Rich Leiter wrote, in part:
>Did you know that the Biblical "chapter and verse" arrangement is
>relatively new to the Bible? Perhaps only about three or four hundred
>years. What's more, there are serious problems with it for theologians.
>Chapters have cut off thoughts in the middle of an idea, and length of
>chapters is very irregular. Finally, chapter names are not very helpful
>when they refer, say, to Obadiah because most people don't know where
>that is in the Bible. The books are arranged somewhat randomly just like
>cases. This could be one advantage of volume and page number, because it
>actually identifies a precise location of an item.
I've also had the gut feeling (and perhaps someone with an academic
background in this area can confirm this, or disabuse me of the notion,
whichever...) that the ability to cite "chapter and verse" of the Bible
can encourage people to focus on small chunks of text (and perhaps tempt
them to take material out of context), rather than examining larger
units of meaning.
Could there be a danger of this happening with case law? (Or does it already
happen under the current page citation rules to such an extent that
a paragraph numbering system would not make a difference? :-) )
Just some random musings....
- Lee
________________________________________________
(Ms.) Lee Ryan, Reference Librarian
University of San Francisco Law Library
Internet: RyanL@usfca.edu
Voice: (415) 666-2253 Fax: (415) 666-2345
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