Chapters and verses of the Bible

The Bible is a compilation of many shorter books written at different times by a variety of authors, and later assembled into the biblical canon. All but the shortest of these books have been divided into chapters, generally a page or so in length, since the early 13th century. Since the mid-16th century, each chapter has been further divided into "verses" of a few short lines or sentences. Sometimes a sentence spans more than one verse, as in the case of , and sometimes there is more than one sentence in a single verse, as in the case of . As the chapter and verse divisions were not part of the original texts, they form part of the paratext of the Bible.