11. I. AS TO LITERARY FORM (SEPARATE BOOKS)
(iii) "The Psalms" (Kthuvim) or the [other] writings.
14. Psalms 15. Proverbs 16. Job 17. Song of Songs 18. Ruth 19. Lamentations 20. Ecclesiastes 21. Esther 22. Daniel 23. Ezra-Nehemiah 24. Chronicles
The Five "Megilloth"
(or scrolls).
This is how the Books are rightly divided in the Hebrew Bible. And it is sad to find so many good men exercising their ingenuity in order to find some Divine spiritual teaching in the utterly human and different order of the Books given in the Translations. One actually manufactures "five Pentateuch's," quite dislocating the Books of the Bible; and he arbitrarily re-arranges them to suit his theory. Another divides them by re-arranging them in what he conceives to be the chronological order, which results, among other calamities, in the Psalms being dispersed among the Historical Books.
The "Higher" Critics would have us make a Hexateuch instead of a Pentateuch.
We fear it is hopeless ever to look for the books to be rightly divided and arranged in the order of the Hebrew Canon; so we shall have to make the best of man's having wrongly divided the Word of truth from the very outset.
The number of Concordances and Commentaries and general works where reference is made to the present chapters and verses would be sufficient to make such a change impossible, however desirable it might be on other grounds.
Nevertheless, it is well for those who would study the Word of truth to have this information, and to be in possession of the facts of the case, even if the result is only to prevent them from attaching any importance to the present order of the books, and keep them from
· III. RIGHTLY DIVIDING THE WORD elaborating some scheme of doctrine or theology based on what is only human in its origin.¹
(b) The Books of the New Testament.—As to the Books of the New Testament the problem presented is somewhat different. We find them in the Manuscripts generally in five groups: (1) the Gospels, (2) the Acts, (3) the General Epistles, (4) Paul's Epistles, and (5) the Apocalypse.
The order of these groups varies in certain MSS.: and the order of the books also in the different groups varies. There is, however, one exception which we have elsewhere pointed out:² the Epistles of Paul which are addressed to Churches are always in the same order as we have them in our English Bible to-day. Out of the hundreds of Greek MSS. not one has ever yet been seen where the Canonical order of these Epistles is different from that in which they have come down to us.³
We can therefore build our teaching on a sure foundation, though we cannot do so on the order of the other New Testament books.
3. The Divisions of the Hebrew Text
The Hebrew Text is divided (in the MSS.) into five different forms:—
(a) Into open and closed Sections, answering somewhat to our paragraphs. These were to promote facility in reading.
(b) Into Sedarim or the Triennial Pericopes: i.e., Portions marked off: so that the Pentateuch is divided into 167 Pericopes or "Lessons," which are completed in a course of three years' reading. There are 452 of these Seders in the Hebrew Bible, indicated by 2, in the margin.
¹ The Cambridge Companion (p. 7) suggests another classification, based on the subject-matter (as is that of the Septuagint): (1) Historical, (2) Prophetic, (3) Poetical, (4) Didactic, (5) Sapiential, (6) Apocalyptic. It is not necessary to indicate the Books under these heads, as the Divisions are so intensely human as to be unworthy of our notice.
² The Church Epistles, p. 13, by the same author and publisher, 3s. 6d. Also Part I., ch. iii., 16, f. below.
³ The Twentieth Century New Testament has the impertinence to change this into a chronological order!
⁴ Greek, from peri (around) and koptō (cut); a portion or extract. Pronounced Pe-rio-o-pe.
⁵ From קָרָא (sadar), to arrange in order.
i. AS TO LITERARY FORM (THE ORIGINALS)
(c) Beside these the Pentateuch was divided into 54 Par'shioth or Annual Pericopes, by which the Law was read through once a year.
(d) The division into verses. The verses in the Hebrew Bible are of ancient origin, and were noted by a stroke (+) called Silluk under the last word of each verse.
These words were carefully counted for each book. Hence the Scribes were so called not because of their writing (from the Latin word Scribo), but they were called Sopherim or Counters (from the Hebrew, Sopher, to count). The Massorah gives the number of verses as 23,203.²
4. The Divisions of the Greek Text.
In the Greek MSS. of the New Testament there is an indication of sections in the margin, dividing the text according to the sense.
There is also a division of the Gospels ascribed to TATIAN (Cent. II.) called Kephalaia, i.e. heads or summaries: these are known also as Tilloi or titles. AMMONIUS, in the third century, divided the Text according to sections, known by his name: "The Ammonian Sections." In the fifth century EUTHALIUS, a deacon of Alexandria, divided Paul's Epistles, the Acts, and the General Epistles into Kephalaia; and ANDREAS (Archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia) completed the work by dividing the Apocalypse into 24 Logoi or paragraphs, each being again divided into three Kephalaia.
These dividings of the New Testament can be traced back to individual men, and are all essentially human.
5. The Divisions of the Versions.
(a) The Chapters.—There are other more modern divisions into CHAPTERS. These are quite foreign to the Original Texts of the Old and New Testaments. For a long time they were attributed to HUGHES DE ST. CHER (Hugo de Sancto Caro). He was Provincial to the Dominicans in France, and afterwards a Cardinal in
¹ From פְּרִיב (pūrask), to divide.
² See Ginsburg's Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, Trinitarian Bible Society, 7, Bury Street, Bloomsbury, London.
C
Spain: he died A.D. 1263. But it is now generally believed that they were made by STEPHEN LANGTON, Archbishop of Canterbury, who died in 1227.
(b) The Verses.—Hugo made use of Langton's chapters and added subdivisions which he indicated by letters. This was in 1248. ROBERT STEPHENS, finding these letters inadequate, introduced numbers in their place in his Greek Testament of 1551. This was the origin of our verse-divisions, which were first introduced into the English Version known as the Geneva Bible (1560), and from that into our Authorized Version in 1611. These verses do not correspond always with those of the Hebrew Bible.
(c) The Chapter Breaks.—As to these chapter divisions, they were not of Jewish origin: and were never associated with the Hebrew Bible until A.D. 1330, when RABBI SALOMON BEN ISMAEL adopted the Christian chapters by placing the numerals in the margin, to facilitate reference for purposes of controversy.¹
In many cases they agree with the Massoretic divisions of the Hebrew Bible, though there are glaring instances of divergence.²
It will thus be seen how very modern, and human, and how devoid of all authority are the chapter and verse divisions which obtain in the versions of the Bible generally, and in our English Bible in particular. Though
¹ This appears from a note appended to MS. No. 15, in the Cambridge University Library. See Dr. Ginsburg's Introduction, etc., p. 25.
² Up to A.D. 1517 the Editors of the Printed Text of the Hebrew Bible closely adhered to the MSS. and ignored the Christian or Gentile chapters.
The first to reverse this practice were the Editors of the Complutensian Polyglot of CARDINAL XIMENES (1514-1517); but still confining the indications to the margin, in Roman Numerals.
FELIX PRATENSIS was the first to substitute Hebrew Letters for the Roman Numerals in his Edition printed by Bomberg, Venice, in A.D. 1517; though he retained the Massoretic divisions.
JACOB BEN CHAYIM adopted the same practice in his standard Edition (A.D. 1524-5); and it was continued down to 1571, when
ARIAS MONTANOS actually went so far as to break up the Hebrew Text, and insert the Hebrew Letters (or Numerals) into the body of the Text, in his Edition printed at Antwerp in 1571.
From this, the "pernicious practice," as Dr. Ginsburg well calls it, has continued in the Editions of the Hebrew Text since printed, though it is discarded in his own Massoretico-Critical Edition, printed in Vienna in 1894, and published by the Trinitarian Bible Society of 7, Bury Street, Bloomsbury, London.