Before Langton (1150-1228), several people had tried to divide the longer books of the Bible into more manageable chunks. But his version was the one that stuck and is the basis of the chapters we use today.
The advantages of chapters are obvious. Apart from making it easier for students, they help us find our way through the text by identifying the different sections of a narrative and telling us where stories and themes begin and end. Not all Langton's chapter divisions work, which is why some Bibles lay out the text in a way that crosses the chapter heading. But what's surprising is that 800 years after he did his work, so many of them do.
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