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)!
Where Did Bible Chapters and Verses Come From?
Chapters and verses are a relatively late addition to the books of the Bible.
Scrolls: The Original Divisions 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.
History of Bible Chapters
Codices (books) were the format in which the Bible was read for over a thousand years across Christendom. Then, in the early 13th 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.
History of Bible Verses
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.
The First Complete Bible with Chapters and Verses
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.
How Many Chapters Are There in the Bible?
The Bible contains a total of 1,189 chapters divided between the Old Testament and the New Testament — plus additional chapters in the Apocrypha.
Number of Chapters in the Old Testament
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.
Number of Chapters in the Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical Books
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.
Number of Chapters in the New 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.
Longest and Shortest Chapters in the Bible
- Longest Chapter: Psalm 119 in the Old Testament is the longest chapter in the Bible, with 176 verses. It’s a beautiful and complex meditation on the varied ups and downs of human experience and the steadfast dependability of God’s law.
- Shortest Chapter: Psalm 117 is the shortest chapter, containing just two verses that call all nations to praise the Lord.
How Many Verses Are There in the Bible?
In total, the Bible contains some 31,102 verses across its 1,189 chapters, split between the Old and New Testaments.
Number of Verses in the Old Testament
The Old Testament includes approximately 23,145 verses. These verses span from the creation story in Genesis to the prophecies of Malachi.
Why “approximately”?
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.
Number of Verses in the Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical Books
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.
Number of Verses in the New Testament
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.
Longest and Shortest Verses in the Bible
- Longest Verse: Esther 8:9 holds the record for the longest verse in the Bible. This verse details King Ahasuerus’ decree allowing the Jews to defend themselves across his empire, “from India to Ethiopia.”
- Shortest Verse: John 11:35 is the shortest verse in the Bible — and one of the most powerful. It simply states (in the NIV translation), “Jesus wept.” The brevity encourages us to witness Jesus’ profound compassion and humanity as he mourns the death of his friend Lazarus.
Conclusion: The Value of Verse and Chapter Additions
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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5 Questions on the Book of Revelation: Q&A
For many people, Revelation is a bit intimidating. It’s a big book with a lot of weird characters in it.
And yet, for the last 2000 years, the book of Revelation has put courage into the spines of Christians across the world — regardless of the time and period in which they lived.
Revelation spoke to them and let them know that despite what they were seeing and experiencing, Christ was on his throne, and he was ruling on high, and they were able to live faithfully in the moment of time that God had placed them.
What Is the Book of Revelation?
That’s an easy question to answer because John, the author, actually tells us what it is. In Revelation 1:4 he says that it has been written to the churches in Asia.
And so, what we see right out of the gate is Revelation is a letter to a specific group of people living at a specific time and in a specific place, much like Ephesians and Philippians or the book of Romans. This is written to a specific group of people.
Now here’s why that’s important.
It’s important because Revelation was written for us, but it wasn’t written to us. That means what we read in this book cannot mean to us what it did not mean to them.
This letter was given to the people of God across Christian history. It wasn’t just given to people who just happened to be here right before the return of Christ.
What Was Happening at the Writing of this Letter?
Revelation was written around AD 96, and for the 30 years before that, Christians had been subjugated to some of the most brutal torture and persecution imaginable. It started in AD 65 under Nero and only got worse later under Vespasian. By AD 92, Domitian took over and he took it to another level.
Now, throw into that mix that in AD 70, not only does Jerusalem fall, burned to the ground by the Romans, but in that same year, Paul, Peter and Timothy are all killed by the Roman empire.
It’s probably hard for us to get our minds around 30 years of perpetual torture, arrest, unfair laws. Domitian actually set a series of laws that people across the empire had to come to his temple, take a pinch of incense, sprinkle it in an altar, and say that he was the king of kings and Lord of lords. And he set laws that if Christians were found guilty of any crime, on top of being punished for that crime, they would have to recant their faith or face even harsher punishments than what their crime might’ve demanded in that moment and time.
Who Were the Recipients of this Letter?
The book was written to seven specific churches in seven different locations across the ancient near East. Each one of these churches was feeling an immense amount of pressure to sell out, an immense amount of pressure to fit in. The sheer pressure to just compromise a little for peace, just quiet down a little bit, just shrink back in order to not be persecuted and be able to raise their children the way we wanted to raise their children.
And yet, in each one of these churches, John writes with the words of Jesus for them to overcome, for them to stay strong. These seven churches fit into three categories.
1. Faith of the Head, but not of the Heart
The first thing that we see is, like in the church at Ephesus, they’re biblically knowledgeable. They know the word, they’ve got good doctrine, but their hearts have gone cold. They have an intellectual faith, but their heart is no longer in love with Jesus.
And Jesus rebukes them for this and tells them to return to their first love, to get back with a heart inflamed for his name and renowned, not just doctrinal correctness, but a heart for king Jesus.
2. Ethical Indifference
The second category are the four churches that are most strongly rebuked here are Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, and Laodicea. And what they’re doing, and you can see this everywhere right now in our current cultural moment, they know the gospel, they know Jesus, and yet they find themselves indifferent to His commands. They are fitting in with the Roman Empire regarding their sexual ethic, and about how they do their economic system. They are perpetually surrendering to the force of the Roman Empire and living an indifferent Christian life.
3. Faithful but Exhausted
The third category are the last two churches. I pray if you’re going to find yourself anywhere among the churches listed in chapter two and three, that you find yourself here. We see in Smyrna and Philadelphia, they’re faithful, they love him, they’re walking in correct doctrine, they’re just tired and weary and exhausted.
Courage to Overcome
And Jesus says to each of the seven churches, he encourages them to overcome, offers them rewards for overcoming and then rebukes them either for their indifference or their lack of love. But for those who are just weary and falling away, he whispers into their souls that he sees them, that he knows them, and he won’t let them go.
Isn’t Revelation About the Future?
Revelation is a letter, but it’s not just a letter. If you look back at Revelation 1:3, you’ll see that this is a prophecy.
Now if you think of like the major prophets, Jeremiah, Isaiah, they’re not saying, “This is what the future looks like.” They’re saying, “thus sayeth the Lord.”
And that’s the way Revelation is prophetic. It’s not so much just saying, this is what the future is going to be — although there’s some of that in the book. It’s saying, this is what the Lord God wants you to hear and wants you to be confident of in this moment.
What Is a ‘Revelation’?
So, the book is a letter. It is a prophecy. And then lastly, and you see this in Revelation 1:1, it is a “revelation,” or the Greek word apocalypsis. It is an apocalypse, where we’re going to find our minds being stretched.
The purpose of apocalyptic literature is to unveil, to make clear, to let you see what is unseen. Apocalyptic literature is also wildly strange. It uses images and strange scenes to provoke our hearts and our imaginations to feel and experience things that are different than just intellectual ascent. And so, it’s not uncommon in apocalyptic literature for things to get a little strange.
What’s the Purpose of Revelation?
Things aren’t always as they seem — both now and in the future.
The primary purpose of the Book of Revelation is to show readers of every generation of Christians between the first century and the return of Christ that things are not always as they seem, despite the data that we see and despite what we’re experiencing in the world.
If I could put a catchphrase here, I would say “fear not tomorrow, for tomorrow is already won.”
Want more from Matt Chandler? Check out his bible study on the book of Revelation, The Overcomers — and watch the full first session of the study for free.
Plus, sign up for a free 5-day devotional based on The Overcomers.