The modernist Bible is a format of the Bible that was created in the modern period. All of the additions we’ve made to the Bible and the way we’ve laid out the text is a modernist phenomenon. Before that the Scriptures were not mass-produced—the printing and mass producing of the Bible coincided with this new format of the Bible, but it wasn’t until the 16th century that chapters and verses came together into a single Bible.

The Geneva Bible brought them together, and sadly made every single verse number a separate paragraph in two columns on the page, which effectively obliterated any literary aspect of the text at all. Suddenly what the Bible looked like was a list of numbered spiritual statements, each of them individually paragraphed, and the message visually was these are meant to be read alone and understood alone and out of context. 

The contention in my book is that this new modern format, which we then added cross-reference systems, which were first developed in the same period—section headings, footnotes—all this additional material created the Bible that was really a modern reference book rather than a reading book. In fact, our practices have followed the new form.

 . . .

There was no such thing as proof texting before the appearance of the format of the modern Bible. Before that you just don’t see the practices in the church. Nobody produced a list of supposed biblical doctrines and then backed them up with a list of proof texts. That way of using the Bible was born when the format of the Bible became something that was conducive to that. It tells people that the Bible is a certain kind of thing, and it can be used a certain kind of way. 

When you change the form of something, you change what people perceive the content is. Instead of seeing a letter, a song, a story, a proverb, a prophecy, what you see is a numbered list of statements. It all looks the same. You’re inclined to not pay attention to literary genre because they just look like a list of propositions. It harms our apprehension of the Bible in very specific ways when we change the way the Bible looks.

 Glenn Paauw in "Reformat the Bible: An Interview with Glenn Pauw"

   Listen and hear my voice;
   pay attention and hear what I say.
   When a farmer plows for planting,
   does he plow continually?
   Does he keep on breaking up and working the soil?
   When he has leveled the surface,
   does he not sow caraway and scatter cumin?
   Does he not plant wheat in its place,
   barley in its plot,
   and spelt in its field?
   His God instructs him and teaches him the right way.
   Caraway is not threshed with a sledge,
   nor is the wheel of a cart rolled over cumin;
   caraway is beaten out with a rod,
   and cumin with a stick.
   Grain must be ground to make bread;
   so one does not go on threshing it forever.
   The wheels of a threshing cart may be rolled over it,
   but one does not use horses to grind grain.
   All this also comes from the Lord Almighty,
   whose plan is wonderful,
   whose wisdom is magnificent.

Isaiah 28:23-29 (NIV)

This passage is discussed by Albert Wolters in Creation Regained.

How small-minded of us in our hopelessness to look at our closed Bible and say, "What I need is ____, and this is not in the Bible." How do we know we need _____ and not some utterly unexpected hope that the Bible will awaken in us when we read it in faith?

Indeed, we may lack hope because we think we need something we do not need. It may take the Word of God to show us what we really need, and then to give us the power to get it. In the end what we really need is Christ. He is the sum of all our hopes. . . . Sometimes what we need from the Bible is not the fulfillment of our dream, but the swallowing up of our failed dream in the all-satisfying glory of Christ. We do not always know the path of deepest joy. But all Scripture is inspired by God to take us there.

John Piper, When I Don't Desire God: How to Fight for Joy

From the Preface to the Authorized Version (of 1611):

Wee doe not deny, nay wee affirme and avow, that the very meanest translation of the Bible in English, set foorth by men of our profession (for wee have seene none of theirs of the whole Bible as yet) containeth the word of God, nay, is the word of God. As the Kings Speech which hee uttered in Parliament, being translated into French, Dutch, Italian and Latine, is still the Kings Speech, though it be not interpreted by every Translator with the like grace, nor peradventure so fitly for phrase, nor so expresly for sence, every where.

Here it is with modern spelling:

We do not deny, nay we affirm and avow, that the very meanest translation of the Bible in English, set forth by men of our profession, (for we have seen none of theirs of the whole Bible as yet) containeth the word of God, nay, is the word of God. As the King's speech, which he uttereth in Parliament, being translated into French, Dutch, Italian, and Latin, is still the King's speech, though it be not interpreted by every Translator with the like grace, nor peradventure so fitly for phrase, nor so expressly for sense, everywhere.

Here it is in modern English:

We do not deny, but affirm the fact that even the most basic translation of the Bible set forth by its translators into the English language contains the word of God--and in fact is the Word of God. In the same way, the King's speech in Parliament, which is translated into French, Dutch, Italian, and Latin, is still the King's speech, even if it's not translated in each case with the same grace, phrasing, or emphasis. 

Apparently, the translators of the KJV itself were not KJV only.

Isaiah 26:3-9 (NEB):

Thou dost keep in peace men of constant mind,
in peace because they trust in thee.
Trust in the Lord for ever;
for the Lord himself is an everlasting rock.
He has brought low all who dwell high in a towering city;
he levels it to the ground and lays it in the dust,
that the oppressed and the poor may tread it underfoot.
The path of the righteous is level,
and thou markest out the right way for the upright.
We too look to the path prescribed in thy laws, O Lord;
thy name and thy memory are our heart's desire.
With all my heart I long for thee in the night,
I seek thee eagerly when dawn breaks;
for, when they laws prevail in the land,
the inhabitants of the world learn justice.

The Bible is not a compendium of doctrines, ideas, or rules. Scripture teaches, but teaches through stories, poetry, exhortation, visions, letters. It addresses the whole man—our minds, but also our passions, imaginations, loves, and desires. Christians who attempt to apply the Bible to political life, for example, often focus so completely on discovering ethical standards that they ignore the significance of Scripture's rhetoric.

The Bible has done its proper work when it produces a certain kind of person. Scripture's target is not primarily ideas or worldviews. Scripture aims to shape people. And people moulded by the Word of God not only bring that Word to the city of man. In union with the eternal Word, they are the Word of God in the city of man.

—Peter Leithart, Comment, Nov. 2012

What were the mariner without his compass? And what were the Christian without the Bible? This is the unerring chart, the map in which every shoal is described, and all the channels from the quicksands of destruction to the haven of salvation mapped and marked by one who knows the way.

C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, Sept. 1