Why the Bible is divided by verses and numbers?

vis4valentine@lemmy.ml to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 85 points –

It always looked so weird to me, like, who not just read the Bible like a proper book instead of having all of those numbering?

I guess it's because it makes easy to find some specific line? But that is from an academic perspective instead of something you would put in a faith book?

When did that started and why they put all the numbering?

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So, if I wanna start a 1 billion people religion, gotta write my shit like:

The Lost Apples

  1. And it came to pass that I went to the park with my apples, But I was so focused on TikTok that I did not heed where I placed them.
  2. And I wandered the park, watching video after video, And when I finally looked up, my apples were gone!
  3. I searched high and low, but they were nowhere to be found. I asked the squirrels and the birds, but they had not seen them either.
  4. And I was filled with great sorrow, for I had lost my apples. I sat down on a bench and began to weep.
  5. But then I remembered the words of the wise: "Do not despair, for all things are in the hands of the Lord."
  6. And I knew that my apples were safe, even if I could not find them. So I stood up and went on my way, trusting that the Lord would provide.
  7. And as I walked, I saw a little girl sitting on a swing. She was eating an apple, and it was the most delicious-looking apple I had ever seen.
  8. I approached the little girl and asked her where she had gotten the apple. She smiled and said, "A nice man gave it to me."
  9. And I knew that the Lord had provided. I thanked the little girl for the apple and took a bite.
  10. And it was the most delicious apple I had ever tasted.

If you ever want to steal candy from a baby, remember Lost Apples verses 7-9.

I can't tell if you're trying to be clever or not but do you really view that any different than referring to poetry by stanza/line? Or books by page number/paragraph/line? The Bible has been written, rewritten, and edited thousands of times, it makes no sense to say "page 121, paragraph 3" when quoting from it

It also facilitates two things. First, hermeneutics. Which is the art of overanalizing text ad nauseam until you can manufacture new meaning that wasn't put there by the author in the first place, by sheer force of dubious rethoric. And secondly taking individual lines out of context to support fringe and contradictory statements.

I imagine if your book got translated into hundreds of different languages, eventually people would add numbers to the verses. Sometimes the translated version is not a great translation to the original languages intent, so it's easy to reference the verse number across other translations or compare it across languages

You don't need to write it like this. Just write normally (prose or poetry, your choice), and other people will fragment your text this way, while either discussing it [proto-]academically or looking for hidden stuff in it.