The Fourth Method: Partition

On Partition — The Fourth Method

Of Partition — which itself also brings much light to the divine scriptures — there are two chief offices: ¹ namely, to divide, and to gather together the divided [parts]. Division ² divides the whole body of each volume — not rashly, but according to the analogy of the divisible matters, with the greatest reason — into members, and into parts (which they call heads, or chapters), dividing [them] by number and distinguishing [them] by the addition of numbers. And this device of dividing was invented for the convenience of teachers and learners, so that what could not be grasped as a whole at once, and in a single glance, might be more conveniently and more openly learned when divided into parts. Collection, ³ on the other hand, gathers the particular sums of the divided parts under the strictest titles or inscriptions, by which — as by eyes — it illustrates and adorns the fronts of the individual chapters. But as regards division, it must be known that this arithmetical distinction of chapters which we now have in the Bibles is recent; ⁴ for before five hundred [years…] [continues p170]

[continuing from p169] …[for before five hundred] years no passage of divine Scripture is found cited by number, either among the Hebrews or among the Greeks, except the psalms — of which, as appears from the Acts of the Apostles, they were wont, from the very beginning of the nascent church, to make mention with numbers added (for these numbers, as Hilary testifies in the preface of the psalms, the Seventy interpreters affixed to the psalms). ⁵ And those chapter-divisions and numbers which are now seen in the Greek copies, as well as in the Hebrew and Latin, were taken from our Latin codices. For those most ancient expositors used to divide the divine scriptures, and to cite them, not by the enumeration of chapters and the recitation of numbers, but by the allegation of particular histories — as Augustine said that he had written from the beginning of Genesis up to the expulsion of the first parents from Paradise, and Gregory too [said] that he had expounded from the beginning of the book of Kings up to the anointing of King David — instead of what we would now say, “on the first three chapters of Genesis,” and “on the first fifteen earlier chapters of 1 Kings.” They divided likewise, and set forth publicly, the scriptures by places, or periods, or verses or versicles, or the sentences of the sacred volumes expressed verbatim — which they also sometimes called Chapters or Capitula — saying, for example: “On that passage of Paul where it is written, I speak the truth in Christ ⁶ up to that place where it is said, of whom is Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever”; ⁷ or “on that which is written in Job, The oxen were plowing, and the asses feeding.” ⁸

I find that a similar mode of division existed also among the ancient Jews: ⁹ that their codices were divided by sentences, commata, members, and verses, and distinguished by certain intervals — of which Jerome is witness, in the preface of Paralipomenon [Chronicles] and of Isaiah, asserting that, for the utility of readers, he had preserved in his own translation the same cuttings of the commata and the distances of the intervals which he had found in the Hebrew codices. Although Elias Levita, in the preface of the book Masoreth ha-Masoreth, affirms — following the opinion of the Rabbis ¹⁰ — that the whole Law was once as it were one single Pasuk, or one sentence, in which all things cohered without any distinction of verses, and that it was divided into Pesukim (that is, into verses and sentences) by the Jews of Tiberias four hundred and thirty-six years after the last destruction of the holy city. The author of the book of Hebrew Questions on the books of Kings (whom St. Thomas thinks was a Jew reborn in Christ) ¹¹ shows that the Jews cut the books into a certain number of sentences, or verses — since he says that the book of Proverbs among them contains nine hundred and fifteen verses; ¹² yet I myself have nowhere read, in the commentaries of the Hebrews, any of these sentences marked with an arithmetical mark, or expressed by a numeral word.

But it must be known that the partition of verses among the Jews is different from [that] among us and the Greeks. For the ancient Greeks and Latins distinguished the verses by an equal number of words, writing in each verse almost always six words ¹³ — partly monosyllables, partly polysyllables: which Augustine indicates clearly enough in the book whose title is The Mirror of Divine Scripture, in which — often noting the number of verses (sometimes collected by himself from the divine books, sometimes indeed omitted) — he sets, as an example of one verse, that saying of the ninety-ninth Psalm: His people, and the sheep of his pasture. ¹⁴ As an example of two verses, that sentence of Psalm 118: How many are the days of thy servant? when wilt thou execute judgment on them that persecute me? ¹⁵ Again, as an example of three verses, he brings that from Psalm 149 [so the margin; the body prints 148]: Let them praise his name in choir; on timbrel and psaltery let them sing to him; for the Lord is well pleased with his people. ¹⁶ In these examples, if you count the words, you will find in the first six words, in the second twelve, in the third eighteen. According to this partition of verses, therefore, I judge that the measure of the ancients is to be understood, who were wont to signify the size of volumes by the number of verses, as by a more certain mark — because books are frequently unequal, on account of the diverse abundance of their matter. In which way Jerome, expressing the size of certain books, says that Origen wrote on the Song of Songs nearly twenty thousand verses; ¹⁷ that Gregory Nazianzen comprised all his works in thirty thousand verses; that Hilary, in his commentaries on the psalms, borrowed from Origen nearly forty thousand verses; and that he himself, while expounding the epistle to the Ephesians, dictated a thousand verses into it daily. So too Diogenes Laertius affirms that the sum of certain Aristotelian volumes is contained under five thousand three hundred and thirty verses.

But the Jews, in distinguishing the verses, neither attend to the number of words, nor follow the cola or commata of the discourse, but [follow] a certain ancient custom, supported only by the authority of the elders and the tradition of the Rabbis; nor do they bring any other reason for their partition, except that Ezra and the men of the great synagogue, inspired by the divine spirit, distinguished the divine scriptures in this fashion. Whence among them the Pesukim — that is, the verses — are almost all unequal, ¹⁸ as appears at the outset of Genesis, where the first Pasuk, or verse, is In the beginning God created heaven and earth, ¹⁹ but the second is much longer: And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of the Lord was borne over the waters; ²⁰ after which follows the third verse, And God said, etc., far shorter. This mode of dividing, then, the ancients had — among whom, although Ammonius of Alexandria (or Eusebius of Caesarea, or Tatian) divided the four gospels by number into chapters ²¹ — that is, the Gospel of Matthew into 355 chapters, Mark into 235, Luke into 343, John into 232 — yet I do not think that they had regard to this, that they might establish for us a fixed partition of the scriptures, but only to this, that they might indicate the places of the Evangelical Symphony [Harmony], in which the Evangelists said things consonant among themselves. After these, then, I have found among the ancients no numeral division of the scriptures, except in one [author]… [continues p171]

[continuing from p170] …[no numeral division of the scriptures, except in] one Hilary, who cut the gospel of Matthew, expounded by himself, into thirty-three canons. ²² For as to what we noted in the first book of this work — that the Gospel of Luke, in the commentaries of Ambrose, is divided into sixty-four titles, and in the commentaries of Bede into ninety-three chapters ²³ — we believe this was done not by the authors themselves, but interpolated by the copyists or readers, who love frequent breathing-pauses in writing or reading.

But among the Greek expositors, who flourished five hundred years ago, certain ones began to divide the sacred writings into parts numerically distinguished and marked with the characters of numbers — which they sometimes called titles, and sometimes capitula [chapters]. For thus Euthymius — or, as it seems to some, Oecumenius — divided the Gospel of Matthew into sixty-eight titles, or chapters, ²⁴ of which he inscribed the first “On the Magi,” the second “On the children slain,” the third “On the preaching of John,” the fourth “On the doctrine of Christ,” etc. But some, separating the capitula from the titles, cut the volumes into titles, and again subdivided the titles into chapters — as is gathered from Suidas and Arethas: of whom the former testifies that the Gospel of Matthew was distributed into sixty-eight titles [so the margin; the body prints 28] and into 355 chapters, ²⁵ and the gospel of Mark into forty-eight titles and fifty-six chapters; while the latter relates that Andrew [of Caesarea] cut the Apocalypse of John into twenty-four parts, and each of these into three chapters, so that the chapters of the whole book were seventy-two.

But among the Latins who [lived] from the thousandth year of our salvation up to these our times, I find a twofold enumeration of chapters: ²⁶ the one, as [being] older, so also more numerous — according to which the Gospel of Matthew, even in old printed codices, contains ninety-four chapters, the Gospel of Luke one hundred and seven chapters, and the Epistle to the Romans fifty chapters; the other, later, which we now have in the common Bibles, more contracted and comprised in fewer chapters — by whose numeral citation there used, in their commentaries, Hugh presbyter Cardinal of St. Sabina [Hugh of St-Cher], Alexander of Hales, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and the rest, up to this day, the scholastic Theologians, whose chief care was to bring forth the divine testimonies from the holy scriptures by number. These Rabbi David Kimchi, and the other more recent Jews, follow in the division, calculation, and citation of the chapters of the old testament. Thus far concerning Division.

But concerning Collection — which is accomplished according to the [second] office of partition — it must be observed that this part is not a matter of common industry, ²⁷ but of a keener skill. For just as, before we approach the division, we must diligently inspect that which is set forth to be divided, and rightly know the analogy of the parts to be divided, lest the division turn out wrongly: so, in collecting, there is need of a certain keen judgment, which may gather the separate little summaries of the individual divided parts, or chapters, aptly, briefly, and completely, and compress them as briefly as possible under certain witty and very strict titles and inscriptions, to be prefixed to the beginnings of the chapters. How difficult this is to do, that manifold diversity of the chapter-titles, or arguments, which are prefixed to the chapters of divine scripture, argues — varying in almost every one of the common codices, but especially in the chapters of the more obscure books, such as many are in the Prophets and in the epistles of Paul. In the fourth chapter of the epistle to the Romans I found ten arguments, or inscriptions: ²⁸ of which some grazed the sum of one or two sentences of the whole chapter, the rest being omitted; others strayed far from the whole scope of the chapter; and some even fought diametrically against the whole meaning of the chapter. Which now, for brevity’s sake, I pass over, subjoining in their place various formulas of inscriptions, or arguments, upon Psalm 116 — so that from these you may somehow perceive the varied artifice of collecting.

Argument of Psalm 116, from Paul to the Romans, chapter 15:

1. The Gentiles [praise] God for [his] mercy, the Jews for [his] truth.

Another of Paul’s, from the same place: 2. The Gentiles honor God from mercy alone, the Jews from the promises.

Of Arnobius: 3. The Gentiles, the Jews being excluded, are invited to the praises of God.

Of Eusebius of Caesarea: 4. A prophecy of the calling of the Gentiles.

Of Chrysostom: 5. A prediction of the evangelical preaching, about to occupy the whole world.

Of Cassiodorus: 6. The beginning, end, and compendium of all psalms and hymns.

Of Euthymius: 7. A laudatory psalm, calling together the whole race of mortals to the praises of Christ, and to the giving of thanks to him for such great benefits conferred upon us.

Of Remigius: 8. The whole human race is invited to celebrate God on account of the mercy shown to us in the coming of Christ.

Of Honorius: 9. The Gentiles first, then the Jews, are invited to the divine praises.

Of Smaragdus: 10. The praise of God from mercy and truth — because by these two virtues all the works of the divine perfections are comprehended.

Of David Kimchi the Jew: 11. A laudatory hymn, לימות המשיח (limoth Hammashiach) — that is, looking forward to the days of the Messiah.