How Did They Decide Where Commas Went in the Bible?

The New Testament is written in Greek not Hebrew and the word order is not let the same all the best, urban

Not only that there was no punctuation but if you look at an old manuscript there were all big letters, no spacing between words and sometimes they were using the short form for some words. This is how it started when the bible was made. In the western world St Jerome was criticized because he abandoned the LXX version of the old testament in favor of the texts the jews were using.Here in the east they still use LXX version in the current versions of the bible. This is one of the main reasons i am against the "sola scriptura " concept. Because even if you claim you believe in what is written in the bible only, you first need to believe in those who translated the bible.For the traditional churches that is not a problem, they claim to have the tradition besides the bible and it is a valid logical point. It is a problem for the protestant churches though. That`s why when King James Bible was created it was declared to be "divinely inspired ". That is a starting point, if you have a book that is divinely inspired, then you can believe only what is written in the bible. Same if you use NIV or God knows what other translation. First you need to consider that book to be "divinely inspired".

Well, in translation, I say to leave things as intact as you can. Once someone starts messing with it a little bit, then someone else makes a little adjustment, you end with something far from the original meaning.

As I don't know Hebrew, it's not easy to give a right opinion. But, based on my experience in translating between different languages, I suppose that the specialist used the common sense after reading and studying the text. Once you start to translate a text, that one never can be translated literary, because on this way the tranlation may give no sense in the new language where it has to be translated to. The translation has to be done as near as possible, but based on the sense of the text. Sometimes, a sentense in one language can be translated into a complete another one in the other language to assure that the original IDEA of what the sentense means will be understood in the other language.

Vulcans from Star Trek would have said: "Use your logic!" John 20:17 says: Jesus said to her, "Don't hold me, for I haven't yet ascended to my Father; but go to my brothers, and tell them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" If Jesus was not even after his resurrection with the Father, where to place a comma in the above case? But there are people who do not believe in the resurrection of the body, so they want to put a comma where it suits them. There are many similar places in the Bible... You need the Holy Spirit to understand, right?

No wonder, translation is also considered interpretation. Nevertheless, we should not forget, that without the efforts of these translators, we will not be reading any bible today. Allow me to quote another example of the same kind of where the comma rightly belong. Mark 16:9, "Now when Jesus was risen early the the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene..." Where do you think the comma should be placed? Will it be after the word WEEK or should it be after the word RISEN?

I do not know about the christian testament, but the Torah and TANAKH did contain punctuation marks. They just did not insert vowels, which was a bit of a problem when Hebrew was forbidden to be spoken or written in most countries. When Jews did finally get the freedom to read their Torah scrolls again there were many arguments over how some words were pronounced.

"Yoda-ish " Onto something, I believe you are. I don't know anything about how such a decision was made. Whoever started adding those commas wouldn't have been with Jesus to hear exactly how he made that statement to the thief either. I'd have to assume they were just making guesses about the placement.

Did they use any punctuation at all in Greek? I read a section of text once where there were no commas nor full stops, all in capitals, run-on sentences & it could be read in any of a dozen different ways. For the money, I reckon it was the much celebrated St Jerome what had his way with the commas who was responsible for the Greek translation into the Latin Vulgate who was given unprecedented powers to translate the text into anything that made sense to him at the time. He recieved much adverse criticism for the translation he wrought & so he wrote other works to defend himself after which the Catholic Church made him a saint. You will find little remaining mysticism within today's bible. Mysticism goes against Catholic Church doctrine & dogma. They have done their utmost over centuries to eliminate it & enforce the "literal only" interpretation of scripture. Let's not kid ourselves, the Holy Bible is with us today, not as a complete work, by its own admission, nor as spiritual instruction nor even as a sound set of rules to live by, but for one purpose only; that is to support, defend & promote the doctrine & dogma of The Church of Rome.