Have you ever wondered how the Bible got its chapters and verses? These divisions are so ingrained in how we read and reference the Bible today, many people don’t realize that they weren’t part of the original texts.
This post will run through a quick history of how Bible chapters and verses came to be. Then we’ll take a look at some fun facts and trivia about them — including why they’re so hard to count (hint: it’s not just because there are thousands of them)!
Chapters and verses are a relatively late addition to the books of the Bible.
Originally, the books of the Bible were written on scrolls without any breaks in the text from one end to the other (including such modern luxuries as spaces between words!). These scrolls were made from papyrus (paper made from plants) or parchment (paper made from animal skins).
These texts flowed as continuous narratives or collections of teachings, making it challenging to locate specific passages. They also could only hold so much information on a single sheet.
1 and 2 Kings, for instance, are actually the same “book,” but had to be split between two scrolls due to their length. The twelve “minor” prophets, on the other hand, were all brief enough to include on a single scroll — despite being active hundreds of years apart.
By the time Christians started compiling the Bible into the format we know today — the “codex,” or more commonly, “book” — the divisions were so familiar that they kept the numbering.
Codices (books) were the format in which the Bible was read for over a thousand years across Christendom. Then, in the early 13 th century, the Archbishop of Canterbury (still at that time a Catholic diocese) Stephen Langton invented a new way to subdivide the books of the Bible into a more digestible format: the chapter.
Langton’s system came at a time when access to religious texts was becoming increasingly important, as people were increasingly expressing interest in hearing Scripture in their own languages, outside of the Latin Mass. Dividing the lengthy books of the Bible into smaller chapters provided a structural framework that made it easier for scholars, clergy, and laypeople alike to reference and study the Bible.
It also paved the way for the coming vernacular Bible revolution: John Wycliffe’s English Bible of 1382 was the first to include Langton’s chapter divisions.
The system of verses was introduced still later. In 1448, a French Jewish rabbi named Isaac Nathan ben Kalonymus divided the Old Testament into verses for the purpose of creating a concordance — the first of its kind in Hebrew. (Of course, it didn’t include the books of the Apocrypha, which were found in Catholic Bibles at the time but not in Jewish Bibles.)
Like Langton’s chapters, Nathan’s innovation came during a period of increasing interest in making the Bible more accessible and understandable to scholars and laypeople — and Christians and Jews — alike.
Then, the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-15th century revolutionized the production and dissemination of texts — especially the Bible. For the first time in history, it enabled the mass production of books, which previously had to be painstakingly copied by hand.
The printed Bible soon became much more widely available — and with it came a greater need for standardized references to facilitate study and discussion.
In 1551, Robert Estienne, a French printer also known as Robertus Stephanus, answered that need. He built on Rabbi Nathan’s work to introduce a verse numbering system for the New Testament as well.
A few years later, Estienne produced the first complete Bible with chapters and verses across both testaments. This achievement made the Bible more accessible to readers and scholars, facilitated easier navigation and citation, and established a consistent reference framework that could be applied to all Bible versions worldwide, in any language.
Though today, his name (like Langton’s and Nathan’s) is not well known, we can scarcely imagine a Bible without his influence.
The Bible contains a total of 1,189 chapters divided between the Old Testament and the New Testament — plus additional chapters in the Apocrypha.
The Old Testament comprises 929 chapters across 39 books in standard Protestant Bibles. These chapters cover everything from history and law to prophecies and poetry.
The number of chapters in the Apocrypha, which includes books not universally accepted within the canonical Bible (due to disagreements around the correct manuscripts to translate from), vary depending on the tradition.
Catholic Bibles, which include the Deuterocanonical Books as part of the Old Testament, contain an additional 145 chapters over Protestant Bibles (plus the addition to Daniel 3), for a total of 1,074. These are spread over 46 books.
Orthodox Bibles include even more material, as well as presenting the Book of Ezra in a different format. The total number of chapters in the Greek Orthodox Old Testament comes to 1,114 divided between 50 books — plus more in various other Orthodox branches.
In most Protestant versions that include it, the Apocrypha contains 173 chapters, separate from the rest of the Old Testament.
The New Testament contains 260 chapters — less than a third as many as the Old Testament. Unlike the Old Testament, this number is the same for all major Christian denominations.
Included in these chapters are the life and teachings of Jesus, the acts of the apostles, various letters from Paul and other apostles, and the prophetic book of Revelation.
In total, the Bible contains some 31,102 verses across its 1,189 chapters, split between the Old and New Testaments.
The Old Testament includes approximately 23,145 verses. These verses span from the creation story in Genesis to the prophecies of Malachi.
While chapters remain relatively equivalent across Bible versions, verses can vary somewhat depending on the translation philosophy. For example, Orthodox Bibles are translated from the Greek Septuagint Old Testament, while Protestant Bibles (and, today, most Catholic ones) are translated from the Hebrew Masoretic Old Testament.
There are minor discrepancies between these texts (and major ones — see the Apocrypha section below) that result in slight differences in verse numbering. But for most English Protestant Bibles, 23,145 is the standard number you can expect to find.
Determining the exact number of verses in the Apocrypha is a complex process due to variations across different denominational traditions and translations. In the commonly accepted versions of the Apocrypha included in Western Bibles, you will find approximately 6,081 verses.
Not all of these verses are included in Catholic Bibles (see the section on chapters above). Since verse numberings are more inconsistent in the Apocrypha (see the history section above), it’s hard to place an exact number, but the entire Catholic Old Testament has somewhere around 28,000 or 29,000 verses, with a few hundred more in Orthodox Bibles.
The New Testament consists of around 7,957 verses, beginning with Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus and ending with the expectation of his return.
As with chapters, this number is more consistent than in the Old Testament — but it can still vary a bit based on a few disputed sections, such as the short and long endings of Mark 16.
It’s impossible to overestimate the impact that the division of the Bible into chapters and verses has had on how we read, understand, and reference God’s Word. While these divisions were not part of the original manuscripts, they have provided invaluable benefits — including easier navigation, standardized citations, and more structured theological study — for generations of readers.
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Jacob is Editorial Director of Bible Gateway. He holds a Master of Theological Studies in Early Christian Thought from Harvard Divinity School, and a Bachelor of Arts in Religious History from Memorial University of Newfoundland, though with most of his coursework from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. His work has appeared in Ekstasis and in Geez Magazine's "Embracing Darkness" Advent devotional.
