Finding Your Way Around the Bible 

When you were back in high school English class, your teacher may have assigned the whole class to read a classic novel, such as Moby Dick. Everyone would have a copy of the book. Each day, during class discussion, your teacher could instruct everyone to turn to a certain page number, and look at perhaps the "third paragraph," and you'd all be ready to talk about what happens in that paragraph.

What will happen if you find yourself in a Bible Study group some day where the group is discussing a particular part of the Bible? The Choosing a Translation installmlent in this Toolbox series made it clear the first hurdle your group will have to surmount. Unless you all agree to use the same English translation version of the ancient Hebrew and Greek manuscripts, it will be very difficult to coordinate the discussion. The Do You Need a Special Bible? installment made clear another problem in keeping everyone "on the same page" in a group. Different "editions" of even the same translation of the Bible may have totally different page numberings. A Bible with extensive footnotes on each page will have far less of the actual text of the Bible on each page, and thus the numbering will be far off from the numbering of a Bible with little or no extra-Biblical text on the pages.

So what to do? The moderator for the discussion could insist that everyone in the group go out and purchase the exact same edition of the Bible. But some may not be able to afford that, and if they already have one or more Bibles at home, they really don't need to do that. For all modern English copies of the Bible use a distinctive "navigation system" for getting around in them that is not tied to the page numbering.

Chapter and Verse

When the ancient original writers of the documents that make up the Hebrew Old Testament, and the ancient original writers of the documents that make up the Greek New Testament, composed these documents, they were writing in languages that did not have the kind of clearly marked divisions of sentences and paragraphs that we use today.

This would include no use of anything comparable to "capital letters" to begin sentences and punctuation to mark the end of sentences. In fact, in many cases they did not even use spaces between words! Diving into the middle of a page of this type of writing could certainly be confusing.

Eventually, those who copied material from these original documents began introducing systems by which shorter or longer sections of text could be identified. However, no one system of division was accepted widely until clear up until the 1200s AD. Early in that century, a man named Stephen Langton (who later became Archbishop of Canterbury in England) created a system of dividing the documents of both Old and New Testament into chapters, which was eventually accepted by both Jewish authorities for the Old Testament and Christian authorities for the New Testament. A Rabbi Nathan further divided the Old Testament chapters into short verses in the mid-1400s, and a printer named Stephanus introduced the division of the New Testament into verses in the mid-1500s. All of these divisions were first used in printing a Bible in about 1560, and the same system is used to this day.

Unfortunately, all of these divisions did not necessarily follow the flow of the thoughts of the original authors. Some were quite arbitrary, and designed only for the convenience of "locating" passages, rather than helping in understanding of passages. Some divisions into chapters are introduced in mid-thought as expressed by the writer, giving the mistaken impression that the topic has changed. Even sentences themselves are sometimes cut in two by a new verse designation, also giving the impression of a change in thought. The text of  King James Version Bibles is laid out so that every individual verse starts on a new line, even if this breaks up a sentence.

Thus it is important to remember, when reading any short section in the Bible, to look at the sections immediately before and after the part in question to make sure that you understand the context of what you are reading. Many modern English translations get around this problem by re-formatting the text into actual paragraphs that reflect the flow of the thought, rather than the divisions into verses. They show the verse divisions by small ^{superscript numbers like this 3} right within the paragraph.

Finding a Passage: Books of the Bible

So just how to you navigate around the Bible with this system of chapters and verses?

The first thing you need to do is become familiar with the books of the Bible.

Most Bibles have a Table of Contents in the front of the volume that shows you the names of all of the books of the Bible in the order they appear in the translation you have. This order was not "inspired by God" in ancient times, but merely adopted long ago and accepted by most Biblical publishers to this day. The books were all, anciently, totally separate manuscripts, and only in later years were they compiled into a collection. The order of the books in most modern English Bibles is generally, but not completely, in the historical order in which the events in the books took place. (Later installments of the Toolbox will provide suggestions of reference books that can help the reader get a clear view of the chronology of the various books.)

If you are a student in a high school history class, you are likely going to read your history textbook only one time in your life. Therefore it makes perfect sense to use the Table of Contents (or the index in the back of the book) whenever you need to look something up for your class. After all, you have many other classes, and you will only be using this book for a few months. It would surely seem silly to try to memorize that Table of Contents!

But this is not true of the Bible. Most serious Bible students, who want to know more and more about God and His ways throughout their life, will read the Bible, or at least portions of it, many times over the years. They may bring it to church services or Bible studies, and follow along as the preacher or teacher uses Bible references in their speaking. They may study it in their own home on a regular basis. And thus most such Bible students, very early in their Bible education, realize the value of memorizing that Table of Contents so they can quickly turn to a section of the Bible right while someone is speaking.

Well, not exactly the whole Table of Contents. The beginning page number next to each book listed in the Table of Contents in each Bible may differ widely from Bible to Bible. But there are two things that stay the same ... the names of the books, and the order of the books. Those are what many people choose to memorize, for if they memorize the names of the books and their order in the King James Bible, they will already know the names and order in the NIV, the NASB, and almost every other English translation of the Bible. 

Thanks for the Memory

But, some people will protest, there are 66 different books in the Bible! Memorizing all of their names is certainly not like trying to memorize a friend's phone number! No, but most grade school children are able to memorize their "times tables" by the time they are ten. And most grade school children of that age, with a little prompting,  are able to memorize all fifty states. As a matter of fact, many children of grade school age who attend religious classes such as Sunday Schools or Sabbath Schools are able to master all the names of the books of the Bible and their order ... even the weirder names such as Zephaniah.

If you are old enough and bright enough to be reading the contents of this website, you too are old enough and bright enough to commit to memory just 66 names. And while you are memorizing the names you can also be memorizing the order of the names. There is no one "best way" to do this memorizing that will work for every person. There are many gimmicks you can use for memorization. Find one that works for you,  stick to it for a short time, and you will find that it isn't as hard as you may have envisioned at first.

One method that may work for you is to look at the list in the front of your Bible and just start with the name of the first book of the Bible, Genesis, for the first day. Read it out loud, then spell it out loud as you look at it, and finally cover it up and try writing it on a piece of paper. Check to see if you spelled it correctly. If you didn't, cover it up and try again. When you are able to write it correctly without looking at it in the Bible, stop for the time being. Try it again later in the day, once or twice more. 

On the next day, look at the list and read the first two names, Genesis and Exodus. Read out loud the name of each, read out loud the spelling of each name, and say the names in order as you look at them. Then cover them both and try to write them in a row, correctly. When you are able to write both correctly without looking, stop. Try writing both again later in the day, once or twice more. Be sure to read the names out loud, spell them out loud, and write them down in your own handwriting. This may seem like a method that is "childish," but it isn't. Educational research has shown that the more "senses" ... sight, hearing, touch ... that anyone, adult or child,  uses when learning something new, the more likely they are to retain the information. The perception of each sense reinforces the others.

On day three, add the next name, and follow the same procedure. You are only being asked to memorize one new word per day! Thus, with a few minutes of daily time invested, by the end of 66 days you will be able to recite and spell all the books in correct order. If you find that you can handle more than one new word per day, go right ahead and challenge yourself to learn them two, three, or five a day.

What Next?

Next you may be asking, "If I only know the order of the books, but don't know what page number each starts on, what good is that going to do me if I want to look up a section of the Bible?" It won't allow you to efficiently look up something immediately ... but over the long term you will find it is extremely helpful. Think of how you learned to use a Dictionary. If you pick up a dictionary now and want to look up the word "sagacious," would you look in the front of the volume for a Table of Contents to find out where the "S" words start? No, you would just start rummaging in the book. But would you start rummaging near the front of the book? No, you know that is where the A and B words will be. Would you start looking clear at the end of the book, and work your way backward? No, you know that that is where the X, Y, and Z words are. How about starting exactly in the middle of the dictionary? You probably wouldn't do that because you instinctively know that the M and N words are probably there, and they are several letters before S. 

How do you "instinctively" know this? Not because you were born with that instinct, but because one time, long ago, you committed to memory the letters of the alphabet and their order! After using dictionaries for many years, it has become instinctive to you to sense at least the general location in a dictionary for each of the letters. This is exactly the same principle that will come into play as you become more and more familiar with your Bible. If you know the names and order of the first five books of the Bible, and someone asks you to turn to one of them in the text, you will not be tempted to turn to the end of the Bible and work your way backwards to try to find it. You will know that it is early in the beginning of the volume.

One last tip--this whole process will work more efficiently and quickly if you have a Study Buddy to do your memorization and look-up practice with. If you can encourage a family member or friend to embark on studying the Bible together with you, you can take turns challenging each other to look up a Bible book quickly.

Back to Chapter and Verse

Once you have committed the names of the books to memory, it's time to go back to the topic of chapters and verses in the Bible. You are used to the concept of chapters in a book already. The concept is the same for the Bible. Each Bible book is divided into chapters, with some books having many chapters, and some having only a few. Then each chapter is divided into tiny bite-sized snippets called verses. A verse may contain just one sentence, or several sentences. A few contain just a portion of a sentence.

Thus the location of every passage from the Bible can be identified by telling first the chapter it is in, and then the verse it is in. Someone speaking out loud and telling you where to turn in the Bible might say "Genesis, Chapter one, Verse 10." But there is a shorthand way that most Bible teachers and students and writers use to refer to the locations. Examples:

Matthew 10:2 refers to the tenth chapter of Matthew, and the second verse.

Jonah 2:18 refers to the second chapter of Jonah, and verse eighteen.

In other words, the first number after the book name is the chapter number, followed by a colon : and then the number

of the verse. In some writing, particularly on the Internet, the colon is replaced by a dot:

Matthew 10.2

Jonah 2.18

A range of verses in one chapter is indicated by listing the first verse, followed by a dash, and then the last verse number:

Matthew 2:10-12 indicates the passage that starts with verse 10 of chapter 2 and includes all the material to the end of verse 12.

A range of verses that spans two or more chapters has a similar layout:

Matthew 2:10-3:16 indicates the passage that starts with verse 10 in chapter 2 and goes all the way to the end of verse 16 in chapter 3.

A set of verses that are in the same chapter but are separated by one or more verses is shown this way:

Acts 2:13, 18 indicates that verses 13 and 18 of chapter 2 are under consideration.

These styles may be combined:

Acts 2:13, 18-21 indicates that verses 13, and verses 18 through the end of 21, of chapter 2 are under consideration.

Abbreviations

Once you begin studying the Bible regularly and reading other material that refers to the Bible frequently, you will realize that it will get to be tedious if you try to write out the full name of each book every time you want to indicate a passage of the Bible like those above ... especially for the books that have longer names that are spelled oddly, such as Thessalonians. Fortunately, Bible commentators long ago agreed on standard abbreviations for the names of each of the books of the Bible. The most common of these in use are the three letter abbreviations.

The first three letters of all but four of the books of the Bible have unique from one another. So those three letters are used as abbreviations for all of those. In other words, the standard abbreviation for Genesis is Gen, the standard abbreviation for Matthew is Mat. . Two books start with Jud (Judges and Jude) and two start with Phi (Philippians and Philemon.) So it was decided long ago to use Jdg for Judges and Jud for Jud, and Phm for Philemon and Phi for Philippians.  

There are several books of the Bible that start with numbers because two or more related books have the same name. An example is 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians. These are also sometimes designated by Roman Numerals: I Corinthians and II Corinthians. The abbreviation for these is the number followed by the first two letters of the name, so that the abbreviation is the same length as those of all the other books.

There is no hard and fast rule whether the abbreviation of a book must have a period after the abbreviation. The custom varies with publishers.

Although the three-letter abbreviations seem to be the most common choice of authors, there are other systems that may use just two letters, or a combination of two and three. Most abbreviations are pretty clear even in systems that are unfamiliar. Ge would still obviously stand for Genesis.

The following web page has a chart with most of the alternative abbreviations you might ever run into in your reading. You might want to print it out and tuck it into the back of your Bible while you are still learning to navigate your Bible.

http://www.logos.com/support/lbs/booknames

Footnotes and Center Column References

Your first exposure to the book abbreviations described above may be in the "center column references" and/or  "footnotes" in your Bible, if your version has these. Some Bibles have two wide columns of text on each page, and a smaller "center column" where relevant notes about the text are tucked by the publisher or translators. Little ^{superscript letters and numbers like a, z, and 7} are inserted into the verses next to words or phrases that have notes about them in the center column, next to the appropriate letter or number.

Some of these notes have to do with alternate ways to translate a word, or other commentary. But many of them are what are referred to as "reference" notes. This means that the translators or publishers have provided one or more connections--references--to other parts of the Bible that may have a similar theme or may explain something in the verse.

In the Bible shown in the sample above, numbers are used to flag alternative translations of words. Letters are used to indicate references to other parts of the Bible. If the reference is in the same book of the Bible, instead of the book abbreviation the letters ch. for chapter come before the chapter and verse numbers.

Don't forget ...

Footnotes and column references are not part of the "original texts" of the Bible in the ancient languages. They were not written by the authors of the original books. They are only provided by translators and commentators as aids to understanding, and thus they are subject to possible error in the judgment of those translators and commentators. Most are probably helpful and accurate, but they are not "inspired" in the same way that the original writings were. 

The same thing is true for the words across the tops of the pages of many Bibles, and the section headings above chapters or main sections of chapters in others. Both were not in the original manuscripts, but have been added by later authors, in part to help readers spot topical sections of books that they are looking for.

And one last note: In the King James Version you will regularly come across words in italics. They are not in italics because they are being emphasized. They are in italics because they are words added by the KJV translators to the translation of the original Greek or Hebrew to try to make a sentence clearer in English. Ancient languages--and even many modern ones--have such different grammar styles than English that trying to translate exactly word for word into English can leave a sentence very garbled. This is often because languages may have "unspoken assumptions" for standard phrases, which leave out words that the average reader in that language will fill in naturally in his own mind as he reads. But the English reader of a word for word translation may have no clue what should be "filled in the blanks." A common example of this is a verse like this, in which the verb is left out:

Blessed the merciful : for they shall obtain mercy. (Mat. 5:7)

The KJV translators chose to add the verb in italics to the sentence to make it sound better in English:

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

The Next Step

Once you've started reading the Bible, you will likely very quickly start having questions about things you read. What does some specific unfamiliar phrase mean? Where was some city or river located? When did some event happen? What was some obscure plant or animal like? What was the purpose of some ancient custom? The best way to start getting answers to these questions is covered in the next installment of the Toolbox:

Building a Bible Reference Library

Return to the Index for the Bible Study Toolbox