"The Books of the Bible" formatting

[Joel_Tunnah]

I recently bought a copy of the TNIV translation, in a format the publisher calls “The Books of the Bible”:

thebooksofthebible.info/main.php

It has the following changes in it:

• chapter and verse numbers are removed from the text and a
  chapter-and-verse range is given at the bottom of each page;
• individual books are presented with the literary divisions
  that the biblical authors have indicated;
• footnotes, section headings and any other nonoriginal
  material have been removed from the text (translators’
  notes are placed at the end of each book);
• single books that later translations or tradition divided
  into two or more books are made whole again;
• the books of the Bible have been placed in an order that
  provides more help in understanding their literary genre,
  historical circumstance and theological tradition;
• a single-column setting is used to clearly and naturally present the books, making the text more readable, and the literary form
  more recognizable.

For example, Luke and Acts are placed together as one book, Luke-Acts.
I don’t want to get into a discussion about the TNIV translation itself - but only about the format. They call it a “presentation”. I have to say that I really like it, and it seems like a logical, wholistic way to put the bible together.
Protestants like verse numbering, and quoting them. Should Catholics? Do we need chapter numbers? Do we owe our continued allegiance to the textual formatting of the early 17th century?

As a college English major, I took part in many a detailed discussion of novels like Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, that contain no verse or chapter numbers, and few paragraph breaks. So I know for a fact that it doesn’t preclude study.

Anyway, it’s cheap, and very interesting.

Joel

 

[TheOneTrueFred]

I can’t speak as to how usable this format is since I don’t own this bible, but I’ve gone over their website a few times since I read about this - so my opinion is limited to the samples provided there.

I think they’re on the right track, and I hope that at very least this gets more people interested in tinkering with the format we have our bibles in. This might seem like an example of fixing something that isn’t broken, but I don’t see a problem with shaking up our “small-t” traditions if someone comes up with something that works better. We can’t just think of ourselves, but the many generations of Christians to come that are going to be starting off from what we give them to work with.

Now, my complaints here are with some of the specific decisions they made laying out the bible in this way. The debate on the value of versification is a complicated one, but it’s the way the bible has been referenced for many years in academia, spiritual literature and in official documents. Someone that works with this layout a while might become pretty good at finding the unmarked verse in the page, but someone trying to look something up from an older concordance or trying to understand someone’s cryptic bumper sticker isn’t going to find the range at the bottom of the page very useful. Also consider the backwards compatibility: “Look from around the last couple sentences of chapter 3 to a third into chapter 4, somewhere towards the middle of that.”

At the same time, it really irritates me when a bible completely ignores paragraph divisions and puts every verse on its own line. I think a good middle ground is using the logical format like this, but with the usual numbered references like 1:12 superscripted in the text but not interrupting the flow of any particular thought.

Moving the footnotes to the end of each book sounds like an enlightened thing to do, keeping the text separate from the fallible ponderings of exegetes and translators, but it can also cause problems - say you have a version that includes some substantial variants that enlarge the text, while your friend uses an older version made before those variants were considered useful. With footnotes on the bottom or margin of the page, you can see that certain material won’t appear in his bible and why. With them at the end of the book, you can end up arguing back and forth about what should be there and what isn’t for hours on end, just because it didn’t occur to you to break your thought and flip to the end. Also, for personal study, it’s just a lot more convenient to be able to move your eyes down to the bottom of the page to look something up than to flip through the entire book you’re in everytime something comes up that you need help with.

I think their decisions concerning what books to collapse together in the OT were pretty balanced. Putting together Samuel-Kings was a no-brainer; putting the whole Pentateuch together might have been the logical continuation of this practice, but it also would have been a huge stretch. I’d be interested in knowing how this bible deals with the usual break between books - a note in the bottom verse range, or something more?

As for the order of books, I’m on the fence with the OT. It makes more sense to have Chronicles right after Kings, and combining it with Ezra & Nehemiah means they have to go there too. Plunking Esther & Daniel at the end doesn’t make much sense to me, even if that might be a more chronological set up. I don’t think either the Tanach arrangement or the LXX arrangement are perfect, and would like to see some more experimentation here. It’s going to be a pain when we get a Catholic version like this and we have to find spots for all the deuteros!

The NT arrangement is an even tougher nut to crack. I can see their reasoning clearly enough: Luke & Acts are properly a book and its sequel anyway, and being written by a disciple of Paul makes it seem reasonable that they’d be arranged together with those Epistles. While the same logic is applied elsewhere more or less successfully, I don’t think Matthew - Hebrews - James was a good idea. Maybe in the eyes of someone who envisions them all forming the core of Hebrew Christian thought back in the day, but I’ve never seen anything to suggest that these books share a tradition of authorship the same way the other books do. I also think that there’s something to be said for our present arrangement - The Gospel seen from four angles, the Acts giving the follow up history, the Epistles expanding on the teaching itself and the Apocalypse acting like a natural epilogue to the collection. Personally, I would have just tried to find a better way to arrange the Epistles, and maybe shuffled John up a space so that Luke and Acts could go together.

My :twocents: might not be worth much since no edition can satisfy everyone, but I think I’ll try to tackle some of these issues myself once I get further along with other projects.

 

[Joel_Tunnah]

I agree with you about the NT. The traditional order does have a logic to it.

In TBOTB, there is a title page, and intro for each book. So it’s not just 1700 pages of unbroken text. The chapter divisions are given by a double space between paragraphs.
But it’s the paragraphing that appeals to me. It follows standard modern practice. The Douay-Rheims, King James paragraphs seem at times to be random.
I also like that poetry is set off, like poetry is in modern books. Although this has been done before, I think.

For the OT, I like the Tanakh ordering, which I think this edition uses.

 

[TheOneTrueFred]

In TBOTB, there is a title page, and intro for each book. So it’s not just 1700 pages of unbroken text.

I didn’t ask my question very clearly I meant to ask how it marked the specific divisions between 1 Samuel & 2 Samuel, or Chronicles & Ezra?

For the OT, I like the Tanakh ordering, which I think this edition uses.

It’s a little off. This format has the Prophets grouped chronologically and the Writings grouped by genre, rather than the traditional Hebrew OT order. The Tanakh also has Ruth in the Writings instead of after Judges. I think I like this arrangement for the Prophets, but Daniel ought to be in there too.

 

[Joel_Tunnah]

I didn’t ask my question very clearly I meant to ask how it marked the specific divisions between 1 Samuel & 2 Samuel, or Chronicles & Ezra?

There is only a blank line in between. And Samuel is combinded with Kings into “Samuel-Kings”.

 

[Manfred]

Before we get too caught up with the TNIV, I must point out that the full-size New Jerusalem Bible’s layout is excellent, as regards chapter/verse numbering, headings, sub-headings, titles, AND it did it all without messing with the traditional order of the books, AND, of course, it includes the deutero-canonical works (which the TNIV does not).

 

[Joel_Tunnah]

Manfred,

There are no verse or chapter numbers in this edition, so how is the full-size NJB comparable?

 

[TheOneTrueFred]

To illustrate some of my points on the formatting I made a pdf covering the same text as the sample of Genesis on the TBOB site. I basically followed their lead on paragraphing and dialogue, but the section breaks (blank line) are based on the Clementine’s paragraph breaks. Chapter & Verse are indicated but do not effect layout. The text is Challoner’s, the intro & footnotes are selections from Haydock.

So, here’s my take on a future Revised TBOB: CE.

 

[Joel_Tunnah]

Fred, I have to be honest, the chapter+verse superscript is really distracting. I’m not sure what you gain by doing it that way.

 

[TheOneTrueFred]

Fred, I have to be honest, the chapter+verse superscript is really distracting. I’m not sure what you gain by doing it that way.

Yeah it’s not perfect, but I think this is the way to get the best of both worlds: no chapter headings to interrupt the text, but easy cross-referencing against other versions. In retrospect, perhaps the better system is marginal verse-referencing like in my Confraternity, but in addition to not occurring to me - it’s also beyond my skill in Word

 

[Manfred]

Manfred,

There are no verse or chapter numbers in this edition, so how is the full-size NJB comparable?

The full-size NJB, as opposed to some of the later editions, whether referred to as “standard” or “reader’s”, is single column per page, with verse numbers printed at the beginning of the line, and not as superscript.

Besides, how could the TNIV possibly hold a candle to the NJB anyway? It’s got an evangelical bias and, of course, omits the deutero-canonical works.

 

[Ron_Conte]

Here are some insightful articles on the NIV and TNIV:

bible-researcher.com/niv.html

bible-researcher.com/tniv.html

The author, a Protestant, points out some problems with these versions, their anti-Catholic bias, the extensive use of politically correct gender inclusive language, the liberal rephrasing of the text in many places without any support in any ancient manuscripts, etc.

Roman Catholic critics have pointed out that the NIV seems to show a Protestant bias in its treatment of the Greek word paradosis “tradition.” The word is literally translated “tradition” in places where traditions are being criticized (e.g. Matthew 15:3, Colossians 2:8), but it is translated with “teachings” where traditions are being recommended (1 Corinthians 11:2, 2 Thessalonians 2:15, 3:6). In this, there seems to be an avoidance of giving any positive connotation to the word “tradition.”

 

[Joel_Tunnah]

Besides, how could the TNIV possibly hold a candle to the NJB anyway? It’s got an evangelical bias and, of course, omits the deutero-canonical works.

Obviously you misinterpreted my original post. I am not in any way promoting the TNIV. My interest was only in the format of this particular edition - which even the publisher states could be applicable to any translation.

No verse or chapter numbering. Books grouped by type and author, rather than the traditional ordering. Poetry set off from standard text. Translation notes at the end of each book (no footnotes).

FRED: I’ve had the best luck using text boxes for that sort of thing in Word. I’m able to duplicate 16th century style marginal notations that way.

Joel

ps. One word about the TNIV. Other than the inclusive language, it’s an enjoyable translation to read. Sadly, it’s also a lot more orthodox than the NJB, IMO.