A Bible Without Chapter and Verse

[MennoSota]

Often chapters and verses get in the way of understanding God's word. Prooftexting and creating theologies out of context have lead to a vast number of errors in Christian thought.
This link talks about the history of chapters and verses as well as Bibles that eliminate them so that readers can identify the author's natural train of thought.
https://instituteforbiblereading.org/need-bible-without-chapters-verses/

 

[Arsenios]

The Polyglot Bible does this with Greek, but is not all that readable...
The Concordant Text does the same in Greek which is readable if you know Greek... Its claim to fame is that it is written in the font of Scripted Greek, without chapters or books or spaces of any kind... So valuable were these works of copying that they were paid according to the number of letters on a manuscript page, and not even 'natural' word divisions were made... A page was so many characters wide and so many lines long, and was computed as such... Somehow, these were read in Services. The difficulty can plainly be seen if you do the following in, say, Romans 2:

Try sight-reading this aloud:

THEREFORETTHOUARTINEXCUSABLEOMANWHOS

OEVERTHOUARTTHATJUDGESTFORWHEREINTHO

UJUDGESTANOTHERTHOUCONDEMNESTTHYSELF

FORTHOUTHATJUDGESTDOESTTHESAMETHINGS

BUTWEARESURETHATTHEJUDGEMENTOFGODISA

CCORDINGTOTRUTHAGAINSTTHEMWHICHCOMM

ITSUCHTHINGSANDTHINKESTTHOUTHISOMANT

This would have been close to the appearance of Manuscript English
had English been the language of the Church
in the first thousand years of Christ's Faith...
Quitely KJV I might add!

Paper and pen and ink and hand-scripting were totally dear, and after doing the work, it would have to be checked by someone to make sure it was exactly copied... The Alexandrian MS was one with too many errors, and the monks at St Katherines 3 hours out of Cairo were using it to start fires in their stoves, when it was 'rescued' and taken to Britain as the oldest MS then in existence...

I very much like the style of your Bible, which tells its words conversationally in simplicity of manner as a cohesive narrative... IF one wishes exegetical precision, it cannot be used, and it suffers from our point of view from being narrated outside the phronema of the Ancient Faith and according to a particular denomination's theological presuppositions... But it is a very nicely done account nonetheless...

But if you are going to use the Bible to prove a point, you simply MUST use the Greek Bible, because ALL other versions, including Jerome's Latin Bible, and the KJV are but VERSIONS... Greek is the Mother Tongue of Bible Scholarship for Christians...

Arsenios

 

[MoreCoffee]

The Polyglot Bible does this with Greek, but is not all that readable...
The Concordant Text does the same in Greek which is readable if you know Greek... Its claim to fame is that it is written in the font of Scripted Greek, without chapters or books or spaces of any kind... So valuable were these works of copying that they were paid according to the number of letters on a manuscript page, and not even 'natural' word divisions were made... A page was so many characters wide and so many lines long, and was computed as such... Somehow, these were read in Services. The difficulty can plainly be seen if you do the following in, say, Romans 2:

Try sight-reading this aloud:

THEREFORETTHOUARTINEXCUSABLEOMANWHOS

OEVERTHOUARTTHATJUDGESTFORWHEREINTHO

UJUDGESTANOTHERTHOUCONDEMNESTTHYSELF

FORTHOUTHATJUDGESTDOESTTHESAMETHINGS

BUTWEARESURETHATTHEJUDGEMENTOFGODISA

CCORDINGTOTRUTHAGAINSTTHEMWHICHCOMM

ITSUCHTHINGSANDTHINKESTTHOUTHISOMANT

This would have been close to the appearance of Manuscript English
had English been the language of the Church
in the first thousand years of Christ's Faith...
Quitely KJV I might add!

Paper and pen and ink and hand-scripting were totally dear, and after doing the work, it would have to be checked by someone to make sure it was exactly copied... The Alexandrian MS was one with too many errors, and the monks at St Katherines 3 hours out of Cairo were using it to start fires in their stoves, when it was 'rescued' and taken to Britain as the oldest MS then in existence...

I very much like the style of your Bible, which tells its words conversationally in simplicity of manner as a cohesive narrative... IF one wishes exegetical precision, it cannot be used, and it suffers from our point of view from being narrated outside the phronema of the Ancient Faith and according to a particular denomination's theological presuppositions... But it is a very nicely done account nonetheless...

But if you are going to use the Bible to prove a point, you simply MUST use the Greek Bible, because ALL other versions, including Jerome's Latin Bible, and the KJV are but VERSIONS... Greek is the Mother Tongue of Bible Scholarship for Christians...

Arsenios

Printed editions of The Jerusalem Bible have verse numbers in the margin and dots in the text so that you can tell where the verse number would be but by doing that they make the passages read without interruption. I like it.

 

[Arsenios]

Printed editions of The Jerusalem Bible have verse numbers in the margin and dots in the text so that you can tell where the verse number would be but by doing that they make the passages read without interruption. I like it.

It is the phronema of discipleship that makes most translations OK with it, and without it, makes most of them not so good... I have repeatedly shown, for instance, that exegetically, the Greek states we are baptized IN and not BY the Holy Spirit, yet IF you believe, as Menno does, that it is the Holy Spirit Who DOES the Baptizing, there are no shortage of Bibles that translate the relevant passages as saying we are baptized BY the Holy Spirit into Christ... And those holding this view simply have to ignore very clear passages which state that Christ IS the ONE Who will be Baptizing... And this is because they have had encounters with the Holy Spirit, and regard those events as their baptism into Christ, because they were life-transforming for them...

Yet we find Old Testament encounters that do NOT enter the Prophet into Christ, and such observations, where even Christ says that the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than the greatest of the OT Prophets - And this because of the fact that when now baptized INTO Christ, we ARE by having become through that Baptism, a New Creation, which is therein newly conjoined with the Risen Christ, having become a Member of His holy Body, the Ekklesia, that IS Christ, Who IS the Head of His Body...

To which Menno retorts that water baptism is not some kind of magic pill...

When Christ Baptizes you INTO Himself, it IS a great Mystery, even if not some cheap magic pill... It is profound, and by it, one is now ABLE, if one is willing, to follow Christ... And the Ekklesia disciples those so following Him, preparing them for the Divine Encounter that will consecrate and sanctify the one preparing and prepared for it...

And outside that preparation, strange ideas emerge from such an encounter, which is why the Apostolic phronema that emerges from being discipled in the Apostolic Ekklesia is so critical for success...

Arsenios

 

[MoreCoffee]

It is the phronema of discipleship that makes most translations OK with it, and without it, makes most of them not so good... I have repeatedly shown, for instance, that exegetically, the Greek states we are baptized IN and not BY the Holy Spirit, yet IF you believe, as Menno does, that it is the Holy Spirit Who DOES the Baptizing, there are no shortage of Bibles that translate the relevant passages as saying we are baptized BY the Holy Spirit into Christ... And those holding this view simply have to ignore very clear passages which state that Christ IS the ONE Who will be Baptizing... And this is because they have had encounters with the Holy Spirit, and regard those events as their baptism into Christ, because they were life-transforming for them...

Yet we find Old Testament encounters that do NOT enter the Prophet into Christ, and such observations, where even Christ says that the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than the greatest of the OT Prophets - And this because of the fact that when now baptized INTO Christ, we ARE by having become through that Baptism, a New Creation, which is therein newly conjoined with the Risen Christ, having become a Member of His holy Body, the Ekklesia, that IS Christ, Who IS the Head of His Body...

To which Menno retorts that water baptism is not some kind of magic pill...

When Christ Baptizes you INTO Himself, it IS a great Mystery, even if not some cheap magic pill... It is profound, and by it, one is now ABLE, if one is willing, to follow Christ... And the Ekklesia disciples those so following Him, preparing them for the Divine Encounter that will consecrate and sanctify the one preparing and prepared for it...

And outside that preparation, strange ideas emerge from such an encounter, which is why the Apostolic phronema that emerges from being discipled in the Apostolic Ekklesia is so critical for success...

Arsenios

Facts and well reasoned clear argument will not convince MennoSota.

Prayer may.

 

[Arsenios]

Facts and well reasoned clear argument will not convince MennoSota.

Prayer may.

I happen to be of the opinion that Menno prays for us, just as we do for Menno...

And the simple fact is that each person's path to Salvation is particular
and in accordance with the specific facts of his particular life experience...

So i am not all that concerned for his Salvation at the Second Coming and the Last Judgement...

What does concern me is the message he and Josiah put forth...
That we have nothing to do with securing our Salvation...
That we are saved first and only then can do anything...
That a person who desires Union with God can do nothing to attain it...

Persuading Menno away from his theological understandings?
Naaaaaggghhhhhh!
I am not all that persuaded that such a change would even be good for him...
I have seen way too many Evangelical converts to the EOC flopping about like fish on the ice...
It takes years to get a wrap on this Faith at best...
But UNLEARNING a lifetime of religious training and leadership - For most were leaders - is really hard...

So God Bless Menno...

Straight up!

Arsenios