The Books of the Bible
| The Books of the Bible | |
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| Full name | The Books of the Bible |
| Complete Bible published |
TNIV 2007 NIV 2012 |
| Publisher | Biblica |
| Copyright | 2011 |
| Religious affiliation | Protestant |
| Website | http://www.biblica.com/ |
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The Books of the Bible is the first presentation of an unabridged committee translation of the Bible to remove chapter and verse numbers entirely and instead present the biblical books according to their natural literary structures. This edition of the Bible is also noteworthy for the way it recombines books that have traditionally been divided, and for the way it puts the biblical books in a different order.
The edition was first published by the International Bible Society (now Biblica) in 2007 in Today's New International Version (TNIV). It was re-released in September 2012 in the latest update to the New International Version (NIV).
The traditional chapter divisions in the Bible were introduced around the year 1200 by Stephen Langton, later Archbishop of Canterbury, when he was at the University of Paris. The verse divisions were added by Robert Estienne, a French printer and scholar, in the mid-16th century.
Biblical and literary scholars have noted that chapter and verse numbering disguises the actual form of the biblical writings and interferes with the act of reading. Ernest Sutherland Bates wrote, "Certainly, no literary format was ever less conducive to pleasure or understanding than is the curious and complicated panoply in which the Scriptures have come down to us. None but a work of transcendent literary genius could have survived such a handicap at all."Richard Moulton noted, "We are all agreed to speak of the Bible as a supremely great literature. Yet, when we open our ordinary editions, we look in vain for the lyrics, epics, dramas, essays, sonnets, treatises, which make the other great literatures of the world; instead of these the eye catches nothing but a monotonous uniformity of numbered sentences." New Testament scholar Hermann von Soden urged publishers, "It is high time, in any editions that wish to facilitate rather than impede readers' understanding of the New Testament writings, for not only the verse divisions… but also the conventional chapter divisions to disappear completely from the text. Without giving any consideration to these divisions, the text must be printed in a way that will illustrate visually what units the authors themselves created within their works."
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