Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1855-12-20
THE PRESENT TRANSLATION OF
THE BIBLE.

The EHiMJu,yh R'ricm, in recent article
upon this subject, gives the following facts
The Divisions of the Bible into chapter and
verse, which have no existence in the original,
have been made without any authority whatcv-
cr. They were introduced for the purpose of
libcrating the theological student from the ne
ce<sitv Of attaining deep and accurate knowl-
edge Of the Scriptures, by placing in his hands
Concordance which they have been notched
and scored to tally with, and by which he may
be readily assisted to the discovery of any pas
sage he may chance to want. About the mid
die of the thirteenth century, Cardinal Hugo
de Santo Caro- projected Concordance to the
Testament into chapters Rabbi Nathan, in
the fifteenth century, in preparing a Concor-
dance of the Hebrew Scriptures, subdivided
the chapters into verses Robert Stephens, in
the sixteenth century, passed simultaneously
through the press New Testament and Con-
cordancc: and, SO at least his son Henry tells
Us, while travelling on horseback between Iy-
onS and Paris, he cut the New Testament into
verses for the sake of adapting it to his Con-
cordance This, We believe, is, in brief, the
most approved account of the origin of those
divisions and subdivisions by which our editions
of the Bible are disfgured No other book
ever suffered such irreverent treatment. In all
other compositions the paragraph ends where
the sense pauses in the Sacred Scriptures,
whatever the sense may be, every third or
fourth line brings the reader to the end of the
paragraph. They are the only works we hap
pen to be acquainted with in which the correct
arrangement of the authors text has been rem
dered subordinate to the facility of reference
And we arc quite sure that they alone are en-
dowed with q sufficient force of vitality toout-
live so cruel process of mutilation.
The practice Of breaking the text of Scrip
turc into verses, would, under any circumstan-
ccs, prove most injurious to the ri ight appre-
hension Of its meaning. 1t is the Immediate
cause of much misconception.~Passages of
Holy Writ, thus insulated, receive kind ofin-
dependent character. The sense of each little
paragraph seems drawn to point and the
careless or unlettered reader is apt to confne
his attention to the few words thus placed in an
aphoristic form before him, and to- accept them
as distinct enunciation of some religious
dogma whereas, if they had been presented
to his eye in connection with their context, he
would at once have received them in their right
meaning, and been spared the error into which
the present deceptive mode of printing the
volume has betrayed him. We cannot con-
ceive any case in which evil would not have
resulted from the introduction of our divisions
of chapter and verse. With whatever care
the Sacred Text had been cut into such min
ute sections, those minute sections must neces-
sarily have had tendency to mislead the read
er. But they have not been carefully made.
The only end contemplated in making them,
was to fit the Bible to the Concordance And
that it might be effectually accomplished, ev-
cry other consideration progress of the
narrative, the beauty of the poetry, the theolog-
ical argument, and even the grammatical con-
struction of the sentences-have been continu-
ally disregarded. We need not enlarge on the
detriment which the eloquence, the pathos, the
impression, the very intelligibility of the Sa-
cred Writings have incurred from this reckless
and fractional mode of subdivision.
What would be the effect on the understand
ing of the student, if metaphysical essay of
Dugald Stewart were set before him in a form
as lacerated and severed as that in which he is
condemned to read the Theological Essays of
St. Paul? Would he not find himself lost in
sort of labyrinth of words, amid which he
was unable, on account of the continually re-
curing breaks in the sentences, to trace the
connection of the argument? A very intelli-
gent friend of ours declares, that he never
could comprehend the drift of the Epistle to
the Romans, till he read it without the inter-
ruptions of chapter and verse, in Shuttle
worth 8 translation.
What was the opinion Of seldeu, highau-