De Moor II:14: The Canon and the Church, Part 4

And the Division into Chapters and Verses is not divine, but Human.  Our AUTHOR in his Compendio Theologiæ with good reason distinguishes between the contemporary Division into Chapters and Verses, which we use, and the other Divisions of the Authentic Text, which among the Hebrews and Greeks were in use for ages.

To be sure, for ages the Jews had their פָּרָשׁוֹת/Parashot, into which the Pentateuch is divided, thus called from פרש, to be distinct or separated; to divide; in such a way that the Parashah indicates the separate section and ordinary reading assigned to each Sabbath.  Fifty-four, or fifty-three, such Parashot are reckoned in the Pentateuch, in which readings the entire Mosaic Law is completed yearly in the Synagogue.  The individual Parashot are denominated from the first word of the section, or from the first, especially important, word:  thus the first section, Genesis 1:1-6:9, is called Parashah בראשית, In the Beginning.  The next section, reaching to Genesis 12, is named נֺחַ/Noah; and so on, as, from an inspection of the table of all the Parashot after BUXTORF’S tractate de Abbreviaturis Hebraicis, pages 281-288, it shall be evident to the eye of anyone.  That this division of sections of the Law was made for the use of sabbath reading, which James retraces ἐκ γενεῶν ἀρχαίων, from of old, Acts 15:21, is easily proven; hence we acknowledge that the same is also sufficiently ancient, although we are unwilling exactly to determine the first author and just importance of this division.  In addition to these major Parashot, minor are also given, which are shorter segments of these pericopes, adapted for distinguishing matters or arguments of the sacred text, and aptly moderating the public reading in suitable intervals.  Thus, for example, in Genesis 1, individual allotments of the hexameron[1] are distinguished in minor Parashot; so also, in Genesis 11, the individual moments of the matters there recounted, for example, a.  the building of the tower of Babel, b.  the τεκνογονία/begetting of Shem, c.  the generation of Arphaxad, etc.  Both Parashot are further distinguished into פרשות פתוחות, open sections, which in the Manuscript Codices begin from an open line; and into פרשות סתומות, sections closed, or סמוכות/ conjoined, which are begun in the midst of a line.  The greater open Parashot are signified by three larger פפפ; the lesser with a single smaller פ:  but the greater closed Parashot are signified with three ססס; the lesser with a single smaller ס.  Now, this entire system of Divisions, as not of great use beyond the public reading of the synagogue, is often omitted in printed editions.  Finally, each greater Parashah is divided into seven חֲלָקִים/Halakim/portions, which seven Readers divide among themselves, indicated in the Masoretic Bible by the marginal words כהן/ לוי/ שלישי/ וגו, Priest, Levite, the third, etc.

Likewise, the Jews had their חפטרות/Haphtarot, sendings or dismissals, as it is interpreted by Bartolocci; or even cessations, pauses, according to Elias Levita:  for it is derived from חפטיר/פטר, which sometimes denotes to cease, to stop, and at other times to send away free, to make free/exempt.  Both significations are able to be admitted with propriety:  that they might thus be called Haphtarot, because by the same an end is put to the public reading of the Bible in the Synagogue, and thus, with prayers subjoined, the sacred assembly is dismissed:  unless Haphtarot are called Cessations, on account of their use introduced only after the use of the reading of the Law had ceased.  For the Haphtarot are prophetic pericopes, corresponding in sense and content with the Parashot, and wont to be read publicly in the Synagogue after the reading of the Law.  However, ELIAS LEVITA in Tishbi maintains that the reading of these was put in the place of the Sections of the Pentateuch by the elders of the people, after Antiochus Epiphanes, with the rites of the Jews abolished, prohibited the reading of the Law under penalty of death.  But, as Elias rehearses these things without witnesses, whence VRIEMOET maintains that in this matter credit is given too rashly to Elias, as this author is nearly alone, Thesibus Antiquitatum Israeliticarum, CCCCLXXXV; so it appears to hinder that Antiochus raged, not only against the Pentateuch, but against the entire Sacred Codex:  neither does it appear probable that the tyrant permitted the reading of the Prophets any more than of the Law; since he prohibited this, so that he might call the people away from the knowledge and worship of the true God.  Wherefore the Most Illustrious VITRINGA, De Synagoga Vetere, book III, part II, chapter XI, page 1008, fetches the origin of the Prophetic readings from this, that the Jews, after the republic was restored by the Maccabees, handled their sacred rites in every part with more fervid zeal; thereupon they sought out and reviewed all the sacred writings, with efforts renewed after Ezra; and, since they acknowledged the writings of Moses and of the Prophets to be of the same subject matter, and to tend toward the same goal, they made a decision to conjoin in the readings of the sabbath and feast days the writings of both sorts, while hitherto the public reading of the Mosaic Pentateuch alone had obtained.  Again, concerning the point of time and author of this arrangement, we determine nothing:  but, that this custom of conjoining the reading of the Law and the Prophets obtained in the Synogogues in the time of the Apostles, the Acts of the same most clearly teaches, when, in Acts 13:15, mention is made of the sabbath reading in the Synagogue, and this is called ἀνάγνωσις τοῦ νόμου καὶ τῶν προφητῶν, the reading of the Law and of the Prophets:  just as in verse 27 αἱ φωναὶ τῶν προφητῶν αὶ κατὰ πᾶν σάββατον ἀναγινωσκόμεναι, the voices of the Prophets which are read every sabbath day, are mentioned.  So that you might become acquainted more distinctly with these Haphtarot, the table of the Prophetic sections, לוח הפטרות, subjoined to many Editions of the Bible, is to be inspected; which will show that these sections were taken equally from the former and the latter Prophets, and will additionally indicate a difference that was observed between the Spanish and the German Jews in the diverse prophetic periscopes sometimes substituted for some section of the Pentateuch:  the custom of the former is noted in the margin by כמנהג הספרדים, according to the tradition of the Sephardic Jews, and of the latter by כמנהג האשכנזים, according to the tradition of the Ashkenazic Jews.

Furthermore, our AUTHOR mentions the Jews’ סְדָרִים/ Sedarim/Orders:  by which word, סֶדֶר, or סדרא in Chaldean, the greater Parashah is frequently signified in the final Masorah, which also obtains in the writings of other Rabbis.  Yet, sometimes from the distribution of the Masoretes a Seder constitutes a subdivision of the Parashot, whence it happens that Genesis has twelve Parashot, but forty-three Sedarim, and so on.  And into Sedarim of this sort other books also, which do not admit Parashot, are found to have been divided by the Masoretes; so that Joshua has fourteen Sedarim, Jeremiah has thirty-one, etc.  Now, this later division of the text is of no use today, and is altogether obsolete.

Finally, among the Jewish Divisions of the Text in our AUTHOR appear also the פסוקים/Passukim, Biblical Verses, from the Chaldean פסק, to cease, to have an end.  Now, thus the sentences of the Hebrew text are called, set off by the readers with a full breath, and inscribed and punctuated with the silluq (ֽ), the greatest disjunctive accent, together with two points called the soph passuk (׃), that is, the end of the Verse.  There are a diversity of beliefs among Critics concerning the antiquity and origin of this Division.  1.  There are those that refer the first Division of the Hebrew Text into Verses to the Tiberian Masoretes, and think it to be later than both Talmuds;[2] so it is thought by Morinus, Simon, and Le Clerc following Elias Levita:  see CARPZOV’S Criticam Sacram Veteris Testamenti, part I, chapter IV, § 5, number 3, pages 158, 159.  2.  HUMPHREY PRIDEAUX, The Old and New Testament Connected, part I, book V, column 393-397, in the Dutch folio edition, believes that this Division was contrived, if not quite by Ezra, yet not so long after his death, principally for the sake of the Chaldean Translators, who were translating into Chaldean the Hebrew text, read in public Rites, but hardly understood any longer by the common people.  So that the Hebrew Reader and Chaldean Interpreter might know accordingly how far they were obliged to extend, and again where to stop, it was necessary that there be a division of the text into Verses; which was first done in the Law alone, then in the time of the Maccabees in the Prophets also.  But he does not maintain that this Division was first made through the use of points, but that lines were devoted to the individual Verses on the parchments, etc.:  compare the judgment of CARPZOV, Criticis Sacris Veteris Testamenti, part I, chapter IV, § 5, number 3, pages 156-158.  3.  The Most Illustrious BUXTORF, Tiberiade, chapter VIII, thinks that the division of the Text into Verses was the work of Ezra and the Great Synagogue, yet derogating nothing from the divine authority of this division:  see CARPZOV’S Critica Sacra Veteris Testamenti, part I, chapter IV, § 5, number 3, pages 155, 156.  4.  Finally, CARPZOV, Criticis Sacris Veteris Testamenti, part I, chapter IV, § 5, number 3, pages 153-155, judges that this Division is to be referred to Moses and the Prophets, God’s sacred Amanuenses themselves.  While the Most Illustrious LEUSDEN, Philologo Hebræo-Græco, Dissertation III, § 2, pages 16-19, hesitates between the opinions of Buxtorf and Carpzov.  Indeed, learned Men give a certain demonstration at great length that this distinction of the Hebrew Text into פסוקים/Passukim already obtained, not only before the Tiberian Masoretes, who lived after the five hundredth year after Christ; but even before the Mishnah was completed, which was collected about the middle of the Second Century after the birth of Christ by Rabbi Judah HaQadosh; not only from the unanimous testimony of the Jews, with Elias Levita alone excepted, but also from the frequent mention of the same in both Talmuds; I would not now mention the authority of JEROME, Præfatione in Jesaiam, opera, tome 5, page 4, and elsewhere (see LEUSDEN, Philologo Hebræo-Græco, Dissertation III, § 2, page 17).  In addition, Carpzov seeks an argument from the certitude and evidence of the divine sense, which (in his judgment) in many places would be unsteady and would depend upon an unsound ankle, if it were not divinely established where the end of a sentence was to be placed, or, if it were left to the will of each reader to assign the beginnings and endings of sentences at pleasure.  He also shows the arguments advanced for the contrary opinion are easily answered.

It is certainly not to be denied that, although apodictic demonstration is hardly to be expected here, yet the arguments for the opinion of Carpzov outweigh the rest; and that his opinion is especially useful for keeping in good repair the ordinary reading and division of the Sacred Codex, and at the same time for bridling human license.  From a comparison with those things that were argued concerning the Antiquity of the Vowel Points in § 8, not incongruently shall we also say here, that the Holy Spirit, while He dictated the Scriptures to the Holy Amanuenses, together with the necessary tokens of the Vowels, to such an extent also took care that the sense be stopped and distinguished, as far as this appeared necessary to Him to avert the στρέβλωσιν/twisting of the sense of Sacred Scripture, and to remove doubts otherwise arising from a perverse conjunction or disjunction of expressions:  which inter-punctuation, indicated by the Spirit Himself, He would also have taken the utmost care to preserve in the Biblical Text; whence there is never to be a mad rush to disturb the common Division of the Hebrew Text:  although we would desire to represent to no man that this Division of the individual verses by the same signs of silluq (ֽ) and soph passuk (׃), as it is today, was already made from the beginning:  compare BUDDEUS’ Historiam ecclesiasticam Veteris Testamenti, period II, section VI, § 12, tome 2, page 799.

It is not for no reason that our AUTHOR in his Compendio, when he had affirmed that the Divisions of Chapters and Verses according to those Chapters, in such a way that wherever the first Verse, second, etc., begins to be numbered from the beginning of the Chapter, are entirely human; distinctly then from the Pauses of the Jews, and among these, discusses the פסוקים/Passukim, and does not testify expressly of these that they are entirely human.

Similarly the Greeks had their own τίτλους/inscriptions and κεφάλαια/headings.[3]  They already began to introduce these Divisions into the Greek Text toward the end of the Second Century.  In the Third Century, in a Codex of the Gospels, Ammonius Saccas, an Alexandrian Philosopher,[4] applied his own effort at this point:  in the Pauline Epistles, a similar thing was attempted by an Anonymous writer, whom Mill thinks to have been Theodore, Bishop of Mopsuestia.[5]  Euthalius the Deacon[6] especially at this point, in the Fourth Century, won praise in the division of Acts, and the Pauline and Catholic Epistles.  The practice of weaving together a harmony of the Gospels furnished the first occasion for this work.  The τίτλοι and κεφάλαια sometimes in the same sense come to signify major sections of the Greek Text, each distinguished by its own subject matter; as thus it is in the headings of Matthew, α.  Περὶ τῶν μάγων, Concerning the Magi; β.  Περὶ τῶν ἀναιρεθέντων παιδίων, Concerning the Children Killed; γ.  Πρῶτος Ἰωάννης ἐκήρυξε βασιλείαν οὐρανῶν, John first Preached the Kingdom of Heaven; etc.  But sometimes τίτλοι denotes those greater sections, but κεφάλαια sections far shorter, which were noted with numeral signs in the margin of the text:  thus in Matthew they were enumerating sixty-eight τίτλους, but three hundred and fifty-five κεφάλαια.  To these were added στίχοι/ Verses, with two thousand and five hundred numbered in Matthew, which number of στίχων, however, varied considerably:  and concerning which it is helpful to hear the Most Illustrious SALMASIUS explaining his opinion in his Epistola ad Sarraviam, inter Sarravianas CLXXXIII, page 186, where he writes:  “The Ancient Codices were wont to write all words in one, continuous line without any spaces; except that, where a sentence had been completed, they did not begin another on the same line; but they established the beginning of another line or verse.  Thence the distinction arose through the verses, which were greater or lesser, as a thought was summed up in more or fewer words; just as individual verses were occupying sometimes two, sometimes three or more lines:  the Greeks call them στίχους.  Now, those works were numbered by verses, the sum of which was noted at the end of the book.  Thence they used πολύστιχον βιβλίον, The Many-line Bible, of the great volume.  This method endured for a long time.  In an ancient Codex of the Epistles of Paul, which is in the hands of the Dupuy family,[7] you will find at the end a στιχομετρίαν, a stichometric catalogue, of the books of the entirety of the Sacred Scripture.”  See more things concerning these divisions of the Greeks in the Text of the New Testament in RUMPÆUS’ Criticis ad Novi Testamenti Libros, cum præfatione Carpzovii, § XXXIII, XXXIV, pages 130-146; and also in PRITIUS’ Introductione in Lectionem Novi Testamenti, chapters XXIV, XXV, pages 219-257, where you will find τὰ κεφάλαια, or lemmata, the arguments of the major sections of the entire New Testament enumerated in Greek.

But as far as our modern Division of the Books into fixed portions, which we call Chapters, is concerned, our AUTHOR observes that it is well-known that this is not much above five hundred years old, with the praise of this work in the Latin Text commonly attributed to HUGO CARDINALIS OF ST. CHER.[8]  JOHANNES CROJUS, in his Observationibus Sacris, chapter VII, pages 55 and following, contends that today’s division of the Books into Chapters is not new, but was already devised by the Fathers of the first centuries.  But the foundations upon which his opinion rests are very weak:  for, as far as the Manuscript Codex of the Latin Books is concerned, written eight hundred years before, in which today’s division of Chapters appears; to that purpose also in Theophylact, a writer of the Eleventh Century, to whom he also appeals; the Chapters of the Sacred Books are able to have been added by a later hand for the convenience of the readers.  If such a division had existed of old, it had not been needful for the Fathers to cite the Biblical text by alleging particular histories:  thus, for example, AUGUSTINE relates (with LEUSDEN observing in his Philologo Hebræo-Græco, Dissertation III, § 4, page 20) that he is discussing from the beginning of Genesis unto the expulsion of our first parents from paradise; in the place of which it would have been far easier to have said, upon the first three chapters of Genesis.  Similarly GREGORY THE GREAT, who lived about the end of the Sixth Century, says that he expounded the history from the beginning of the Book of Samuel unto the anointing of King David; in the place of which we now say the first Fifteen Chapters of the First Book of Samuel.  Thus JEROME also had written in Præfatione in Jesaiam, opera, tome 5, page 4, “Didymus…from the place where it is written, Comfort, comfort, oh ye priests, my people; speak to the heart of Jerusalem:  unto the end of the volume, published eighteen tomes.”[9]  So then, in the Psalms, with the individual Psalms subsisting of themselves, the same division always obtained, whence Paul cites the second Psalm, Acts 13:33; but with respect to the rest of the Biblical context the Division into Chapters is attributed by some to Arlotto the Etruscan, who flourished under the Emperor Adolphus in the year 1290.[10]  JOHN BALE, Bishop of England, in his Catalogo Scriptorum Magnæ Britanniæ,[11] Century III, ascribes the praise of this labor to his countryman, Stephen Langton, Cardinal and Archbishop of Canterbury under Kings John and Henry III.[12]  But most, following GENEBRARD in Chronologia, SIXTUS SENENSIS in Bibliotheca Sancta, NICHOLAUS SERARIUS in Prolegomenis Bibliorum, BUXTORF in præfatione in Concordantiam, HOTTINGER in Historia Ecclesiastica, say that the author of this work is HUGH OF SAINT-CHER, a Dominican Monk, who was the first from that order raised to the dignity of Cardinal, commonly called Hugo Cardinalis; now, he flourished about the year 1240 and died in the year 1262.  He, since he wrote Commentaries on the whole Bible, undertook also to provide a Concordance of the Vulgate Version, which he completed by the conjoined efforts of five hundred Monks from diverse monasteries.  But, so that the words occurring in the Concordance might be found more easily, he divided the entire Sacred Codex into Chapters, which might be recorded in the Concordance after the individual words; the Chapters are again divided into smaller segments, not by today’s Verses, but by seven letters, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, placed in the margin at equal distance from each other; whence in more lengthy Chapters the Sections were more lengthy than in others.  Which invention of Hugh soon earned applause, and almost all undertook to apply that Division to their Bible, without which there was no use to him of Hugh’s Concordance.  But in the Fifteenth Century, about the year 1430, among the Jews Rabbi Mordechai Nathan or Isaac Nathan[13] oftimes discoursing with Christians, observing the manifest usefulness of Hugh’s Latin Concordance, undertook to construct a similar Concordance upon the Hebrew Text; which work, begun in the year 1438, was carried through to its end in the year 1445:  but which by the labor of the Buxtorfs was rendered far more complete and correct still.  In this Concordance, Rabbi Nathan assumed Hugh’s Division of Chapters, which thereafter also began to be applied by everyone to the margin of Hebrew Text for the use of this Concordance.  In subdividing the Chapters he entered upon a still more suitable method than Hugh, by numbering the פסוקים/Passukim of the Hebrew Text, and by applying a Hebrew numeral letter to every fifth Verse:  which the Jews thereafter followed in the Editions of their Bible, until Athias, in the preceding century, in the Bibles published in 1661 and 1667,[14] while indeed retaining the letters א, ה, י, applied to every fifth Verse, began to distinguish the remaining Verses in between with common numerical marks.  This Division of Chapters by the custom of designating Verses, rather than that by the letters A, B, etc., of Hugh, Christians again began to imitate in Editions of the Latin Bible around the middle of the sixteenth Century.  But, since only the Old Testament had to this point been divided into the smallest parts of this sort, ROBERT STEPHANUS, a Parisian Printer, rendering the highest service to literature together with his son Henricus, in the same manner, in the place of the Old στίχων, wont to be numbered through entire books with the order uninterrupted, divided the individual Chapters of the New Testament also into Verses, and that especially for the use of the Concordantiarum Græcarum Novi Testamenti, which he was preparing; just as previously Hugh and Rabbi Nathan upon occasion of the Latin and Hebrew Concordances also took it upon themselves to divide the Sacred Text.  In the first place, with this division of the Chapters into Verses added, Robert Stephanus published the Greek Testament together with a twofold Latin translation, that is, of Erasmus and of the Old Translator,[15] in a smaller form, at Paris in the year 1551, which, having been prepared for the sake of convenience, soon found acceptance among all also.  I will add concerning the plan of this collected work the words of HENRICUS STEPHANUS in præfatione Concordantiarum Græcarum Novi Testamenti, whence it shall be proven that it is not strange, if sometimes that Division of Greek Verses should appear to us less fitting.  Therefore, after he he had prefaced in a general way, that his father, Robert Stephanus, prepared this Division of the New Testament, while hitherto the individual Books had been divided only into Chapters, he continues:  “Concerning the matter itself, I shall say more.  I will take my beginning from two things; thou wilt wonder at which of the two thou oughtest more to be amazed.  One is that, he, directing his course from Paris to Lyon, completed this division of each Chapter, of which he treats, even indeed a great part of it while riding.  The other is that him, reflecting upon this somewhat earlier, nearly all were affirming to be thoughtless, just as if he were willing to invest time and labor in a matter, that was going to be entirely useless, and therefore was not only going to obtain no praise, but was even going to come into derision.  But behold, contrary to their condemning opinion of my father’s plan, at the same time that his invention came into the light, it also come into the favor of all:  and also into such authority, that the other editions of the New Testament, whether Greek or Latin, Gallic or German, or in another vernacular tongue, that did not follow that invention, might be dismissed from service, as it were.”  And these things indeed shall be said concerning the modern Division of the Bible into Chapters and Verses.  Since that division into Chapters is a human work, it is not strange, if it suffer from blemishes, and not always aptly correspond to the cohesion and division of subject matter.  Hence in printed Hebrew Bibles the same division is not always found; neither did the translators, whether Luther in the German Version, or Junius and Tremellius in the Latin Version, or the Dutch in their Version, consider it taboo to recede sometimes from the common and accustomed division of Chapters:  compare LEUSDEN’S Philologum Hebræum, Dissertation III, and his Philologum Hebræo-Græcum, Dissertation III; PRIDEAUX’S An Historical Connection of the Old and New Testaments, part I, book V, columns 397-401; RUMPÆUS’ Commentationem criticam ad Novi Testamenti Libros, § XXXV-XXXVII, pages 146-160.  A History of Biblical Concordances, for the sake of which it appears that the Division of Books into Chapters, and of the New Testament also into Verses, was done, BUDDEUS summarily relates in his Isagoge ad Theologiam universam, book II, chapter VIII, § 12, tome 2, pages 1776b-1783.

As far as the age, authors, and authority of the minor Distinctions in the Greek Text of the New Testament, namely, of the accents, breathings, commas, κώλων/clauses, points, and parentheses, consult RUMPÆUS’ Commentationem criticam ad Novi Testamenti Libros, § XXXVIII, pages 160-176; PRITIUS’ Introductionem in Lectionem Novi Testamenti, chapters XVII, XVIII, pages 263-270; LEUSDEN’S Philologum Hebræo-Græcum, Dissertation IV, § 7, 8, pages 29, 30.

[1] That is, the six days of creation.

[2] The Jerusalem Talmud was completed circa 350 AD; the Babylonian roughly two hundred years later.

[3] Conceptually, these divisions differ little from the modern chapters; however, materially, there is a great difference, as they rarely divide the text in the same place.

[4] Ammonius Saccas (flourished in the third century) is remembered as one of the founders of Neoplatonism, and as Plotinus’ teacher.  It does appear that there was a Christian Ammonius of third century Alexandria, and that he composed a harmony of the Gospels, but it is a matter of some doubt that this Ammonius was indeed Ammonius Saccas, the Neoplatonist.

[5] Theodore (c. 350-428) served as Bishop of Mopsuestia in Asia Minor.  Although much of his work has been lost, what remains is a monument of early Antiochene exegesis, characterized by careful consideration of, and adherence to, grammar and history.

[6] Precious little is known about Euthalius; even the time (fourth to seventh century) and the place (Sulca, perhaps in Egypt) of his labors are obscured by the mists of time.  Euthalius provided lectionary and verse divisions for Acts and the Epistles.

[7] Claude Dupuy (1545-1594) was a French humanist.  He collected a great library of manuscripts, which was inherited by his sons, Pierre and Jacques, considerable scholars in their own right.  Codex Claromontanus appears to be the manuscript under consideration.  It is an Uncial of the fifth or sixth century, giving a Western text-type of the Pauline epistles, with a Latin rendering.

[8] Hugh of St. Cher, also known as Hugo Cardinalis because he was the first Dominican to achieve the office of cardinal (c. 1200-1263), was a French Dominican Biblical scholar.  His exegetical works, covering the entire canon, have been gathered into eight substantial volumes.

[9] Didymus the Blind (c. 313-398) was the head of the Catechetical School of Alexandria, and one of Jerome’s teachers.  It is said that his commentaries covered almost the entirety of Scripture, but his work survives only in fragments.

[10] Arlotto of Prato was an Italian Franciscan, and eventually became the Minister General of his order.  He compiled an early concordance of the Latin Vulgate.

[11] John Bale (1495-1563) was Bishop of Ossory, a historian and a controversialist.  He published an extensive list of British authors down to his own time, preserving much rare and precious material during the dissolution of the monasteries in England.

[12] Stephen Langton (c. 1150-1228) was a Cardinal in the Roman Church and Archbishop of Canterbury.  Controversy between Pope Innocent III and King John over the election of Stephen to the Archbishopric was one of the factors leading to the signing of the Magna Carta.  Langton’s chapter divisions are in use to the present day.

[13] Isaac Nathan ben Kalonymus was a Jewish apologist of France.  His Meir Netib was the first concordance of the Hebrew Bible.

[14] Joseph Athias (c. 1635-1700) was a Rabbi of Spanish extraction.  Settling in Amsterdam, he published two important editions of the Hebrew Bible.

[15] That is, the Vulgate.