It always looked so weird to me, like, who not just read the Bible like a proper book instead of having all of those numbering?
I guess it's because it makes easy to find some specific line? But that is from an academic perspective instead of something you would put in a faith book?
When did that started and why they put all the numbering?
41 Comments
Seraph@kbin.social · 52 pts · 2y
So many verses. When will it get to the chorus?
Pons_Aelius@kbin.social · 13 pts · 2y
They got rid of the chorus due to its Pagan Greek origins.
AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 2y
Amen!
Flax_vert@feddit.uk · 6 pts · 2y
The four Gospels :P
PP_BOY_@lemmy.world · 49 pts · 2y
Firstly, the Bible, as we know it, is a collection of books and sections that were written over several thousand years.
You have this backward. It's very important for texts of proselytizing religions to be easy to navigate and repeat.
As for when/why it started, this article from BibleOdyssey.org does a good job of explaining that in detail.
vis4valentine@lemmy.ml · 26 pts · 2y
So, if I wanna start a 1 billion people religion, gotta write my shit like:
The Lost Apples
someguy3@lemmy.ca · 23 pts · 2y
If you ever want to steal candy from a baby, remember Lost Apples verses 7-9.
PP_BOY_@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 2y
I can't tell if you're trying to be clever or not but do you really view that any different than referring to poetry by stanza/line? Or books by page number/paragraph/line? The Bible has been written, rewritten, and edited thousands of times, it makes no sense to say "page 121, paragraph 3" when quoting from it
dustyData@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 2y
It also facilitates two things. First, hermeneutics. Which is the art of overanalizing text ad nauseam until you can manufacture new meaning that wasn't put there by the author in the first place, by sheer force of dubious rethoric. And secondly taking individual lines out of context to support fringe and contradictory statements.
thisisnotgoingwell@programming.dev · 6 pts · 2y
I imagine if your book got translated into hundreds of different languages, eventually people would add numbers to the verses. Sometimes the translated version is not a great translation to the original languages intent, so it's easy to reference the verse number across other translations or compare it across languages
lvxferre@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 2y
You don't need to write it like this. Just write normally (prose or poetry, your choice), and other people will fragment your text this way, while either discussing it [proto-]academically or looking for hidden stuff in it.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk · 35 pts · 2y
Your guess is spot on. It makes it easy to reference. If you look at Wikipedia, with articles and such it cites them by ISBN and page number. Since the Bible is so widely translated into not only different languages, but different versions within languages, as well as printed with varying font sizes, etc, page numbers for such an important book simply wouldn't happen. Surprisingly, numbering was only introduced as late as 1555. As for the books, they are generally separated into what they were found as. So Matthew is the Gospel written by St Matthew the Evangelist, John is the Gospel written by St John the Evangelist, 1 Corinthians is St Paul the Apostle's first known letter to the church in Corinth, etc.
Gigate@sopuli.xyz · 29 pts · 2y
I don't know where the Bible's numbering in particular comes from, but it's common in ancient texts. It helped with navigating long works before the printing press gave us exact pagination.
AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world · 26 pts · 2y
Not just consistent page numbering, but the existence of pages at all—until about 300 CE, most books consisted of scrolls instead of bound codices.
UncleBadTouch@lemmy.ca · 9 pts · 2y
i learned a new word today, thank you
lvxferre@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 2y
1560 Genevra. Before that, only the chapters were numbered. Probably a consequence of Protestantism, but even Catholic bibles adopted it.
It's still helpful, even nowadays. For example if I told you to find in Sermones the quote at 1.2.69-71 (1st book, 2nd part, lines 69 to 71), you could easily do it. Note how the numbering system is similar in spirit to the one in the Bible - except that the books get an abbreviation instead of a number.
TeachMeHowToDuzy@lemmy.one · 26 pts · 2y
It sure makes it easy for religious people to pick out tiny experts and use them out of context.
hydrospanner@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 2y
Excerpts*
Lanthanae@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 22 pts · 2y
For easy indexing. Lots of influential literary works have this. There's a universal standard indexing for both the works of Plato and Shakespeare, for example.
tamiya_tt02@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 2y
Bible history is fascinating. Michael from Inspiring Philosophy on YouTube broke it all down from the original texts (as old as possible) to the King James Version. https://youtu.be/fnlp3--RG3c?si=T01T4emDeT6i6s4-
flooppoolf@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 2y
dustyData@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 2y
On the point of pentameter and other ancient writing quirks. It's because writing was expensive and not really that common. Ink, paper, quill. It all had to be painstakingly made by hand. Then all the training on reading and writing was a huge time investment as well. So it was relegated to the high classes. And slaves, they used slaves as scribes and basically as personal computers.
So, most of culturally relevant works were actually poems. Lacking writing tools, long passages of texts are hard to memorize. But, poems in regular rhyme and accompanied by structured melodies are actually very easy to memorize. The Odyssey was one such a song.
A master could teach his disciples the words and melody of extraordinarily long passages of information. Names, history, dates, myths, moral essays, by teaching the song. Performing the different passages several times allowed memorization and then they could perform this either for entertainment or for study and analysis via rethorical discussion. This oral tradition is how we have theater plays, stories and songs from 5 thousand years ago. We are pretty certain today that Homer didn't wholly originally wrote the Illiad and the Odyssey. He belonged to this oral tradition and put it down into writing. Something that might have been seen as unnecessary at the time, for text was relegated to legal documents and treatises and court proceedings.
EDIT: Here's a practical demonstration. Write down the lyrics for Mr. Brightside. Chances are that you know them by heart.
Granite@kbin.social · 3 pts · 2y
Much in the same way the Vedas were passed down
flooppoolf@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
flooppoolf@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2y
lvxferre@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 2y
flooppoolf@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
lvxferre@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 2y
Even tying sound with movement, on itself, is surprisingly insightful. If they thought that Earth didn't make a sound because it was fixed, this means that they were aware that movement creates sound. (Later on we'd discover that sound is movement.)
I'm a bit clueless on Greek but I gave it a check, and it was the Odyssey indeed - the "lyric I" starts right off the bat asking the Muse about Odysseus. And since Virgil crafted the Aeneid as a continuation of the Odyssey, he most likely took a lot of the poetic resources from it, kind of like a fan game ripping off assets from the original.
Note however that Ancient Greek poetry had another resource at hand, that Latin didn't - tone. And the authors of the past used it quite a bit, so the poem had a melody by itself, by just reading it aloud. Like this:
Those are the two first verses of the Odyssey. Here H/bold = rising or high, L/italics = low or falling, and dash/unmarked = unstressed.
I usually follow it in Portuguese (my L1), so I can't help you much with that. That said I'd recommend you to avoid translations flowering the text too much (it goes against the "spirit" of the text), or insistently keeping Latin word order intact (e.g. "Gallia is wholly divided in parts three" or junk like this, it sounds awful in English).
For the Odyssey the nearest in spirit that you'll get in Latin would be the already mentioned Aeneid. Past that you'd probably need to either go back to Greek works (like Argonautica) or even modern languages (like Os Lusíadas, same "we're out, to the unknown world, to do something great" vibe).
Things like the Golden Ass are easier to find, though. Anything Plautus will give you a good laugh: Aulularia (The Pot of Gold), Miles Gloriosus (The Proud Soldier), Bacchides. Often there are "moral messages" in them but they're mostly slapstick comedy.
You might also like some of Catullus' poems. The one from my example is well-behaved, but check poems 16, 39, 58 and 84 for some fun. 16 in special is quoted often due to the profanity.
I often compare Martial's Epigrams to the Roman version of shitposting.
flooppoolf@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2y
flooppoolf@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2y
shalafi@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2y
Mnemonics for memorization and oral repetition. If that's not the origin, it certainly works that way.
For example, I can quote John 3:16, but if you asked me, "What was that thing god said about his son?"
8BitRoadTrip@lemm.ee · 3 pts · 2y
It’s to facilitate citing random verses out of context to support whatever you need it to.
expatriado@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
because it gets quoted a lot. Some Christian religions go to an anual cycle during mass, where the whole thing is read few verses every day, so you have to brake it down
bstix@feddit.dk · 2 pts · 2y
Notice that we write laws and contracts in the same way. The bible was both. It was used to settle disagreements and to sentence people.
Resol@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 2y
Guess what else is divided like that. That's right, it's the Quran. And maybe the Torah too, I don't know.
That's just a trope of religious texts.
MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world · -14 pts · 2y
Keep in mind that it's pure fantasy goobledygook.
WarmSoda@lemm.ee · 8 pts · 2y
That doesn't have anything to do with OPs question.
MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world · -8 pts · 2y
I don't give a shit.
WarmSoda@lemm.ee · 9 pts · 2y
Oh man, you're so cool!
MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world · -5 pts · 2y
True.Not fantasy fiction.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk · 5 pts · 2y
Least arrogant athiest on Lemmy
WarmSoda@lemm.ee · 5 pts · 2y
Cut the guy some slack. He hasn't finished 9th grade yet.
MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 2y
True. Luckily you can become a Paramedic and save other dumbass religious humans with a GED.
pimento64@sopuli.xyz · 6 pts · 2y
"In this moment, I am Euphoric"
flooppoolf@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y
vis4valentine@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 2y
Yes I know is a fantasy book.