Robert I Estienne, known as Robertus Stephanus in Latin and sometimes referred to as Robert Stephens, was a 16th-century printer in Paris. He was the proprietor of the Estienne print shop after the death of his father Henri Estienne, the founder of the Estienne printing firm. Estienne published and republished many classical texts as well as Greek and Latin translations of the Bible. Known as "Printer to the King" in Latin, Hebrew, and Greek, Estienne's most prominent work was the Thesaurus linguae latinae which is considered to be the foundation of modern Latin lexicography. Additionally, he was the first to print the New Testament divided into standard numbered verses.

Chapter and verse divisions did not appear in the original texts of Jewish or Christian bibles; such divisions form part of the paratext of the Bible. Since the early 13th century, most copies and editions of the Bible have presented all but the shortest of the scriptural books with divisions into chapters, generally a page or so in length. Since the mid-16th century, editors have further subdivided each chapter into verses – each consisting of a few short lines or of one or more sentences. In the King James Version (KJV) Esther 8:9 is the longest verse and John 11:35 is the shortest. Sometimes a sentence spans more than one verse, as in the case of Ephesians 2:8–9, and sometimes there is more than one sentence in a single verse, as in the case of Genesis 1:2.