DOI: 10.47743/rss.2023.12-4 33 CHAPTER AND VERSE DIVISION IN THE ROMANIAN BIBLES: INFLUENCES, CHANGES, QUESTIONS ALEXANDRU MIHĂILĂ Faculty of Orthodox Theology, University of Bucharest almihaila@gmail.com Abstract: The present paper will discuss the problem of chapter and verse division of the Old Testament in some of the Romanian Bible translations, especially the Synodal Bibles starting with the second Synodal Bible of 1936 and up till 2015, the most recent edition. This group of Synodal Bibles innovated the Romanian translation by combining the Hebrew Text and the Septuagint, and thus leaving aside the tradition of following the Septuagint which was still represented by the first Synodal edition of 1914. Thus, the Orthodox Church of Romania is reading now a hybrid text for the Old Testament. Keywords: chapter division, verse division, Romanian Synodal Bible, Cornilescu. 1. Chapter and verse division First, let me remind you shortly the history of chapter and verse division. A sort of text division has been already attested in the early period. In the New Testament, Acts 13:33 quoted a prophecy with the mention that it belongs to the “second Psalm”. In the Mishnah (Megillah 4:4) the student of Torah must read at least three verses, a proof for division of the text in verses. In the Talmud the verse division was ascribed, according to the Babylonian Talmud, Nedarim 37b, to scribe and priest Ezra himself. The Masorah included also a system of accentuation that provided roughly the division into verses by placing the accent silluq on the last word of the verse, thus indicating the end of the verse (Penkower 2000, 379). The present chapter division of the Bible appeared in the Middle Ages. It was the work of Professor Stephan Langton, who taught at the University of Paris. The Parisian text of Vulgate (in Latin) offered for the first time a much easier way to refer to biblical text. Probably the teaching staff for the University of Paris mandated Langton to make up the chapter division that was complete before his appointment as cardinal of Canterbury in 1206 (van Banning 2007). Verse division was established by the French editor and publisher Robert Etienne (Stephanus): first in a French Bible in folio (Geneva, 1553) with verses beginning new lines, and then in a Latin Bible in octavio (Geneva, 1555) with verses divided by the paragraph sign (Greenslade 1975, 422). His son told later that his father worked on the verse division on a journey from Paris to Lyons