There are literally thousands of Bible study helps available. There are commentaries written as academia and some for simple understandings. There are handbooks, dictionaries, synoptic comparisons, expositions, translations, word studies in both Greek and Hebrew, parallel companions, daily Bible readings, prayer guides and on and on. I have to confess I have quite of few of these helps. But every one of them depend on the work of another. Never-the-less, without the work of a Bible scholar in England in the 13th century, it would have been much harder to study the Bible.
Stephen Langton was the medieval Archbishop of Canterbury. He was the most prominent churchman in England. He was the one working with the Barons of England to force a faithless King John into signing the Magna Charta. Quite a revolutionary for his time. What this churchman is not well known for and the subject of this blog is something he added to the Bible that all the others that followed including me and you as we look through the Bible. The next time someone asks you to lookup a verse in Isaiah they will give you a chapter and a verse number. That convention was created by Stephane Langton. He went through the entire Bible dividing it up in what, was to him, the most logical places to put chapters and delineate the verses.
Imagine how hard it would be to lookup John 3:16 if all you had was the text without any numbers to guide you along the way? Each time the preacher says, “my text will be found in the fourteenth chapter and the third verse, you are depending upon the work of Stephen Langton. Know full well his divisions were to the Latin Vulgate for the Holy Roman Church. But even after translation of scripture into all the languages of the world, Steven Langton stands in the background helping you find your favorite scripture.
Since the 13th century each expositor, scholar, printer, publisher, copier used this method. Thank you Rev. Stephen Langton.