The Bible Past and Present
As may be seen, the old texts or codex are very hard to read. It is reminiscent of Japanese in the sense that spaces are lacking between words, as is punctuation in general.
Fortunately, the scholars do a good job of it. Here it may be seen that no punctuation, nor spaces between words are added. All of that is added by the translator doing as good a job as he can according to his understanding. Please continue reading below the picture. It was obtained from the link at Wikipedia below.
Link to: Wikipedia Codex Sinaiticus
In Greek, the text to Luke 23:43 reads as shown just below with its basic Latin alphabet transliteration:
43και ειπεν αυτω αμην σοι λεγω σημερον μετ εμου εση εν τω παραδεισω
43kai eipen auto amen soi lego semeron met emou ese en to paradeiso
T he text shown here is from a Greek Bible Tisch. As seen in verse 43 above, this doesn't have any punctuation!
Here is a text from the Diaglott Emphatic Bible where everything is easy to see:
Here the text has been added the punctuation marks.
The problem with that is as follows:
If we all know that Christ was dead for the next three days and if we use the KJV Bible, then he was in Hell. That is not equivalent to Paradise, is it?
Thus, if you have the right to punctuate according to what has to be true -- which we do, since the original text didn't contain punctuation. Perhaps the translation should read like this:
Luke 23:43 43 And he said to him: "Truly I tell you today, You will be with me in Paradise.. . .(NW)
Instead of reading like this:
43And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise. (KJV)
From the above, it is apparent that the translator and Bible editor needs to punctuate the sentence so that what is said remains in harmony with the rest of the inspired word of God! Unfortunately, some such problems exist in all Bible translations. These are coloured to some degree, large or small, by the predominant understanding of the translator.
Thus, no matter how good you think your translation is, you need to use several translations to avoid falling into this trap of accepting carte blanche the translator's Bible viewpoint.
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