RhinoPrints BBS^(IC)²

[rhinorick]

I thought I had posted about this a long time ago, but I do not see it at the BBS, so I will post it here.

An email has been going around for years and years, claiming that Psalm 118:8 is the center verse of the Bible. That is actually not the truth.

There are 1189 chapters in the Bible. There are 595 chapters before Ps. 118, and 593 chapters after Ps. 118:8. I counted them myself to verify this.

595 + 593 = 1188. An interesting fact.

There are 31,174 verses in the Bible. (I did not count them to verify that ) So, any one verse cannot be in the center.

That makes verses # 15587 and # 15588 the center 2 verses.

So, Ps. 118:8-9 are actually the 2 center verses of the Bible.

"It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes." - Psalms 118:8-9 NIV

A very important message to be at the center of the Bible.

And, Psalm 118 does in fact fall between the shortest chapter, Ps. 117, and the longest chapter, Ps. 119.

You can verify this at Snopes.com HERE, if you wish.

Note: As they point out at snopes.com, chapter and verse divisions were not in the original texts of the Bible.
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[dopper]

You did a good job of counting the chapters, but there remains
one question for me, what about cases where a chapter is unclear?
In Psalms, there is a case where one song was seemingly divided
into two chapters, Ps. 42-43. I'm not sure if it matters so much,
since the bible was divided pretty much arbitrarily into chapters
long after its books were written. Still, I believe ps. 42-43 to be
one song which was could be, then, considered a single chapter.
If so, that would knock the actual chapter number down to 1188,
as the e-mail claims. And your note about the two central verses
stands confirmed. This makes ps. 118 the Central chapter, with
the two central verses being 118:8-9.

Thanks for bringing up this old piece of discussion, which is quite
interesting.

Have a good day.

Bryan
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Jesus is Alive Today

[rhinorick]

That's funny Bryan. If there were actually 1188 chapters, there could be no middle chapter.

The original email claims 1189 chapters, which is basically true. It's just that Psalm 118 is not the center one, as noted above.

Yes, correct Bryan, as I also noted above, there were no chapter and verse divisions in the original manuscripts, so this is all based on today's translations.

This is just an interesting piece of trivia which points us to a very important truth.
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[dopper]

Thanks Rick. It is true that there would be two middle
chapters.

I sent you a couple of Rhinos in the mail last week. They
should arrive not too long from now.

Today I got an e-mail from someone who has studied how the
Finnish language relates to Hebrew and keeps a web page about
it, and I gave her your website to check out my forum. Good that
you had a copy in reserve. Maybe she'll take a look at my
writings a bit, and otherwise read some of the BBS content, etc.

She also is aware of the possibility of Finns being a lost tribe of
Israel. Maybe I'll write another message soon.

Have a good day.

Bryan
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Jesus is Alive Today

[rhinorick]

Thanks for sending the rhinos. I'll reply more in another post, so as to not get too far off topic here.

And, thanks for referring your friend to our site. I hope she will visit, and even join.
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