Center of the Bible

[petra]

A Protestant friend of mine sent me an e-mail containing interesting trivia about the Bible (the Protestant Bible). I’ve seen variations of this e-mail several times over the years, and it seemed pretty cool and beyond mere coincidence. But now that I am a Catholic and believe the original Catholic canon is accurate what do I make of the following? Here is a summary of the e-mail:

• The shortest chapter in the Bible is Psalms 117
• The longest chapter in the Bible is Psalms 119
• The chapter that is in the center of the Bible is Psalms 118
• There are 594 chapters before Psalms 118
• There are 594 chapters after Psalms 118
• 594 + 594 = 1188
• The center verse in the Bible is Psalms 118:8
• If you want to find God’s perfect will for your life, go to the center of the Bible:
• “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.”
• Isn’t it odd how this worked out (or was God in the center of it?

Now I know that verse designations were not added to scriptures until much later, and theologians would say that the verse designations themselves are not inspired. Drawing any conclusions from the above would not be very scholarly.

But this above is very impressive to a sola scriptura Christian and seems to indicate the hand of God in the Protestant canon. How would I respond to this?

 

[Jan_Wakelin]

I would simply point out that over time there have been various ways that the Bible has been divided into chapters. So which method would one attribute to God, and why? What authority would determine that?
For more information, you can read the article in the The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge on chapter and verse divisions or the article in the Catholic Encyclopedia on the Hebrew Bible.