Steps

[Time: 5 minutes. Read below or listen here.]

You don’t feel any guilt about the Bible? Really?

You don’t have the unpleasant feeling that you have not kept your commitment (New Year’s Resolution?) to read and study the Bible? You don’t think that by this time in your spiritual walk you should know much more of the Bible than you do? Have a Bible with lots of marks you’ve made in it but have never looked back at? That Bible on the table over there or on the shelf, it doesn’t whisper to you that you should be spending more time with it?

OK, maybe just a little guilt, right?

It’s not really your fault. Let me explain.

We have the misconception that, before Johannes Gutenberg’s creation of movable type in the mid 1400s and before the Reformation in the early 1500s, Christians were completely ignorant of the Bible. This is not historically accurate. In Western Europe and the British Isles not only were there regular and extensive daily public readings from the Bible in the churches, but society was filled with formal plays and informal street presentations based on stories from the Bible. A typical European of that era could likely do a better job of discussing the unfolding story of the Bible than a typical European or American could today.

With the Reformation emphasis on the Bible and with hundreds of printing presses rolling out page after Bible page, why is our knowledge of the Bible so limited today, especially considering that you probably have multiple copies of this perennial best seller? The reason begins, quite unexpectedly, with Stephen Langton and Robert Estienne. Although the Old Testament had been divided into reading sections before the birth of Christ, no attempt to so divide the New Testament really took hold until Langston’s system of chapters about the year 1200 in England. And, it was not generally accepted for several hundred years. Gutenberg’s famous Bibles did not include chapter divisions. William Tyndale’s Bible was among the first to include chapter separations, but there were still no verses or verse numbers.

About 1550 a French printer and Greek scholar, Robert Estienne, wanted to create the first concordance for the Greek New Testament allowing scholars to more easily locate individual words and passages. He divided the entire Greek New Testament into verses, essentially the same versification used today. His system of verse numbers was an overnight success. The centers of the Reformation in Germany, France, Switzerland, England, and elsewhere seized on their new ability to quote individual Bible verses as proof texts and lob them at the Catholics and at each other.

Individual verses could be taken out of their contexts, removed from the story of the book of the Bible that gave them meaning, and used to prove doctrinal positions. Systematic theologies developed entirely based on harvesting proof texts to support propositions. A verse taken away from its context does not necessarily mean it is being misused, although it is certainly much easier to do so. But,from the Reformation on, Christians began focusing on individual verses, newly numbered and identified, as the basic unit of the Bible. This was a distraction during reading.

Compound the problem with today’s attitude that the Bible is really a self-help book full of our favorite supportive and encouraging verses, and it becomes almost impossible to read through any book of the Bible without subconsciously searching for the occasional verse that seems “just for me.”

No wonder most of us have a hard time reading more than a few verses or a chapter at a time. And, no wonder we feel a bit guilty about it.

Drop the guilt and read on to discover a better way to read the Bible.

[Time: 7 minutes. Read below or listen here.]

The Bible Gateway website lists the most searched for verses from the Bible. Our favorite verses are, in order (with the first few words of the verse):

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave…”
Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know well the plans I have…”
Romans 8:28 “We know that all things work for good…”
Philippians 4:13 “I have the strength for everything…”
Psalm 46:1 “God is our refuge and our strength…”
Joshua 1:9 “I command you: be strong and steadfast!…”
Psalm 23 “The LORD is my shepherd;…”
I Cor 13:4-8 “Love is patient, love is kind;…”
Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the LORD with all your…”
Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning, when God created…”
Romans 12:1-2 “I urge you therefore, brothers,…”
Philippians 4:6-7 “Have no anxiety at all,…”
Hebrews 12:2 “while keeping your eyes fixed on Jesus…”
Matthew 28:19-20 “Go, therefore,…”
Ephesians 2:8-9 “For by grace you have been saved…”
Galatians 5:22-23 “In contrast, the fruit of the Spirit…”
Galatians 2:20 “yet I live, no longer I, but Christ…”
John 10:10 “…I came so that they might have life…”
II Timothy 1:7 “For God did not give us…”
Proverbs 22:6 “Train the young in the way…”
James 5:16 “Therefore, confess your sins…”
Deuteronomy 31:6 “Be strong and steadfast;…”
I John 1:9 “If we acknowledge our sins,…”
Romans 3:23 “all have sinned and are…”
John 14:6 “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way…'”
Romans 5:8 “But God proves his love for us…”
Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death,…”
Isaiah 40:31 “They that hope in the LORD will renew…”
I Peter 3:15 “but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts…”
II Timothy 3:16 “All scripture is inspired by God…”
Matthew 6:33 “But seek first the kingdom of God…”
I Peter 5:7 “Cast all your worries upon him because…”
Romans 10:9-10 “for, if you confess with your mouth…”
John 16:33 “…but take courage, I have conquered…”
Isaiah 41:10 “Do not fear: I am with you;…”
Hebrews 11:1 “Faith is the realization of…”
I Corinthians 10:13 “No trial has come to you but…”
II Corinthians 5:17 “So whoever is in Christ is a new…”
Matthew 11:28-29 “Come to me, all you who labor…”
Acts 1:8 “But you will receive power…”
II Corinthians 5:21 “…he made him who knew no sin…”
Romans 15:13 “May the God of hope fill you…”
John 11:25 “…I am the resurrection and the life…”
Hebrews 11:6 “But without faith it is impossible…”
John 5:24 “…has eternal life and will not come to…”

I would be surprised if your favorites are not included in this list. Most of mine are. And, these verses, all of them, may be very familiar to you. But it may shock you to know that our seventy favorite verses are only 0.2% (two-tenths of one percent) of the full Bible’s 31,102 verses.

Notice that the favorite verses are not taken equally from all Bible books. More than half of them come just from Isaiah, Romans, Psalms, and John’s Gospel.

This modern emphasis on individual verses has focused our attention on only a tiny portion of the sixty-six books of the Bible. Worse, did you notice how many of the verses listed above center on “me” and are words of personal comfort? Not to us, but to me individually? And worse yet, the other verses deal almost exclusively with the most basic truths of salvation, the milk of the Word, so to speak. But we need stronger food. So, the chapter and verse numbering has, in and of itself, brought some harm to our Bible reading. Combine that with modern Western self-centeredness, and you have a Bible that is largely unread.

What to do? Drop the chapter and verse numbers.

Read on to discover how to read the Bible for what it is, a Book of individual books each with its own story that deserves uninterrupted reading from start to finish.

[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.