Slicing And Dicing The Tanakh: Where did they come from?

The current division of the Tanakh into 929 numbered chapters and verses may seem to be an integral and original component of the sacred scriptural text. However, it turns out that the numerically divided format of our Bible is a medieval Christian innovation, usually attributed to  Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury in his 1226 edition of the Latin Vulgate.

There are, of course, other ways of dividing and citing the scriptural text. Most familiar to Jews are the traditional weekly Torah portions (parashot, sidrot) according to which the Torah is read in synagogue. This way of reading through the entire Pentateuch according to an annual cycle reflects the ancient practice of the Babylonian Jewish community that was eventually accepted in most of the Jewish world until today. However, a so-called triennial cycle of Torah readings was practiced in the Land of Israel and Jewish communities under its influence until at least the 12th century, completing the Torah once every three years. These shorter and more numerous Torah portions, known as Sedarim, are marked in the margins of the text with the Hebrew letter Samekh in some Biblical manuscripts and conveniently numbered in the widely accepted Tanakh Koren (Jerusalem 1962).

The earliest surviving manuscripts of Scripture, discovered at Qumran in the Dead Sea Scrolls indicate sense divisions in the Hebrew text by simply leaving spaces. The early Midrash on Leviticus, Sifra teaches that the “breaks” (hafsaqot) between the “sections” and “subjects” in the Biblical text were to give Moses time for reflection  between consecutive parts in the flow of the Scriptural text. According to Talmud Nedarim 37b, the division of the Biblical text into readily understandable units goes back to the initial public reading of the Torah in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. Menachot 32a mentions briefly the division of the Biblical text into “open and closed” sections to which Maimonides devotes an extensive Halakhic discussion. These parashiyyot petuhot ve-setumot are preserved in our Torah Scrolls. They are marked by the Hebrew letters peh (petuhah) and samekh (setumah) in the authoritative Masoretic text preserved in vocalized Biblical manuscripts and printed Hebrew Bibles to this day.

In addition to the “Rabbinic Bible” (Mikra’ot Gedolot), first published by the Christian printer Daniel Bomberg in Venice in 1517, a famous example of a printed Hebrew Bible is the edition published by the Jewish printer Joseph Athias in Amsterdam in 1661 and 1667, edited by the Christian Professor Johannes Leusden of Leyden. Upon its publication Athias was elected to the Amsterdam printer’s guild, an unprecedented honor for a Jew. In 1667, the Dutch government presented Athias with a gold medal and chain, in recognition of his having produced a reliable text of the Hebrew Bible for study by both Jews and Christians.