Middle verse of the Bible

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Many people believe Psalms 118:8 to be the middle verse of the Bible. This is perpetuated in large part by an e-mail chain letter of Bible facts, which tries to illustrate the recurrence of the number 1188 in the Bible.[1] It talks about trusting God over man and this "statistic" has been known to be used as an illustrative device by preachers. Analysis done on a modern computer has yielded a different result.[2]

Using Microsoft Word 2000, (which resulted in a total verse count of 31,102 for the King James Version), the middle verses are Psalm 103, verses 1 and 2:

1 Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name.

2 Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits:

As there is an even numbered total verse count, there is no one middle verse. There are 15,550 verses before and after these verses.[3] Some verse counts in the past (probably counted by hand), have resulted in an incorrect verse count of 31,175, leading to Psalm 118:8 as the middle verse.

The middle chapter of the bible using the same technique, is Psalm 117. These two verses of the Psalm make up the shortest chapter in the bible:

1 O praise the LORD, all ye nations: praise him, all ye people.

2 For his merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the LORD endureth for ever. Praise ye the LORD.

[edit] Complexities

The King James Version of the Bible which has been used above is an English translation that uses the traditional Protestant canon of the Christian Bible. The significance of this statistic is debatable as there is no international standard in chapter and verse numbering (for example most German Bibles conjoin Malachi's third and fourth chapters into one) and there is some variation between ancient manuscipts (for example, John 5:4 is only in some later manuscripts and is often given as a footnote rather than in the main text). It is unclear as to whether verses such as these have been taken into account in the above statistics.

[edit] See also

[edit] References and external links

  1. ^ ChristRing.com
  2. ^ Analysis results at ChristRings.com
  3. ^ BibleBelievers.com
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