WHO PUT THE NUMBERS (chapters and verses) IN THE BIBLE?

The next time you go to a baseball or football game, look for someone in the crowd holding a sign that simply reads: John 3:16. What does it mean? It is a reference to the Gospel of John, chapter three, verse sixteen, which says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” It is a nice, public demonstration of Christian faith. If you and I, however, were at a chariot race in the Coliseum in Rome in the year 200 AD, and saw that sign (it would probably be in Latin: Ioannes III:XVI) we would have no idea what it meant even if we were devout Christians at the time.
What most people take for granted today when they pick up their Bibles is that they can find any passage merely by knowing the book, the chapter, and the verse. Ironically, the original sacred authors never used these tools.When Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote their respective versions of the Gospel, none of themincluded chapters and verses. Even translators like Saint Jerome, who was the first person to translate the entire Old Testament from Hebrew and Greek into Latin and to translate the entire New Testament from Greek into Latin, and then combine both in a one volume book (circa 400 AD), never used chapter and verse.
No Bible had this until 1205 AD, when the Archbishop of Canterbury Stephan Langton assigned chapter numbers to make reading the Bible easier. It took another three and half centuries before the verses were added by Robert Stephanus in 1550 AD. That means there was no 3:16 until 1550. People had to memorize entire passages in their entirety before they could simply say “Matthew 16:18” or any other citation. Another interesting tidbit is that the original sacred authors did not use any punctuation marks, either. Commas, periods, apostrophes, question marks, exclamation marks, and the rest did not exist at the time the books of the Bible were being written. Later on, translators added those to conform to their native tongues and the rules of grammar for languages.

Are there any mistakes in the Bible?

Saint Augustine once said if he ever ran across an apparent error in the Bible, he would conclude that
a) the translator of the sacred text made a mistake when he translated the original Hebrew or Greek into the vernacular or common language;
b) the person who copied the manuscript from the original made a mistake;
c) he as the reader is misinterpreting a text and is not using the author’s intended meaning.
He could never accept the premise that the Bible has any mistakes. This idea is known as inerrancy. No one denies that there are some difficulties in the biblical texts. Originally written in Hebrew and Greek, the Old and New Testaments were copied by hand. Most inconsistencies or irregularities in the Bible are human error and not from the original sacred author, but from human translators who hand-copied from the original or from another copy. Misspelled words, wrong numbers (plural nouns with singular verbs and vice versa), improper gender (feminine-ending adjectives with masculine-or neutral-ending nouns and vice versa), etc., can be found in many manuscripts.Today, computers run spell checks. Back then, you had to use a human editor. These copied texts were then translated into Latin, German, French, Spanish, English, Polish, Russian, Slovenian, Czech, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Arabic, etc.
Only the original manuscript written by the sacred author (called the “autograph” by scripture scholars) is guaranteed inerrant, infallible, and inspired. Unfortunately, there are no surviving originals. Papyrus was used back then and it was more vulnerable to climate changes than today’s paper. Historians and theologians are convinced, however, that our modern translations and versions of the Bible are pretty close to the original.
Difficulties in the Bible arise when a literal interpretation is given to a Biblical passage which should be taken figuratively. When Jonah was sent by God to Ninevah, the Bible says it was such a large city that it took three days to go through it (Jonah 3:3). Literally interpreted, if the average person at that time could walk twenty miles in one day, it would mean the city was sixty miles in diameter. Ever see a traffic jam in downtown Manhattan or Center City Philadelphia? When there are wall-to-wall people and streets crowded with merchants, vendors, animals, carts, etc., it is not like walking on the AppianWay to Rome. Your walking time and distance will be much different in a large city than in a rural town. If taken figuratively, three days does not mean seventy-two hours of nonstop walking.

Ancient Hebrew had no comparative or superlative as we do in English (good, better, best). So they used hyperbole to make a point. It was not intended to be interpreted literally. Jesus said in the Gospel, “If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). Literally interpreted, a Christian would have to hate his mother and father, yet the commandments say we must honor them.Without a comparative, ancient Hebrew could not say what we can say in English, that is, to “love more than,” so it had to make an almost absurd exaggeration. Matthew 10:37 uses the Greek concept when it says, “He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.” When you compare both these passages, you see that the proper way to understand “hate” in Luke 14:26 is as to “love less than” rather than to harbor animosity.

By Rev. John Trigilio Jr., PHD, THD and Rev. Kenneth Brighenti, PHD, in the book 'The Catholicism Answer Book- The 300 Most Frequently Asked Questions', Published by Sourcebooks, Inc. Naperville, Illinois- USA, 2007, p.26,27 & 35. Adapted to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

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