A Reader’s Bible presents Scripture as continuous prose, the way it was originally written and first read, without the chapter numbers, verse numbers, or reference apparatus we’re used to seeing on every page.
Those divisions are a fairly recent convenience, not part of the inspired text. For roughly its first twelve centuries, the Bible had no chapter or verse numbers at all. The chapter divisions in general use today are traditionally credited to Stephen Langton, later Archbishop of Canterbury, who devised them around 1205 while teaching in Paris. Verse numbers came later still: the printer Robert Estienne (Stephanus) added them to the New Testament in his 1551 edition, and to the whole Bible by 1555.
Both systems exist to help us find a passage quickly, and both were laid over the text centuries after it was written, not always at a natural break in the narrative. A chapter break, in particular, can obscure the very context a passage needs. One clear example sits at the very end of Matthew 16:
Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.Matthew 16:28
Read in isolation, cut off by the chapter break that follows it, this verse has been used to claim Jesus made a failed prediction of His return within His hearers’ lifetime. But the account does not actually break there: the very next words, “after six days,” open straight into the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1–8), where Peter, James, and John are given a glimpse of Christ in His glory. Read straight through, the connection is plain: that vision is what verse 28 was pointing to. The chapter number in between is the only thing that makes it possible to miss it.