De-versify the Bible in Other Translations

From AD 1200 to 1500, the Bible has been divided into smaller parts with the intent of making passages easier to find. The books were divided into chapters, and the chapters were later divided into verses. The chapter-verse system has indeed made it easier to locate biblical passages quickly, but it also produced disastrous results. Bible illiteracy is rising rapidly, and much of the faulty theology preached today can be traced to proof-texting, also called verse-jacking. This is the act of taking verses out of context to prove a false theological proposition. Individual verses are seen as isolated thoughts independent of each other, and the message of the Bible is distorted. The King James Version and the New American Standard Bible arrange the verses with each verse beginning a new line, making the problem even worse. We no longer read the Bible as God intended.

In the 1950s Intervarsity Christian Fellowship developed Manuscript Studies, in which a part of the Bible is produced without the chapter-verse divisions, and college students across America have seen the benefits of reading the Bible as it was mean to be read. However, leaders of such a study must prepare their own manuscripts, and often the undertaking requires permission from the copyright holder of the translations used.

In mid-2007 the International Bible Society released The Books of the Bible, the first complete Bible to be published in 500 years without the distractions of the chapter-verse divisions. Only the TNIV (Todays New International Version) is available at this time.

Clearly there is a market for a Bible without the distractions of chapter-verse divisions, and we, the undersigned, want Bibles in other translations published in the same manner. The translations we desire include, but are not limited to the New International Version (NIV), the English Standard Version (ESV), the New American Standard Bible (NASB), the New King James Version (NKJV), the Contemporary English Version (CEV) and the New Living Translation (NLT).