Through the Bible - Structure

Our Old Testament is the same as the Jewish Scriptures, called the Tanakh. The name is an acronym derived from its three divisions - Torah (the Law), Neviim (the Prophets) and Khetuvim (the Writings). See Luke 24:44 and Acts 24:14. The order of the books is different and the books of Ezra and Nehemiah are combined into one.

The Torah is divided into sections called parshiyot (plural) e.g. Parsha (singular) Lech Lecha, Genesis 12:1-17:7. See also Luke 20:37, where Jesus refers to "the burning bush passage", which is Parsha Shemot, Exodus 1:1-6:1. A parsha is read in the synagogue each Shabbat so that the whole Torah is read in a year.

Compare this with our familiar Bible layout:

Our Bible was divided into chapters by Archbishop Langton about 1530. They are not inspired divisions and sometimes you need to read a chapter with the tail-end of the previous chapter and/or the beginning of the next chapter to get the full sense. Robert Estienne divided the Greek New Testament into verses in 1551, and the Geneva Bible of 1560 was the first English translation to be entirely divided into chapters and verses.