also, for the same purpose, subdivided the chapters into parts designated by marginal letters from A to G. About 1430 Rabbi Nathan, in preparing a Hebrew concordance, marked every fifth verse in the Hebrew Bible by a Hebrew numeral, and adopted the cardinal’s divisions into chapters. In 1528 Pagnino’s Latin Bible, published at Lyons, was arranged after the cardinal’s manner, both in chapters and in verses;
Stephens changed the plan by shortening the verses, and substituting numerals for letters.
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