[Time: 5 minutes. Read below or listen here.]
Here is what the Bible looks like without chapter and verse numbers. Below, between the dashed lines, is the Third Epistle of John. You can read it in about a minute and a half.
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The Presbyter to the beloved Gaius whom I love in truth.
Beloved, I hope you are prospering in every respect and are in good health, just as your soul is prospering. I rejoiced greatly when some of the brothers came and testified to how truly you walk in the truth. Nothing gives me greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.
Beloved, you are faithful in all you do for the brothers, especially for strangers; they have testified to your love before the church. Please help them in a way worthy of God to continue their journey. For they have set out for the sake of the Name and are accepting nothing from the pagans. Therefore, we ought to support such persons, so that we may be co-workers in the truth.
I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to dominate, does not acknowledge us. Therefore, if I come, I will draw attention to what he is doing, spreading evil nonsense about us. And not content with that, he will not receive the brothers, hindering those who wish to do so and expelling them from the church. Beloved, do not imitate evil but imitate good. Whoever does what is good is of God; whoever does what is evil has never seen God. Demetrius receives a good report from all, even from the truth itself. We give our testimonial as well, and you know our testimony is true.
I have much to write to you, but I do not wish to write with pen and ink. Instead, I hope to see you soon, when we can talk face to face. Peace be with you. The friends greet you; greet the friends there each by name.
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That is a clipping from the New American Standard Revised Edition, 1995. After I pasted it here I had to remove all the verse numbers, decide where to put the paragraphs, and remove a half dozen footnote references. When I read my NASB, I find it difficult not to look at every marginal note. Your personal Bible might be in two columns (convenient for cross-references but not for extended reading) and might have study notes and comments at the bottom of the page. All of this distracts terribly from simple reading, as helpful as they may be at times of in-depth study.
So, if there are no verse numbers, how do we find a passage in a book? The same way we do at the book club. We refer to the part of the story. Christians did this for over a thousand years before verse numbers began to be common. A thousand years. And, yet, we seem to have trouble imagining a Bible without chapter and verse numbers.
It can be tedious, but you can paste a whole book of the Bible, for your personal use, into a word processing app and then remove all the numbers. But there are an increasing number of Bibles printed now without chapter and verse numbers. Among the first was Bibliotheca, a work of art using a custom font and paper thicker than the typical Bible paper. Recently Bibles without chapter and verse numbers have become available for the ESV (Crossway), the NASB (Kindle), NIV, and others. Nearly all audio recordings of the Bible skip verse numbers, but I have yet to find one that will also omit the chapter numbers. If you know of one, please let me know.
So, your first task will be to find a way to read or listen to the book of Genesis in a format that omits all notes, commentary, side-bars, cross-references, and chapter and verse numbers.
Read on for a panoramic view of the Bible.