I am curious to find out as grammatically the meanings of sentences can change by punctuation. When the Bible was translated into English, punctuation did not exist. For that matter, it did not exist in the original either.
2007-01-20 12:13:03 · 8 answers · asked by emiliosailez 6 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
Excellent answers- Thank you!
Now we can understand a bit better why we have so many translations and interpretations, hence denominations. We interpret things as we would wish them to be.
2007-01-20 21:33:24 · update #1
Originally the Bible was written in "uncial" writing. This type of writing consists of capital letter with no connection between letters, no spaces between words and sentences, no periods or comas and no chapters or verses, e.g., GODISNOWHERE. Our modern writing would read: God is now here, or God is nowhere. So punctuation, etc., can be very important and translators have to be aware of that. As in the above example, the meaning can change, depending upon where the spaces and punctuation are placed. Uncial writing was popular until the A.D. 800's. Next came "cursive" writing, ordinary handwriting with capital letters at the beginning of sentences, letters joined and spaces between words.
2007-01-20 12:19:06 · answer #1 · answered by whynotaskdon 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
I am not certain that punctuation did not exist in King James's time... but obviously translating it into a very dated of current English from a Latin translation at the Council of Micea 1000 years ago who translated from Aramic
from arbitrarily chosen texts allows a lot of room for serious questioning!
You find Shakesperian English hard to follow??? That was about 400 years ago!
2007-01-20 20:20:51 · answer #2 · answered by waynebudd 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The Bible was originally written in continuous, unbroken lines of letters. It was not until the ninth century C.E. that any system of dividing sentences by punctuation marks was devised. The main features of our modern system of punctuation began in the fifteenth century C.E. as a result of the introduction of printing. Subdivision of the Bible into chapters and verses (the Authorized Version has 1,189 chapters, 31,173 verses) was not done by the original writers either. This came centuries later. The Masoretes, Jewish scholars, divided the Hebrew Scriptures into verses. Then in the thirteenth century C.E. chapter divisions were added.
2007-01-21 00:22:22 · answer #3 · answered by BJ 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Verse divisions were introduced by Stephanus in 1551. That is what is used for most modern translations. There are an estimated 600 passages which are punctuation critical in the NT.
2007-01-20 20:20:15 · answer #4 · answered by Joe Cool 6 · 2⤊ 0⤋
The Bible was divided into chapters in 1226 by Stephen Langton, into verses in 1551 by Robert Etienne. The Geneva Bible was the first Bible with the text divided into verses ever (1560).
http://www.fuller.edu/ministry/berean/chs_vss.htm
http://www.gotquestions.org/divided-Bible-chapters-verses.html
I don't know about punctuation, but this seems like a good source:
http://www.bfbs.org.uk/documents/Masoretes.pdf
2007-01-20 20:25:56 · answer #5 · answered by Cristina 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
most likely when the monks took out all the parts that they deemed "ungodly" so it was just the glory parts. like when they took out the part about how jesus wasnt realy a great guy and thats y judas turned him in and all those other parts they thought were "bad" and didint want "good" christians knowing the whole truth just the abridged truth
2007-01-20 20:18:53 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 2⤋
what does it matter? it's all fiction anyway
2007-01-20 20:16:59 · answer #7 · answered by Dr. Brooke 6 · 2⤊ 2⤋
i dont know ...why do you want to know ?
2007-01-20 20:15:55 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋