Much thanks!
EDIT: I’m thinking of maybe asking for a future enhancement on the bugzilla page to allow one and two column layouts with footnotes independently of the main text body
EDIT2: You have helped me streamline and arrange my project more efficiently, many thanks! I have now filed an enhancement request here. I will see how I proceed with my project.
Greetings again. I’ve been formatting my layout with your advice. The only thing I have yet to do is the paragraph part. You say that I got one big paragraph. However every chapter I have has a different heading already. Aren’t these all different paragraphs?
The problem is not in the headings (they are small paragraphs). It lies in the “main” text which is a single paragraph per chapter. This does not matter much in "ordinary documents. But here, you are in 2-column context (where determining column and page breaks can’t be done on the fly; text corresponding to the whole page must be cached; this is made worse by the fact that Writer works in “paragraph atoms”). And to make things more complicated, you text is in a section, adding another level of cache before making a decision.
One way to alleviate these issues would be to change slightly your layout (if your specification allows it).
Instead of having one section per book, split to one section per chapter with full page width chapter heading. I have done it on the first 10 chapters. It improves performance a bit but I still have a single paragraph per chapter (spanning page breaks; thus not solving this issue).
Sample file-ajl.odt (132.1 KB)
Your sample file crashes my LibreOffice (now v.25.x, flatpak) 
Here’s my current layout, implementing the tips you gave me., for which I thank you a lot.
Nieuwe LO versie en nieuwe textformatting GENESIS.odt (136.7 KB)
I have also seen that you’re the one supporting my enhancement request. I want to inform you that I’ll probably plan on putting a bug bounty on it. I know some IT people who might want to try to solve this for a price. I can’t say it will happen but you’ll see it on the bugzilla page.
Just to see, I took my copy of Genesis and inserted paragraph breaks accordingly. My version has a break in 2-4, creating verses 4a and 4b. So don’t be surprised by this “strange” break.
Note that this causes a large blank space at end of page 2 because first word of next paragraph (verse 4b) has a large note. Writer could not put both at least 2 lines of text and start of the note in the remaining space. It solved it by flushing paragraph to next page.
I found that your choice of centred separator did not “isolate” enough the note number from text and changed its alignment to left. IMHO, it is important when a note extends in the next column where “naked indent” is confusing. This is purely personal aesthetic tastes. YMMV.
Nieuwe LO versie ajl.odt (142.4 KB)
I also experimented with you initial 2-column section structure (with added paragraph breaks). This is Nieuwe LO versie sections ajl.odt (140.7 KB)
Beware of direct formatting (DF). This is your worst enemy on long books. As an example, see “Genesis 20”. Your DF aligns it left whereas all other headings are centred. A well-designed book has NO DF. Or rather, only strictly necessary DF. Using DF requires knowing and accepting the consequences. Contrary to common belief, DF needs super-expert guru skills. And even so, there are adverse effects.
I will take your aesthetic separator into consideration. I’ll also look at your section experimentation.
The direct formatting on Genesis 20 seemed to be a bug. Genesis 23 also had some direct formatting for some reason even though both were part of the same paragraph style. I’ve been avoiding any direct formatting as of now. In your opinion, should I put the chapter titles in character formatting instead of paragraph formatting?
Chapter titles have a different semantic significance from main topic text. Therefore, they deserve their own paragraph style. Since they are “headings”, why not use Heading 1 for book title and Heading 2 for chapters? They are already attached to outline levels 1 and 2, thus correctly configured for automatic TOC. They would replace advantageously your custom Boektitel and Bibel Hoofdstuktitel.
My formatting method is to abstract paragraph significance and to assign a style to each significance. The same can be done for changes of significance inside a paragraph with character styles.
Note I base my design on significance not on look. If I named a style “Red paragraph” and afterwards realised that it would better to indent it with italics without red, my name becomes confusing. With a name like “Very important”, I can change all attributes without creating an ambiguity in usage.
My rule of thumb is: there are ~10 different types of paragraph in a sophisticated book (→ ~10 paragraph styles); there are also roughly less than 10 “diverging” significances in paragraphs (→ less than 10 character styles). This is less clear-cut for page styles because it is highly dependent on the degree of sophistication. I’d say you need either 1 or 3 page styles for all chapters (a single set can do thanks to fields), special page styles for cover page, front material, TOC and index (each time 1 or 3). At most you need 3 list styles because you rarely define 2 different numbered lists plus one for bullet list).
It is much more difficult to tell how many frame styles you need. These are particularly sensitive to direct formatting. So, you must have a pretty long experience to master them.
Mentioning frames, beware when spreading a list between main text and frames. You did so by having the book title in a frame and chapter headings in main text. In your present state, it does not matter because the corresponding styles are not used in Tools>Heading Numbering. But if you intend to build a TOC, all headings are part of a special internal list. When collected for the TOC, this list may not be shown in expected page order because the document is scanned separately for main stream and frames in insertion order. Most of the time your editing history is not chaotic and things go fine. But if you heavily reviewed your text, notably the frames, the internal representation might not be in page order and the TOC is “weird” to say the least.
It’s an interesting perspective you’re giving me about outlines and the heading numbers. I presumed that since they were based on Heading 1 and Heading 2 respectively they’d get the same outlinings. For now I have changed the outline to match the headings they’re based on. If I have to start a whole new document again I’ll consider what you’ve said.