NT punctuation
The Greek language has a system of punctuation marks somewhat
similar to ours. Originally, this was not so; there was no punctuation, and
moreover, the writing was not separated into words. ("The oldest Greek mss had
no chapter and verse divisions, no punctuation marks and hence no separation
into sentences, and not even any separation between words. All they have are
line after line, column after column, page after page, through a whole book of
the NT": Earle, "NIV: Making of Contemporary Translation")
Translators, therefore, are not bound to follow the
punctuation which they find in their mss. Scott also tells us that punctuation
marks were first introduced in the days of Jerome (c 400 AD), who translated the
Bible into Latin.
Translators must therefore look at the possible meaning of a
phrase as if all the punctuation marks were ignored.
The best example of this "complication", at least to
Christadelphians, is Luk 23:43, where the AV translates "Verily I say unto thee,
Today thou shalt be with me in paradise", but a much more appropriate
translation might be: "I say to you today, You shall be with me in
paradise."
But other instances may be found. For example, the AV
translated Luk 16:22,23 as: "The rich man also died and was buried. And in hell
he..." William Tyndale (1525) translated this as: "The rich man died and was
buried in hades." Likewise, the Douay (Roman Catholic) version (1582) read: "The
rich man died also, and was buried in hell" (Harold Hughes, Sh
85:5:7).
