DID YOU KNOW?
The answer
Robert Estienne, also known as Stephanus, numbered the New Testament's verses for his 1551 Greek edition — his son later said some of the work happened while traveling. The Geneva Bible of 1560 brought the system into English, half a century before the King James.
Why it’s interesting
Every life verse, cross-reference, and concordance depends on a filing system younger than the printing press. Hebrew scribes had long marked verse breaks in the Old Testament, but the numbering readers use today is an early-modern invention.
Scholarly consensus
You can know the Bible.
Not just the stories, but the history, authorship, and scholarship behind it.