A Chapter Vocabulary Emerges

Abstract

Chapter 2 chronicles how a vocabulary of textual division and reference emerges, up to the time of the great biblical parchments of the fourth century. It finishes by introducing the first systems of numbered divisions of Scripture produced by the Christian scribal tradition: the Eusebian canon tables for the Gospels, which incorporated the Ammonian Sections; the Kephalaia, or Old Greek Divisions, also designed for the Gospels; the chapter divisions of the Euthalian Apparatus of Acts and the NT Epistles; and finally, the Capitulatio Vaticana. All of these systems illustrate how rapidly the visual presentation of the pages of Scripture changed in the first three centuries of the church’s existence.