Chapter-&-Verse Origins of the Bible

The Bible consists of 66 distinct books that were written in different times and places. When originally penned, the books of the Bible did not include numbered chapters and verses which we are currently familiar with and accustomed to in our major English Bible translations.

Although, by mental and verbal and written divinely-inspired communication, God did not initially dictate the written form of the entire Bible all at once, He did inspire each successive author to contribute a growing accumulation of Scriptural texts to add to the totality of The Bible in a thankfully-logical chronological order, cumulating by Him divinely inspiring the partitioning of the texts of each book into first chapters, and then, verses within chapters segments.

Again, the fragments of Hebrew and Greek Original-Text manuscripts on parchment and papyrus (some more extensive than others) did not, at first, contain the chapter-and-verse edits we are familiar with.

Designation of what was named "the Old Testament" text and "the New Testament" text, and "books" contained therein, was done by pre-Medieval church fathers during their messianic-canon-of-Scriptural-determining councils, reaffirming and assigning names to books of what they and the Lord considered both Testaments by the content-related name of the Hebrew author or some other contents-appropriate name (e.g. Deuteronomy, Chronicles, Kings, Proverbs, Psalms, Hebrews, etc.). Their conclusions were not capricious, and what was to be deemed "canonical" inclusion was based, in part, upon the names and associations thereof cited within Scripture itself (see examples below).

Interesting it is that when Jesus, Paul, others referred to what we consider parts of the Old Testament, they did not cite the names of the books given by those pre-Medieval church fathers (such as Jerome who authored the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible), but instead simply referred to persons named in the Old Testament and the quotations of such prophets, referencing Scripture with Scripture:

Numbers 7:89 And when Moses went into The Tent of Meeting to speak with The LORD, he heard The Voice speaking to him from above the mercy seat that was upon the ark of the testimony, from between the two cherubim; and It spoke to him.

Jeremiah 15:1 Then the LORD said to me, "Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my heart would not turn toward this people. Send them out of my sight, and let them go!"

Ezekiel 14:14 "...even if these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness," says the Lord GOD.
Eze 14:20 "...even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as I live," says the Lord GOD, "they would deliver neither son nor daughter; they would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness."

Daniel 9:11 All Israel has transgressed your law and turned aside, refusing to obey your voice. And the curse and oath which are written in the law of Moses, the servant of God, have been poured out upon us, because we have sinned against Him.

Micah 6:4 For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and redeemed you from the house of bondage; and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.

Malachi 4:4 "Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and ordinances that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel."

Matthew 12:17 This was to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah...
12:39 But he answered them, "An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign; but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah."
12:42 The queen of the South will arise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and hey, something greater than Solomon is here.
17:3 And hey, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with Him.
17:4 And Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, it is well that we are here; if you wish, I will make three booths here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah."
19:8 He said to them, "For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so."
24:15 "So when you see the desolating sacrilege spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place ..."
27:9 Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, "And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel...

Mark 12:26 And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the [burning] bush, how God said to him, 'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'?

Luke 2:22 And when the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord
4:17 and there was given to Him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and found the place where it was written...
5:14 And He charged him to tell no one; but "go and show yourself to the priest, and make an offering for your cleansing, as Moses commanded, for a proof to the people."
9:30 And hey, two men talked with Him, Moses and Elijah...
11:31 The queen of the South will arise at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them; for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and hey, something greater than Solomon is here.
11:51 from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, it shall be required of this generation.
12:27 Consider the lilies, how they grow; they neither labor nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
24:44 Then He said to them, "These are my words which I spoke to you, while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled."

John 1:23 He said, "I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, 'Make straight the way of the Lord,' as the prophet Isaiah said."
6:32 Jesus then said to them, "Truthfully I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.
12:38 ...it was that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: "Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?"

Acts 2:16 ...but this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel...
7:22 And Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in his words and deeds.
7:29 At this retort Moses fled, and became an exile in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons.
7:35 "This Moses whom they refused, saying, 'Who made you a ruler and a judge?' God sent as both ruler and deliverer by the hand of the angel that appeared to him in the bush.
7:40 saying to Aaron, 'Make for us gods to go before us; as for this Moses who led us out from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.'
7:44 "Our fathers had the tent of witness in the wilderness, even as he who spoke to Moses directed him to make it, according to the pattern that he had seen.
7:45 Our fathers in turn brought it in with Joshua when they dispossessed the nations which God thrust out before our fathers. So it was until the days of David,
8:28 ...and was returning; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah.
13:39 ...and by Him every one that believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.
15:1 But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brethren, "Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved."
15:5 But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up, and said, "It is necessary to circumcise them, and to charge them to keep the law of Moses."
15:21 For from early generations Moses has had in every city those who preach him, for he is read every sabbath in the synagogues."

Romans 9:25 As indeed he says in Hosea, "Those who were not my people I will call 'my people,' and her who was not beloved I will call 'my beloved.'"

Second Corinthians 3:7 Now if the dispensation of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such splendor that the Israelites could not look at Moses' face because of its brightness, fading as this was..., Second Corinthians 3:13 ...not like Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not see the end of the fading splendor.

Hebrews 4:8 For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not speak later of another day. Hebrews 7:14 For it is evident that our Lord was descended from Judah, and in connection with that tribe Moses said nothing about priests.

Our modern chapter divisions of the Bible were created by Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury England, and were started and completed around AD 1227. Wycliffe's Bible (completed in 1382 before the printing press) was the first Bible to use Langton's chapter divisions. Again, in 1382 A.D. the Wycliffe translation used these divisions. Since this time, English Bible translations have followed the pattern, with other foreign-language renditions worldwide adopting the same division system.

Bible verses were created later. Verse designations of the Old Testament were developed by a Jewish rabbi named Nathan in 1448. The New Testament's verses were developed in 1551 by Robert Estienne (also known by the name Stephanus). His divisions were first used in the Greek New Testament published in 1551 and were used again in a French Bible in 1553.

Stephanus was qualified to create and establish such verse partitioning, being that he was a vital part of the preservation of the true and genuine ["Received"] Greek Text of the New Testament in particular, and was part of a divinely-inspired line of preservers starting with those of the church of Antioch near the time of the apostles, continuing on with devout [Jewish and Gentile] monks through the Middle Ages, then Erasmas (a contemporary of Martin Luther), Beza and Elzevir, and finally infallible-and-inerrant Trinitarian-Greek-New-Testament-Text assembled and synthesized by F.H.A. Scrivener in the late 1800s.

The influential Geneva Bible (based upon the partitioning created by Stephanus) from the sixteenth century was the first Bible to include both chapter and verse divisions for both Old and New Testaments. Publicly-accepted Bibles published since these times have continued to use this system of chapters and verses.

The Bible was divided into chapters and verses to help us find Scriptures more quickly and easily. Such are vital for memorization and serve as crucial anchor points to not randomly proof-text verses out of context but rather useful in interpreting and bibliographizing Scripture with Scripture.

Second Corinthians 4:2 We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways; we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.

It is much easier to find "John chapter 3, verse 16" than it is to find "for God so loved the world..." somewhere in the entirety of the Old-and-New-Testament Holy Bible.

In a few places, chapter breaks seem strangely placed as to apparent incontinuity of subject matter, and the choice of both Langdon and Stephanus to section Scripture into either short or long chapters, short or long verses, and their choice of separation or break points thereof seems arbitrary and weird to the arrogantly ignorant. However, the given and inspired chapter and verse divisions were and are established by the Holy Spirit, and are in fact "set in stone" so to speak, and mandatory for the true church of God.

To repeat, chapter divisions commonly used today were developed by Stephen Langton, an Archbishop of Canterbury. Langton put the modern chapter divisions into place in around A.D. 1227. The Wycliffe English Bible of 1382 was the first Bible to use this chapter pattern. Since the Wycliffe Bible, all acceptable Bible translations have followed Langton's chapter divisions.

The Hebrew Old Testament was divided into verses by a Jewish rabbi by the name of Mordecai Nathan in A.D. 1448. Robert Estienne, who was also known as Stephanus, was the first to divide the New Testament into standard numbered verses, in 1555. Stephanus essentially used Nathan's verse divisions for the Old Testament. Since that time, beginning with the Geneva Bible, the chapter and verse divisions employed by Stephanus have been accepted into nearly all the Bible versions.

So, as for the verses, Mordecai Nathan apportioned Old Testament manuscripts, written in Hebrew, beginning in 1445 A.D. At a later date, in 1448 A.D., Mordecai and scholar Athias parsed Old Testament verses. The system we see today was put into place by Robert Estienne, or Stephanus who used the numbered verse system when printing the Bible around the 1550s. Since the time of the Geneva translation (an English version of which was published in Paris around 1560), which preceded the famous King James Version, all legitimate Bible versions have used this same numbering system.

The Divinely-inspired-and-standardized numbering system works well for helping people look up scriptures. Lamentably, certain demonic deviants have defied the standard chapter-and-verse deliniations, and both suggested and concocted their own peculiar and non-authorized alternatives, disruptively and divisively causing needless and despicable confusion and mistrust against the Lord's Holy Word, and demonically thwarting the easy locating of Bible text.

Romans 9:6 But it is not as though the word of God had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel...

Second Peter 3:15 And count the forbearance of our Lord as salvation. So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him,
Second Peter 3:16 speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures.

It almost goes without saying, but the obvious should be acknowledged, which is that chapter and verse divisions were definitely inspired by the Holy Spirit, who caused His men of holy commission and appointment to originate such apportionments which are absolutely vital in quickly finding and citing Biblical passages.