Lesson 1 | The First Pass: Divide

Because the biblical authors wrote with purpose, logic, and order, it is possible to accurately establish the beginning and ending of a passage of Scripture. This could be as short as a quotation, a paragraph, or as long as an entire book. Here are five simple guidelines to help you establish literary units. 1. Don’t automatically follow an English translation’s verse and chapter divisions. These were not part of the original biblical text. They are not sacred, and in fact they are not even always accurate. So it is important that you carefully assess on your own where a passage begins and ends. 2. Remember that some multivolume works in our English Bibles were single books in Jesus’ Bible. When Israelite seers, sages, and singers originally wrote the Old Testament, they used consonants only. Of course, the words were spoken with vowels, but the vowels were not written. This made it possible to write even big books like 1-2 Samuel, 1-2 Kings, and 1-2 Chronicles on single scrolls. But when the Jews translated the Old Testament into Greek in the third to second centuries B.C., however, they included vowels, so books doubled in size, and the longer books required more than one scroll to reproduce. And the book divisions of our English Bibles are based on the Greek Old Testament’s divisions, not the original Hebrew. So when you are wrestling with literary units in books such as Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, and even Ezra-Nehemiah (which is a single book in the Hebrew Old Testament), remember that they were all originally single volumes. Thus, literary units could cross “book” boundaries. 3. Look for recognizable beginning and ending markers. In English, one way we signal section breaks is by indenting paragraphs. We use quotation marks to mark off speeches. We begin stories by saying things like, “Once upon a time.” These are road signs to readers and listeners, telling them that something new is coming. The biblical authors used many similar features to guide their listeners’ understanding of the structure and message of their writings. Common words that introduce a new paragraph in the epistles are conjunctions like “but” and “therefore.” New sections in the prophets can be marked off by “thus says the Lord.” You can also discern a new paragraph by a change of topic. For instance, shifts in scene or main character divide narratives. In poetry, the end of a paragraph is sometimes signaled by a refrain. A summary of an argument in an epistle reveals the end of a thought unit. An exhortation can mark the beginning or end of a paragraph as well. 4. Treat literary units as wholes. The natural framework for verbal communication is not a single word or even a single clause, but an entire text. Normally, a text is made up of a sequence of clauses, whether short (an answer to a question) or long (a book). Lengthy texts themselves often divide into discrete parts or self-contained literary packages. When you are interpreting a biblical passage, you need to work with these whole units of thought. When interpreting narrative, this means you need to deal with whole scenes in light of episodes. For instance, you can’t properly interpret the scene of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife in Genesis 39 outside the episode of the entire chapter. In prophetic sermons, make sure you interpret each paragraph in light of the overall oracle. When working with poetry, you need to study an entire unit, such as a psalm, not merely a single paragraph. Poetry is constructed with lines, which make up stanzas, which together form an entire poem. You need to interpret each line in light of the stanza it is in, and each stanza in light of the poem it is in. In epistles, you need to interpret individual verses in light of the argument the author is making, and each argument in light of the overall message of the letter.  5. Check your decision against modern translations and, if possible, the original language text. In modern Bible versions, translators signal paragraph breaks and distinguish literary units by indentation. Modern critical editions of the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament do this as well. These divisions are not infallible, but if you decide to start or end your passage where no editor or translator has, then it is your responsibility to argue fully for your decision.

How to Understand and Apply the New Testament

By Jason DeRouchie The basis of the guidelines described above