Originally, Bible Scripture wasn’t divided by chapter and verse. It all ran together. Not hard to imagine how difficult that must have been to locate a passage. Thank God we don’t have to deal with that today. The following is the breakdown of when and by whom the divisions occurred.

Chapter divisions. These were put in place in A.D. 1227 by the Archbishop of Canterbury (a city in southeast England). His name was Stephen Langton. The first Bible to use his pattern was the Wycliffe English Bible in 1382. Nearly all translations since then have adopted Langton’s chapter arrangements.

Verse divisions. In A.D. 1448, a French Jewish Rabbi named Isaac Nathan divided the Old Testament into verses. In A.D. 1555, French printer and scholar, Robert Estienne (also known by the Latin name Stephanus), established the verses for the New Testament. He used basically the same verse divisions that Nathan rendered for the Old Testament. Since that time, nearly all Bible translations have employed Estienne’s format.

Overall, these chapter and verse divisions have served us well. Bible scholars have said that it’s only in a few places that the chapter breaks were poorly placed, dividing content that should have flowed together.