Every Bible includes some non-Bible parts. There are chapter and verse breaks, maps in the back, and dedication pages at the beginning. No one thinks those things are divinely inspired. But they’re in there.
Sometimes Scripture is also printed with an introduction, commentary, cross-references, and a concordance. Bibles can have reading instructions—such as specific verses to turn to for comfort in a time of crisis—or carry a presidential endorsement.
Scholars call this extra stuff “paratext.” For the most part, everyone ignores it unless some controversy sparks debate over the appropriate packaging of Scripture. But New Testament scholar Garrick V. Allen wants to call our attention to the parts of the Bible that are not part of the Bible.
Allen, the author of the new book Words Are Not Enough, says all that extra stuff shapes our reading. Poking at the paratext, looking at what it does for us and has done for Christians historically, can help us become better Bible readers.
He spoke to CT by Zoom from Scotland.
Daniel Silliman: There was a big controversy earlier this year when former president Donald Trump endorsed the God Bless The USA Bible, which includes historical documents that are not part of Scripture. But is paratext a recent phenomenon?
Garrick V. Allen: Paratext exists in the earliest manuscripts we have. For example, the earliest copies of Paul’s letters have things like titles, which were not written by Paul himself, and notations that give you the number of lines in each letter. They are giving a structure to the text.
The Bible is an ancient text, so some basic framing, mapping things for readers, is really helpful, especially when it’s done by someone you trust. That way of helping people read starts very early and expands dramatically over time.
DS: When does that expansion happen? Does that come with the advent of the printing press or modern publishing?
GA: No, much earlier. It starts in the fourth century. We can go back to Eusebius, who was a bishop in Syria Palaestina and is mostly known now as the “father of church history.”
Eusebius creates this system where he numbers passages of the Gospels, so instead of chapter and verse, there’s just one number, from 1 to 300 or whatever, for each passage of each Gospel. Then he takes the numbers and creates a table so people can find the parallels between Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. You can flip back and forth, making comparisons between the Gospels. It gives you 1,000 different ways to read across the Gospels and ask questions and think about things in new ways.
This exists in almost all of the Greek manuscripts that we have. It becomes a central part of the tradition, part of how people are reading the Bible.
There really is no Bible without paratext: Paratext makes the different texts into a book.
DS: Are there other notable early paratexts besides the one developed by Eusebius?
GA: Staying in antiquity, there’s something called the Euthalian Apparatus, attributed to a person called Euthalius, though we don’t know anything about this person. The apparatus is a really complex system of lists, cross-references, and lists of quotations for Acts, Paul’s epistles, and the epistles of James, Peter, John, and Jude. This is in the fifth, sixth century.
Moving to the modern era, we see a dramatic change in the Victorian period with the advent of family Bibles in Europe and North America. You get these heirlooms where you can record your genealogy or make note of significant events in family history. People would also often put mementos in the pages, connecting their family in a way with the sacred text.
More recently, there’s been an explosion in the last 30 or 40 years of new Bible editions that repackage the same translation with new audiences in mind. You get the women’s Bible, teens’ Bible, military Bible, fisherman’s Bible. You can select the paratext that fits your identity. There’s an audience for these things, and it’s always about framing Scripture and helping people do a particular thing with the sacred text.
DS: Some paratext is very obvious, very visible to Bible readers. But are there examples of paratext we might just miss?
GA: I think there are a few things we think are part of the Bible that are really paratextual. The first is chapters and verses. These are inventions of the 16th century. They segment the text, and we often take those interventions for granted.
Another example is subtitles and section titles. This tradition goes back to the beginning, but most of the ones we see when we read our Bibles are made up by modern editors. Mark didn’t stop and write, “Garden of Gethsemane.” That’s an anonymous editor who has done that to try to help you read the Gospel, but it’s not part of the Gospel.
A lot of good paratexts are hidden in plain sight.
DS: Are there places where this impacts interpretation? Where our understanding is shaped—rightly or wrongly—by an apparatus that’s not really part of
the Bible?
GA: Many modern versions have paratext that points out parallels in the Gospels. So you’re reading Matthew, and you’re told where a similar story occurs in John, Luke, or Mark. Those are made on the assumptions of modern editors.
If you compare that to what Eusebius was doing, Eusebius had a much broader view of parallels in the Gospels and what counted as a parallel. Modern editors tend to have a narrower understanding of how the Gospels speak to each other, and that shapes the reading of Christians today.
Another example, which I think is more dangerous, is putting the US Constitution in the Bible, giving it a sacred status.
DS: Would you want a Bible without paratext? Could we just get rid of all of it?
GA: Why not? People have been playing with the paratexual apparatus since the beginning. If you want to try to pare it down, you can.
There’s a cool 15th-century manuscript that’s just a small little pocket version of the Gospel of John and the only paratext it has is page numbers—and those were added by a modern librarian. It’s as close as I’ve seen to no paratext.
DS: Is there one example of a paratext from an ancient apparatus you’d like to see people bring back?
GA: There are some really innovative lists that we could bring back. Like lexical lists. In some Gospel manuscripts there’s a table of Hebrew words and their meaning in Greek. Lists of quotations. You have these kinds of helps today, but they’re rarely part of the text itself.
Another really interesting one would be to include the alternative chapter breaks embedded in there. Not that our modern chapters are better or worse, but the option to break up the text in different ways would be interesting and I think opens up interesting questions about the text.
I think we should be open to experimenting with paratexts. If it helps you read the Bible, if it pushes you to read the Bible in a different way, and that seems good to you to read it that way, go for it.
This article appeared in the September/October 2024 issue of Christianity Today as "Pastor's Heart, Lawyer's Mind".
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