Standard verse numbers are certainly useful when comparing translations of the Hebrew Bible. Robert Alter’s translation renumbers some of them—presumably for better literary indication. So here we map out which numbers have changed:
Download the Standard→Alter Table (JSON format)
- Standard on the left, Alter on the right.
- Includes only the changed verse numbers:
- 2,296 out of 23,261 verses (9.87%) were renumbered
Cover Art for Volume 3: Ayin Amekh Nun from The Creation, ca. 1978–1980,
a series of ten tapestries by Mordecai Adon (1896–1992)
Anyone may use this (e.g. for verse-collation efforts). I used them to collate Alter’s verses with other translations, but I cannot legally publish the verse text here. I can only publish the verse map, which:
- can be used by vendors like Bible Gateway, Bible Hub, or YouVersion should they license Alter’s translation and need a means to import it
- can be used by Alter’s editor should they want to export standardized verses to simplify vendor import
map.json: map from standard Bible verses to Alter Bible verses- same: if verse is not present, then no remapping is needed
- empty: if verse maps to
null, then Alter provided no respective verse - split: if verse maps to
[...], then Alter separated it into multiple verses
code.js: code that createsmap.json- see
stdToAlterfor how verses are mapped - see
splitVersesfor how verses are split
- see
books.json: standard books/chapters/verses of the Bible used bycode.js
If you wish to generate the map yourself, install Node and run:
node code.js
I checked the size of each chapter in the Alter Bible, and accounted for each size difference, mainly:
- when Alter moved chapter boundaries to contain more or less verses from previous or subsequent chapters
- when Alter merged or split verses
- when Alter reordered verses
- when Alter treated Psalm superscriptions as verse one