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"Verse" Article, Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature
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John Kitto,
ed. The Cyclopaedia of Biblical
Literature. NY: American
Book Exchange,
1880:
2.905-914
VERSE (qwsp, st°cov, kçmma, caesum, incisum, versus, versiculus).
An
inquiry into the origin of the verses into which the printed
text of the Bible in
every language is at present divided, will not, we
trust, prove uninteresting to the
lovers of Biblical literature. As there was no distinct work on the
subject of these
divisions, the writer of this article attempted to
supply the deficiency in a series
of papers published in the year 1842
in the Christian Remembrancer, but the
subject was discontinued,
as not being found adapted to the present
circumstances of that
periodical. We shall here give the
results of our inquiries,
which are not fully developed in the papers
referred to. [[906]] We shall
first
treat of the versicular divisions in manuscripts of the
Bible, viz.: --
1.
Members of rhythmical passages.
2.
Logical divisions in the prose books, peculiar to the
versions.
3.
Logical divisions in the original texts.
The term verse (versus, from verto, ‘to turn’), like
the Greek st°cov, was
applied by the Romans to lines in
general, whether in prose or verse, but more
particularly to the
rhythmical divisions which generally commenced the line with
a capital
letter. The custom of writing
poetical books in stanzas was common
to the Greeks, Romans, Arabians,
and Hebrews. The poetical books
(viz. Job,
Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Canticles), in the
oldest Hebrew MSS., as
the Paris, Bodleian, Cassel, and Regiomontanus,
are also thus divided, and the
poetical passages in the historical
books are still given in this form in our printed
Hebrew Bibles. The Alexandrian MS., and those of the
Italic version, are equally
so written, and this division is found in
the Psalterium Turicense, the Verona and
St. Germain Psalters, and in
Martianay’s edition of Jerome.
Athanasius applied
the term st°cov to the passage in Ps. cxix. 62: ‘I arose at midnight to praise
thee
for the judgment of thy righteousness;’ and Chrysostom observes,
on Ps. xlii, that
‘each stich (st°cov) suffices to afford us much philosophy.’ He also uses the
termhrÒsiv in the same sense. The poetical books are called by
Epiphanius the
five sticjre²v.
The following example is from the Alexandrian MS. (Brit. Mus.):-- [Job
iii.]
Apoloito j jmera
en j egennjqjn en autÛ
Kai j nux j eipon idou arsen
Apenegkoito autjn skotov
Mj eij eiv jmerav eniautou
Mjde ariqmjqeij eis jmerav mjnwn.
Let the day perish wherein I was born,
And the night wherein it was said, There is a man-child
conceived.
As for that night, let darkness seize upon it;
Let it not be joined to the days of the year;
Let it not come into the number of the months.
It is not improbably that
this division may have come from the original authors,
which the nature
of the subject, and especially the parallelism of the sentences,
seems
to require (Jebb’s Sacred Literature). In the Cod. Alex. are
equally
divided in this manner the songs of Moses and of Hannah, the
prayers of
Isaiah, of Jonah, of Habakkuk, Hezekiah, Manasses, and
Azarias; the
Benedicite; and the songs of Mary (theotokos),
Simeon, and Zachariah, in
the New Testament, to which is added the
Morning Hymn, or Gloria in Excelsis.
A similar metrical division is found in the Latin version. Jerome (Ep.
ad Sunn. et
Fret.) applies the term versiculus to the words ‘grando
et
carbones ignis’ (Ps. xviii. 13), assigning as a reason why the
Greeks had not
this versicle after the interposition of two verses,
that it had been inserted in
the Sept. from the Hebrew and Theodotion’s
version (with an asterisk).
He
also observes that it was not easy to reply to the question,
why St. Paul, in
citing the 13th Psalm, added eight verses not found in
the Hebrew.
Martianay
remarks that these eight verses, which form but three divisions in
the
Latin Psalters, are thus found in an ancient Psalter of the koinÐ and the
Italic, in the Abbey of St. Germain
des Pres:
Sepulchrum pateus est guttur eorum
Linguis suis dolose agebant
[Ps. v. 9]
Venenum aspidum sub labris eorum [Ps. cxi. 3]
Quorum os maledictionis et amaritudine sanguinem
Contritio et infelicitas in viis eorum
Et viam pacis non cognoverunt [Isa. lix. 7, 8]
Non est timor Dei ante oculos eorum [Ps. xxxvi, 1]
We need scarcely ad that
these eight stichs, although found in Justin Martyr,
in the Vatican
MS., and in the Vulgate, Arabic, and Ethiopic versions, are an
early
interpolations from Rom. iii. 15-18.
They are wanting in the Cod. Alex.
Jerome observes (Pref. to Job) that the book of Job commences
with
prose, glides into verse, and again ends with a short comma
in prose from the
verse 'Idcirco me reprehendo, et ago poenitentiam in
cinere et favilla' (the form
assumed also by the text of the oldest
Hebrew MSS.). He adds that there
were
700 or 800 verses wanting in the old Latin version of this book,
and makes
mention of 'three short verses' in Ezek. xxi. and Isa.
lxiii. That a
stichometrical
arrangement pervaded the whole Latin Bible is further
evident from the
Speculum Scripturae, attributed to Augustine,
which contains extracts from
Psalms, Canticles, Ecclesiastes, Job,
Hosea, Amos, Micah, Zephaniah,
Malachi, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel,
Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, the four
Evangelists, 2 Corinthians,
Philippians, Timothy, 1 John, and Hebrews.
All
these passages will be found extracted in the Christian
Remembrancer (ut
supra, vol. iii pp. 676-683); and although
the first editors of the Speculum
seem to have misunderstood
Augustine's meaning (Simon's Hist. Critique),
it is beyond a
doubt that the verses in the Speculum (one of which
was,
'Populus ejus et oves pascuae ejus') were of the character which
we are now
describing.
Jerome has not followed any of the divisions of the
present
Hebrew text, except in those passages where he could not well
have avoided
it, viz., the alphabetical division in the book of
Lamentations, and the
alphabetical Psalms, but even here he differs
from the present divisions
(Morini Exere. Bibl.* pars ii. cap.
2).
[* Of this learned work the only copy in
any public institution in London is that
in Mr. Darling's Clerical
Library.]
Jerome introduced a similar division into the prophetical books
and
the books of Chronicles.
To this division he, in the prophetical books,
applies the terms
cola and commata (or 'stanzas' and 'hemistichs'), while
in
the Chronicles he only employs the colon, or longer period. 'No one' he
observes, 'when he
sees the Prophets divided into verses (versibus), must
suppose
that they are bound by metrical lines, or that in this respect
they
resemble the Psalms and the books of Solomon; but as the works
of
Demosthenes and Tully are divided into colons and commas, although
written
in prose and not verse, we have, for the [[907]] convenience of
the reader, also
distinguished out new version by a new species of
writing.' The Chronicles,
he
says, he divided into members of verses (per versuum cola) in
order to avoid
an 'inextricable forest of names.'
The following specimens of Jerome's divisions are from Martianay:
--
[Job iii.]
'Pereat dies in qua natus eum
et nox in qua dictum est:
Conceptus est homo.
Dies illa vertatur in tenebras
non requirat eum Deus desuper
et non illustretur lumine.'
[Isaiah xl.]
'Consolamini, Consolamini, popule meus,
dicit Deus vester.
Loquimini ad cor Jerusalem, et advocate eam:
Omnis vallis exaltabitur,
et omnis mons et collis humiliabitur,
Et erunt prava in directa,
et aspera in vias planas.
Et revelabitur gloria Domini,
et videbit, &c.
Vox dicentis:
Clama.
Et dixi:
Quid clamabo?
Omnis caro foenum,
et omnis gloria ejus quasi flos agri.'
[1 Chron. xiv.]
'Misit quoque Hiram rex Tyri nuntios ad David,
et ligna cedrina, et artifices
parietum,
lignorumque, ut aedificaerunt ei domum.
Cognovitque David quod confirmasset eum
Dominus in regem super Israel,
et
soblevatum esset regnum suum super
populum
ejus Israel.
Accepit quoque David alias uxores in Jerusalem:
genuitque filios, et filias.'
A division of the prophetical books into cola, or stichs, has
been
considered by some to have had its origin before the time of
Jerome.
Eusebius acquaints
us (Hist. Eccl. vi. 16) that Origen, in his Hexapla,
divided
the Greek and other versions into kòla, which, however, Bishop Christopherson
(in
Euseb. Eccles. Hist.) supposes to be the columns containing the
different
texts into which Origen's Polyglott was divided. Hesychius, who died in
A.D.
433, also published his sticjre²v of the twelve prophets, which he calls
an
invention of the Fathers, in imitation of David and Solomon, who had
thus
divided their rhythmical compositions. He observes that the had found a
similar
division in the apostolical books. In this case such division must have
been
anterior to the stichometrical edition of Euthalius, if the date
assigned to his
publication be correct, viz., A.D. 450 [HOLY
SCRIPTURE]. It is not
improbable
that the work of Hesychius was but an adaptation of Jerome's
cola and
commata to the Greek text. This is also the opinion of
Martianay.
Epiphanius
(De Orth. Fid. iv) adds the two books of
Wisdom to the poetical books thus
arranged.
We have seen that Jerome imitates the mode of writing the works
of
Demosthenes and Cicero in his divisions of Chronicles. This custom of
writing
kat
st°couv appears to have been usual among profane
writers.
Josephus observes
that his own Antiquities consisted of sixty thousand st°coi,
although in Ittigius's edition there are
only forty thousand broken lines.
Diogenes
Laertius, in his Lives of the Philosophers,
recounts the number of stichs which
their works contained. There have, however, existed doubts as
to what
the st°coi really were; some supposing them to be simply lines,
or lines
consisting of a certain number of words or letters, as in our
printed books, while
others have maintained them to be lines of varied
length regulated by the sense,
like the cola and commata
of Jerome. The fact is that there
are MSS. written in
both kinds of verses or stichs, with the number of
the stichs placed at the end of
each book; and this is what is called
stichometry, or the enumeration of lines.
The introduction of lines
regulated by the sense into the New Testament is
supposed to have been
a rude substitute for punctuation.
The second mode,
resembling our printed books, is also common;
it is that adopted in the
Charlemagne Bible, at the close of each book
of which will be found the number
of verses, that is, lines of equal
length, but without any regard to the number of
words or
letters.
We are not aware at what time or by whom stichometry was adapted
to
the Gospels, but not long after the time of Euthalius we find it in
common use.
The Cod. Bezae
(C) and the Clermont MS. (D) are thus written.
The following is from C: --
[John i]
En arcÛ
jn é
logov kai é
logov jn prov ton Qeon
Kai Qeov jn é
logov. outov jn arcÛ
prov ton Qeon
Panta di autou egeneto kai cwriv autou
Egeneto oude ›n
é
gegonen;
en autû
Zwj jn kai Ó
zwj jn to fwv twn Anqrwpwn
Kai to fwv en tÛ
skotia fainei
Kai Ó
skotia auto ou katelaben
Egeneto anqropov apestalmenov
Para Qeou, onoma autou Iwannjv.
The following is from Acts xiii. 16, in Greek and Latin:-- (Kipling, p.
747).
Anastav
de é
Paulov --
Cum surrexisset Paulus
Kai
kataseisav tÛ
ceiri eipen
-- Et silentium manu postulasset, dixit,
Andrev
Istrajlitai, kai oi foboumenoi ton Qeon
--
Viri Istraheliti, et qui timetis Deum
Akousate --
Audite
O
Qeov tou laou toutou, k. t. l. -- Deus populi hujus,
&c.
Afterwards, in order to save parchment, it became usual to write
the
stichometrical books continuously, separating the stichs by a
point, but still
placing their numbers at the end of each book. The following is a
specimen
from the Cod. Cypr.:--
O
de egerqeiv. paralabe to paidion. kai tjn mjtera autou. kai jlqen
eis
gj Israjl. akousav
de. éti
Arcjlaov basileuse epi tjv Ioudaiav.
anti Jrwdou tou patros autou. efobjqj
ekei apelqein.
Sometimes, instead of the point, the stichs commenced with a
capital,
as in the Cod. Boerner., which, however, seems to have been
written by an
ignorant Irish scribe, unacquainted with the languages in
which the MS. was
written [VULGATE].
Ut non quasi ex necessitatetem bonum tuum
Ina
mj wv katanagkjn to agaqon sou
sit. Sed voluntarium forsitan enim
ideo
j. Alla katekouseion. Taca gar. Dia
[[908]] t propterea. Ad horam t ad
tempus ut
toutou Ecwrisqj. prov wran
Ina.
eternum illum t eum recipias non jam quasi
aiwneion auton apecjv ouk etei wv
servum fratrem dilectum maxime mihi
doulon. Adelfon. Agapjton. Mallista emoi
quanto autem magis tibi et in carne et in dno
Posw. de mallon soi kai. en. sapkei kai en kw
si igitur t ergo me habes socium accipe
ei oun me eceis koinwnon Proslaboi
illum sicut me. 77. Si autem aliquid nocuit
t
auton wv emai. Ei de .ti.
jdei-
essit te aut debet hoc mihi imputa ego
kjsen se j. ofeileitai. Touto moi
elloga Egw
paulus scripsi mea manu ego reddam
paulov. egraya tj. emj cirei. Egw apoteisw.
ut non dicam tibi quod et te ipsum mihi
Ina mj legw soi. oti kai se auton.
moi.
debes ita t utique frater ego te fruar
prosofileiv. Nai. Jai adelfe. Egw sou. onaimjn.
in dno
en
kw. [Philem. 14-20.]
The stichs were sometimes very short, as in Cod. Laud. (E), in
which
there is seldom above one word in each. The Clermont MS. (D) contains
a
list of the stichs in all the Greek books of the Old and New
Testaments, and
the Stichometry of Nicephorus contains
a similar enumeration of the
Canonical books,-- the Antilegomena of the
Old and New Testament,-- and
of the Apocryphal books, as Enoch, the
Testaments of the Patriarchs, &c. &c.
Hug (Introd.) observes that the
Codex Alexandrinus might be easily
mistaken for the copy of a
stichometrical manuscript, from the resemblance
of its divisions to the
st°coi,
as,
jkousa
de fwnjv lefousjv moi. anastav
Petre. quson kai
fage.
but these occur only in
occasional passages.
Instances occur in other MSS. in which the stanzas are numbered
in
the margin, as in the Song of Moses in Greek and Latin in the
Psalter of
Sedulius of Ireland, who flourished in the ninth
century. The song
consists
of forty-two commas or stichs, with a Roman numeral prefixed
to each-- all
in the handwriting of Sedulius. The Latin in Ante-hieronymian
(Montfaucon,
Palaeogr. Graec.; also Christ.
Rememb.
ut supra, p. 687).
There is a Greek Stichometrical manuscript of Isaiah, probably
of
the ninth century, in the Bibliothèque du Roi (1892), in which the
stichs do
not commence with the line, but there is a Greek numeral
letter attached in
the margin opposite each stich, the enumeration
recommencing at the end
of every hundred lines, in this
form:--
1.
The vision of Isaiah, the son of Amoz, which
he saw concerning Juda
and Jerusalem, in
the days of Uzziah,
Jotham, Ahaz, and
Hezekiah, kings
of
2.
Judah. Hear, O heavens,
and
3.
give ear, O earth: for the
Lord hath spoken.
4.
I have nourished and brought up children,
and they
5.
have rebelled against me.
The ox knoweth
6.
his owner, and the ass his master's crib:
7.
but Israel doth not know, my people
8.
doth not consider. O sinful
nation,
9.
a people laden with iniquity, a seed
10. of
evil-doers, children that are corrupters,
they have forsa
11. ken the
Lord, they have provoked the ho
ly one of Israel to anger; they are gone away
backward. Ye will revolt
more and more, &c.
12. Why should
ye be stricken any more?
Hug is of the opinion that the Stichometrical system gave rise to
the
continuous and regular grammatical punctuation. Attempts at interpunction
for
the sake of the sense were, however, of much greater antiquity in
profane
authors that the era of Stichometry. Grammatical points are said to
have
been introduced by Aristophanes of Byzantium about two centuries
before the
Christian era.
We have already seen that interpunction was in use in MSS.
of
the New Testament before Euthalius, as in the Cod. Alex. Isidore of Spain
acquaints us
that in the only note of division in his time was a single
point,
which, to denote a comma, or short pause, was
placed at the bottom; to
denote a colon, or larger pause, in
the middle; and to denote a full pause, or
period, was placed at the
top of the final letter of the sentence.
Manuscripts of
the New Testament, as the Zurich Cod. Bas. E.,
have come down to us thus
pointed. In others, as the Cod. Alex. and Cod.
Ephrem., the point is placed
indifferently at the top, bottom, or
middle of the letter (Tischendorf, Cod.
Ephrem.). Others, as L., use a cross for the
purpose of marking a period, and
Colb. 700 makes use of no other
mark. Hupfeld, however, (Stud. u.
Krit.),
doubts
whether the points in Cod. Cyprius are notes of the stichs, and
denies
any distinction between grammatical and other
interpunction.
Originally there were no spaces between the words, but in the eighth
or
ninth century they began to be separated either by spaces* or by
points.
About the same
period the present marks of punctuation began to be
gradually and
imperceptibly adopted, and had become universal in the
tenth
century. Michaelis
(Introd. ch. xiii.) says, 'that
Jerome introduced the comma
and colon;' but this was not for the
purpose of dividing sentences [VULGATE].
Cod. V., however, in Matthaeii,
of the eighth century, has the comma and the
point, and Cod. Vat. 351,
the colon. The Greek note of
interrogation came
into use in the ninth century. After the invention of printing, the
Aldine editions
fixed the punctuation, which was, however, varied by
Robert Stephens in his
different editions of the Bible. It is scarcely necessary to observe that
the
punctuation of the Bible possesses no authority, and that no critic
hesitates to
dissent from it.
The accents, or the writing kat
prosûd°an, which
were
already in use in the Old Testament, were added by Euthalius to
his edition,
but were not in general use before the tenth
century.
[* In the Cod. Alex.
blank spaces are found at the end of the commas or
sections, but
nowhere else (Marsh's Michaelis).]
The Hebrew MSS. all contain a versicular division, marked with
the
accent called silluk, and the soph
pasuk
(end of the verse). The word
pasuk, qwsp, is found in the
Talmud, where it denotes some division of this
kind; but whether the
Talmudical pesukim are identical with
those in the
manuscripts, has been strongly contested. [[909]] It is said in tract
Kiddushun (30, c. 1), 'Our
rabbins assert that the law contains 5888 (or,
according to Morinus,
8888) pesukim,' while, according to
the division in our
Bibles, there are 5845 verses. 'The Psalms have 8 more.' There are at present
2527. 'The Chronicles 8 less.' This division rather resembles the
st°coi in the
Sept., of which the Psalms contain
5000. In the Mishna
(Megilla, iv. 1) it is said,
'He who reads the law must not read
less that three pesukim. Let
not more than
one be read by the interpreter, or three in the
Prophets.' The passage
in
Isa. lii. 3-5 is reckoned as three pesukim. In Taen (iv. 3), a precept is
given for
reading the history of the creation according to the Parashes
and the verses in
the law; and in the Bab. Talmud (Baba Bathra,
xiv. c. 2) the passage in
Deut. xxxiv. 5-12 is called 'the last eight
verses (pesukim) in the law.'
It is
evident, therefore, that some at least of our present
verses correspond with the
Talmudical. The term £yqwysyp [[sic.]] pisukim is also applied in the
Gemara,
as anonymous with £ymvX, to reading lessons in general, and sometimes
to
short passages or half verses.
But no marks appear to have existed in the
text to distinguish
these divisions, which were doubtless preserved by oral
teaching. The first notice of such signs is found
in Sopherim (iii. 7), in these
words: 'Liber legis, in quo
incisum est, et in quo capita incisorum punctata
sunt, ne legas in
illo.' No such marks occur in the
synagogue rolls. The
Sept.
and Vulg. differ both from the Hebrew and from each other in
divisions of this
character.
(Ps. xliii. 11, 12; xc. 2; Lam. iii. 5; Jon. ii. 6; Obad. 9; Vulg.
Cant. v. 5;
Eccles. i. 5).
The pesukim of the Talmud, which are said there to
have
descended from Moses, may have been possibly separated by
spaces. From
a
Targum on Cant. v. 13, it appears that the decalogue was originally
written in
ten lines (tammim). All the pointed or Masoretic MSS.
contain the present
verses, divided by the soph pasuk
(:). We
have already referred to the
practice of the Masorites in numbering
these verses, which was done at the
end of each book. Thus at the end of Genesis: 'Genesis has 1534 verses,'
&c.;
and at the end of the Pentateuch: 'The number of verses (pesukim)
in the book
of Deuteronomy is 955,' it sign ¦nh [[sic.]] (which represents the same
number);
the middle verse is, "And thou shalt do according to the
sentence" (xvii. 10); the
number of the parashes is 10, and of
sidarim 27; and the number of the verses
in the entire
Pentateuch is 5245 [5845?] . . . . .
The number of verses in the
Psalms is 2527, the sign
¢zk''; the middle verse, "Nevertheless they
flattered
thee with their mouth" [lxxviii. 36]; the number of
sidarim 19, and the number of
Psalms 150.' The Venice edition of Ben Chaijim, from
which these divisions
are taken, omits them in Chronicles, but they are
supplied by two manuscripts.
In the Pentateuch the number of
verses in the greater sections, or those marked
by p p p and s s s, is also indicated at the end of each section,
thus: 'Bereshith
has 146
verses, sign hycm'; Noah has 153 verses, &c. The entire number of
verses is
23,206.' Before the Concordance of
Rabbi Nathan in the fifteenth
century [HOLY SCRIPTURES], the Jews made
their references by citing in the
Pentateuch the two first words of the
Sabbath lessons, making no use of the
shorter sidarim, or of the
open or shut parashes. Of these,
which are confined
to the Pentateuch, there are 290 open and 379
shut. Of the larger
parashes,
or Sabbath lessons, Genesis contains 12, Exodus 11,
Leviticus, Numbers,
and Deuteronomy 10 each. Of the lesser sidarim Genesis contains 42, &c.
These always commence in the
Pentateuch with an open or closed section.
From the time of Cardinal
Hugo's Concordance citations began to be made
by chapter and letter
[SCRIPTURE, HOLY]. All MSS. of the
Vulgate after this
period began to be thus marked, and we find Nicholas
de Lyra in the
fourteenth century frequently citing them in this
manner. The citation of
chapter
and verse was a Jewish improvement of the succeeding
century.*
[* Mr. Gresly (Forest of
Arden,
ch. i.) is guilty of an anachronism in making
Latimer, in 1537, cite
for his text the twentieth verse of the tenth chapter
of
Matthew. The New
Testament was not referred to by verses until long after
this
period.]
The ancient Greek MSS. which have descended to our times
also
contain a division into short sentences, which have been
sometimes
called st°coi and verses. They are regulated by the sense, and
each
constitutes a full period.
They are frequently double or treble the length of
the verses in
our present New Testament, although sometimes they are
identical with
them. The Alexandrian, Vatican,
Cambridge, Dublin, and other
ancient MSS., all contain similar
divisions. The following is from
the Cod.
Ephremi:-- [I Tim. iii. 12-16].
Diakonoi estwsan
miav gunaikov andrev;
teknwn
kalwv pro»stamenoi
kai twn idiwn oikiwn;
o³
gar
kalwv diakonjsantev;
baqmon ›autoiv
kalon
peripoiountai;
kai polljn parrjsian en pistei
tÛ
en Cw. IÂ;
Tauta.
soi grafw elpizwn elqein prov se en tacei;
ean de bradunw;
ina eidjv pwv dei en oikû
qou
anasrefesqai eitiv estin ekkljsia qou zwntov;
stulov kai ›draiwma
tjv aljqeiav;
Ka±
émologoumenwv
mega estin to tjv eusebeiav
mustjrion;
ov[?] efanerwqj en
sarki;
edikaiwqei
pni;
wfqj aggeloiv;
ekjrucqj en eqnesin;
episteuqj en kosmû;
aneljmfqj en doxÛ;
Versicular divisions in the printed Bibles.-- These, together with
the
numerical notation, are generally attributed to Robert Stephen, or
Stephens
(Etienne).
Their origin is, notwithstanding, involved in obscurity. Even those
who attribute the
invention to Stephens are not agreed as to their date. 'We
are assumed,' observes
Calmet (Pref. to the Bible), 'that it is Robert Stephens
who, in
his edition of 1545, has divided the text by verses, numbered as
at
present.' This division
passed from the Latins to the Greeks and Hebrews.
'Robert Stephens," says Du Pin
(Proleg.), 'was the first who followed the
Masorites in his
edition of the Vulgate in 1545.'
'Verses,' says Simon (Hist.
Critique), and after him Jahn
(Introd.), 'were first introduced into the Vulgate
and marked
with figures by Robert Stephens in 1548.
Morinus (Exercit. Bibl.),
who is followed by Prideaux
(Connection), attributes the verses to Vatablus,
without naming
a date, while Chevillier (Hist. de l'Imprimerie) and
Maittaire
(Historia Stephanorum) assert that Stephens divided
[[910]] the chapters into
verses, placing a figure at each verse, in
the New Testament in 1551, and in the
Old in 1557. Chevillier adds that James Faber of
Estaples had introduced the
practice in his edition of the Psalms
printed in 1509 by Henry, father of Robert
Stephens; and he is followed
by Renouard (Annales des Etienne, Paris, 1843),
in supposing
that Stephens took his idea from this very work. But, not to multiply
instances,
Mr. Horne (Introd. vol. ii. p. i.
ch. ii s. iii. § 1) gives the following
account of their
introduction: 'Rabbi Mordecai
Nathan . . . . undertook a similar
Concordance [to that of Hugo] for
the Hebrew Scriptures [SCRIPTURES, HOLY],
but instead of adopting the
marginal letters of Hugo, he marked every fifth verse
with a Hebrew
numeral, thus, ' 1, h 5, &c.; retaining, however, the
cardinal's
divisions into chapters . . . . The introduction of verses into the
Hebrew Bible
was made by Athias, a Jew of Amsterdam [1661] . . . . with
the figures common
in use, except those which had been previously
marked by Nathan with Hebrew
letters in the manner in which they at
present appear in the Hebrew Bibles.
By
rejecting these Hebrew numerals, and substituting for them
the corresponding
figures,
all the copies of the Bible in other languages have since been
marked.'
'The verses into
which the New Testament is now divided are much more
modern [than the
st°coi], and are an imitation of those invented for the
Old
Testament by Rabbi Nathan in the fifteenth century. Robert Stephens was the
first
inventor.' In another place (§ 2)
Mr. Horne has observed that the
Masorites were the inventors of verses,
but without intimating that they are the
same with those now in
use. Doubts were entertained on
this subject so early
as the sixteenth century. 'Who first,' observes Elias Levita,
'divided the books
of the Old and New Testament into st°coi? There
are even some who entertain
doubts respecting a matter but recently
come into use, viz., who the person was
who introduced the division of
verses into the Greek and Latin Bibles.'
Serrarius (Proleg.)
makes the following allusions to the circumstance: 'I
strongly suspect that it is
far from certain who first restored the intermitted
division into
verses. Henry Stephens, indeed
having once come to Wurzburg,
would fain have persuaded me that his
father Robert was the inventor of this
distinction in the New
Testament: and I afterwards
observed this same
statement in his preface to his Greek
Concordance, with the addition that it
was on his way from Paris to
Lyons that he made the division, a great part
of it while riding on
horseback' (inter equitandum).
'This may, after all, be
an empty boast; but supposing it true,
as Catholics have used the versions
of Aquila, Symmachus, and
Theodotion, who were apostates or heretics,
so may we use this division
of Robert Stephens;' and, not able to conceal
his mortification that
the honour should belong to a Protestant, he
significantly observes
that Seneca had found the best scribes (notarii)
among the
vilest slaves. Henry Stephens, in
the preface to his Concordance,
thus expatiates on his father's
invention: 'As the books of the New
Testament
has been already divided into the sections (themata)
which we call chapters,
he himself sub-divided them into those smaller
sections, called by an
appellation more approved of by others than by
himself, versicles. He
would
have preferred calling them by the Greek tmematia, or the
Latin sectiunculae;
for he perceived that the ancient name of
these sections was now restricted to
another use. He accomplished this division of each
chapter on his journey from
Paris to Lyons, and the greater part of it
inter equitandum. A short
time before,
while he thought on the matter, every one pronounced him
mad, for wasting his
time and labour on an unprofitable affair which
would gain him more derision
than honour: but lo! in spite of all their
predictions, the invention no sooner saw
the light, than it met with
universal approbation, and obtained such authority that
all other
editions of the New Testament in Greek, Latin, German, and
other
vernacular tongues, which did not adopt it, were rejected as
unauthorized.'
Henry
Stephens had already stated the same fact, in the dedication to
Sir
Philip Sydney, prefixed to his second edition of the Greek
Testament (1576).
We now
proceed to Stephens's own statements.
Upon leaving the church of Rome, and embracing Calvinism in 1551,
in
which year he took refuge in Geneva, he published his fourth edition
of the
Greek Testament, combining also the Vulgate and the Latin
version of
Erasmus, with the date in the title MDLXI., an evident error for MDLI. The X
has been, in consequence,
erased in nearly all the copies. In
the preface, he
observes:
'As to our having numbered this work with certain versicles, as
they
call them, we have herein followed the most ancient Greek and
Latin
manuscripts of the New Testament, and have imitated them the more
willingly,
that each translation may be made the more readily to
correspond with the
opposite Greek.' Bishop Marsh (notes to
Michaelis), and after him Mr. Horne
(ut supra), asserts
that 'Beza split the Greek text into the verses invented by
Robert
Stephens;' but the bishop is evidently mistaken, as Stephens's
fourth
edition is divided into these breaks as well as Beza's (see
facsimile in Christ.
Remembr. ut supra). Each verse commences the line with a
capital, the
figures being placed between the
columns.
The fourth editions of the Greek Testament was followed, in 1555,
by
the seventh of the Latin Vulgate, in 8vo., containing the whole
Bible, having the
present verses marked throughout with numerals, and
the following address to
the reader. 'Here is an edition of the Latin
Vulgate, in which each chapter is
divided into verses, according to the
Hebrew form of verses, with numerals
prefixed, corresponding to the
number of the verse which has been added in
our new and complete
Concordance, after the marginal letters A, B, C, D, E, F,
G, that you
may be relieved from the labour of searching for what these
figures
will point out to you as with the finger.' The title page bears Stephens's
olive;
and the name of the printer Conrad Badius, the son-in-law of
Stephens, with
the date 8 idibus Aprilis 1555, shows where and
when it was printed. It
was
the first edition of the entire Bible printed by Stephens since he
left the church
of Rome.
The text is continuous, the verses being separated by a ¶, with
the
figures in the body of the text.
The next edition of the Bible by Stephens is that of 1556-7, in three
vols.
fol. containing the [[911]] Vulgate, the version of Paginus, and
Beza's Latin
version of the New Testament, now first published. The notes are those
commonly
ascribed to Vatablus, with those of Claude Badwell in the
Apocryphal
books. The text is broken up into
divisions, and there is a notice to
the reader apprising him that this
edition contains the text divided into verses,
as in the Hebrew
copies.
Again, in the preface to Stephens' Latin and French New
Testament,
published at Geneva in 1552, which is also thus divided, but
which we have
never seen cited, he observed: 'Et a fin de plus aisement pouoir faire
la dicte
collation et confrontement, avons distingue tout iceluy
Nouveau Testament
comme par vers, a la façon et manière que tout le
Vieil a este escript et
distingué, soit par Moyse et les prophets
compositeurs et autheurs ou par
scavans Hebrieux succedans, pour la
conservation des dictes Escriptures,
suyuans aussi en ce en partie la
manière de ceux qui ont escript le premières
exemplaires Grecs, et le
vieulx escripts de la vielle tralation Latine du dict
Testament, qui de
chasque sentence, ou chasque moitie de sentence, voire
de toutes les
parties d'une sentenceeu faisoyant commedes versets. Et en la
fin de chasque livre
mettoyent le nombre d'iceulx versets:
possible a fin que
par ce moyen on n'en peust rien oster, car on
l'eust appercen en retrouvant le
contenu du nombre des dicts
versets.' Stephens adds that he has
also given
references to the verses in indexes and concordances, not
omitting the letters
(lettrines) by which the chapters had been divided
by his predecessors into
four or seven parts, according to their
length, for the purpose of a concordance.
He makes reference to the
chapters and verses in his Harmonia Evangelica,
taken from the
work of Leo Judah, and placed at the end of his edition of the
New
Testament (1551).
Henry Stephens, in his
preface to his Concordance, states that it was
this division
with first suggested to his father's fertile mind the idea of a
Greek
and Latin concordance to the New Testament, in imitation of his
Latin
concordance, Concordantiae Bibl., utriusque Testamenti VII
Cal. Feb. 1555,
fol; in the preface to which he says that he has
followed the Hebrew mode of
numbering the verses. In the title-page he makes an appeal to
his brother
printers no to 'thrust their sickle into his harvest;' not
that he 'feared such
plagiary from well-educated printers, but from the
common herd of illiterate
publishers, whom he considered as no better
than highway robbers, no more
capable of Christian integrity than so
many African pirates.' 'Whether
his
apprehensions were well founded,' continues his son, 'let the
experience of
others tell.'
Owing to Stephens's death in 1559, his Concordance
was
published by Henry Stephens, in 1594.
But it is far from being true that Stephens, as has been
commonly
believed, was the first who either followed the Masorites, or
divided the
chapters into verses, or attached figures to each
verse. This had been
done,
not only in regard to the Psalms, by James le Fevre, in this
Psalterium
Quincuplex in 1509, but throughout the whole
Bible by Sanctes Pagninus in
1528. The Psalterium was beautifully
printed by Henry, father of Robert
Stephens, each verse commencing the
line with a red letter, and a number
prefixed; and we may here observe,
that the Book of Psalms was the first
portion of the Scriptures to
which numbers were attached by designating each
separate Psalm by its
number. Some ascribe this
numeration to the Seventy;
it is, we believe, first referred to by St.
Hilary (Pref.), and is found in the
manuscripts of the
Sept. Whether they were so numbered
at the Christian era,
is
somewhat doubtful. In Acts xiii.
33, the second Psalm is cited by its number,
but to some of the
best manuscripts the reading here is the first Psalm. In
ver. 35 'in another' is
said, without reference to its number; and Kuinoel is of
opinion that
the true reading in ver. 33 is simply en yalmþ -- 'in a psalm.'
In the year 1528 the Dominican Sanctes Pagninus of Lucca
published
at Lyons, in quarto, his accurate translation of the Bible
into Latin from the
Hebrew and the Greek. This edition is divided throughout into
verses marked
with Arabic numerals in the margin, both in the Old and
New Testament. The
text
runs on continuously, except in the Psalms, where each verse
commences
the line. There
was a second edition, more beautifully executed, but without
the
figures and divisions, published at Cologne in 1541. The versicular divisions in
the
Old Testament are precisely the same with those now in use, -- viz.,
the
Masoretic. Each verse
is separated by a peculiar mark ([[like ¶ without the
tail]]).
Masch (Biblioth. Sac.), in reference to Stephens' statement that
he had
followed the oldest Greek manuscripts, says that this assertion
was made by
Stephens to conciliate those who were taking all methods of
blackening him,
for that the ancient divisions were quite
different. The reader will judge
from
Stephens preface to his French translation above cited, whether
this assertion
is borne out.
Stephens there asserts that the authors of the
ancient
(stichometrical) division reckoned by whole books, and he only
professes to
imitate them in part, as well as the Hebrew
copies: which he did by making
a
versicular division of each chapter, and prefixing a figure to each
verse (as in
Nathan's Concordance), instead of adding the amount
at the end of each book.
Hug observes that it is really
true that ancient MSS. of the New Testament are
sometimes divided into
smaller sections, which have some analogy to our
verses, instancing the
Alexandrine, Vatican, and others.
We have already
given an example of this in C, to which we shall
here add one more
instance-- viz., V. in Matthaei (Appendix to vol. ix.
p. 265), who observes
that 'this MS. is stichometrically
arranged.' His facsimile contains
eight of
the nine first verses of St. Mark's Gospel, each of which
commences the line
with a capital. All but one are identical with those in
Stephens, whose first two
verses form but one in the Moscow
MS.
It is, however, only in the canonical books of the Old Testament
that
Stephens follows Pagninus.
In St. Matthew's Gospel, Pagninus has 577
verses, and Stephens
1071. The number of verses in each
chapter in
Stephens is often double, frequently treble that in
Pagninus. In John v.
for
instance, Pagninus has 7 and Stephens 22 verses. In the deutero-canonical
books,
into which no Masoretic distinction had found its way, Stephens
has
also a different division; thus, in Tobit he has 292 verses, while
Pagninus has
but 76; and the same proportion prevails throughout the
other books, only
Pagninus has not the third and [[912]] fourth books
of Esdras, the Prayer of
Manasses, nor the addenda to
Daniel.
There are two editions of the Bible containing this division, stated
by
Le Long to have been published this year in Lyons, one by John
Frellon, the
other by Antony Vincent. The former is entitled Biblia
Sacro-Sancta Veteris
et Novi Testamenti, Lugdun., apud Joannem
Frellonium, 1556, 8; the
colophon of which has 'Lugduni, ex officinâ
typographicâ Michaelis Sylvii,
MDLV.,' which, doubtless, induced Le
Long to assign to it the latter date.
We have at present a copy of
this rare edition before us, and there was a
second, which exactly
represented it, published in 1566, of which there is a
copy in the
Brit. Museum. Masch, the
continuator of Le Long, observes of
this edition (vol. iii. p. 202),
that the publisher did not venture to ascribe the
division of verses to
Stephens, but refers it to Pagninus.
Le Long places
Stephens' edition and Vincent's together among
the Protestant versions;
thus:
'Biblia Latina.
Character minutissimo. R.
Stephanus lectori. En
tibi
Bibliorum Vulgata &c. (ut supp. p. 910).) in 8vo. Olivã Rob. Stephani. 1555.
'Biblia Latina.
Minutioribus characteribus, versibus, numerorum
distinctione
notatis, in 8vo., Lugduni, Ant. Vincentii, 1555, 1556. Eadem est
prorsus editio. Ex monitione typographi: "Biblia Sacra quum jam non
semel
variis tum typis tum formis emiserim, sicque passis ulnis
accepta, ut pe unum
quidem aut alterum nobis superesset exemplar . . .
. . . id operis minutioribus
quam antea unquam excudi placuit
characteribus. . . . . . . Deinde
quae ad
sacrarum sensum literarum pertinere visa sunt non omissurus,
Hebraeorum
secutus morem, versos quoslibet notandos curavi . . . . . .
quo send ipsa certis
distincta versibus clarius innotescerent, et
minori negotio linguae sanctae
candidati concordantius, commentaria,
&c., consulere possent." . . .
. . utraque
editio prima est his distincta versibus,
&c.'
According to this statement of Le Long, it would appear that the
edition
of Robert Stephens and that of Antony Vincent were the
same. Masch, however,
who
places Stephens' edition of 1555 in its chronological order (p. 209),
and
does not transfer it to the Protestant editions, notices Vincent's
thus:--
'Biblia utriusque Testamenti, Lugduni, in aedibus Antonii
Vincentii,
MDLV., &c.
Biblia . . . MDLVI. versibus distinct. Eadem est prorsus
editio . . .
. . utraque est (ut supra).'
Now, whatever the word utraque or eadem
here
refers to, the very extract from the preface given by Le Long as
Vincent's
(whose edition we have never seen), commencing with 'Biblia
Sacra quum
jam non semel,' forms part of the preface to Frellon's
edition, of which Masch
had observed that the publisher did not venture
to assign the invention of the
verses to Stephens, but ascribed them to
Pagninus. It was this
circumstance
which led us to turn to this preface, which also contains
the identical assertion:
'Et ne quem sua frustratum a
nobis laude quispiam clamitet, aut peculatus arguet,
et etiam ut
institutum hoc nostrum plus ponderis obtineat, ultro fatemur
nos
imitatos Santem illum Pagninum Heb. linguae peritissimum, qui et
hoc ipsum
ceu necessarium magnopere probans, eo modo sua imprimenda
curavit.' Now
it seems
clear that Frellon, whom, from the evidence before us, we must
believe
to have been the true author of this preface, wishes to take
credit to himself for the
introduction of the division of verses into
his Bible, and from his declaration that
he takes Pagninus for his
model, in order that none should complain of being
defrauded, we think
it by no means improbable that he meant this observation as
a sly
insinuation against Robert Stephens, who had, in the preface to his
Concordance just published, not only protested against such frauds on
the part
of his brother printers, but had himself adopted Pagninus's
figures without
acknowledgement, while it is equally evident that
Frellon adopts not Pagninus'
but Stephens' division, both in the New Testament and
in the deutero-canonical
books of the Old; for we presume from the
dates that Stephens' edition was the
earliest printed; and his
Concordance, as we have seen, was published so early
as the
month of January in the same year.
The verses in Frellon's edition are
divided into breaks, with
the figures on the left margin.
The next edition containing this division into verses is
Stephens's
eighth and last edition of the Vulgate, 1556-1557, 3 vols.
fol. This is one of
the
editions called Vatablus' Bibles, of which there are three, viz.,
Stephens'
nonpareil (1545), his eighth edition of which we are not
treating, and the triglott
edition published at Heidelberg in
1599. It is the Bible which Morinus
(Exercit.
Bibl.), Prideaux (Connect. vol. i.), and so
many other, conceived to have been
the first containing the