The original gospels were written in Greek without any spaces between the words or punctuation, so when the first scribes began to tease the words apart, they had to insert punctuation as they saw fit. In the NSRV account of 1 Thess 14-15, Paul writes “… for you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord and the prophets….” NOTE THE COMMA! WITH the comma, Paul is suggesting that “the Jews” killed Jesus. WITHOUT the comma, it would be inferred that it was only a group of Jews who killed him (“the Jews who killed Jesus”). How was it decided to put that comma there? And have we been laboring under the misplaced assumption that “the Jews” killed Jesus because of a scribe’s ill-placed comma many many centuries ago?
I agree with you ClaudeTee that the comma is done wrong in that text.
The old primitive Greek is just full of flaws which the translators utilize for their own intentions.
Another notorious comma is in Luke 23:43 as that comma needs to be behind the word “today” and not in front of it, and that wrong comma changes the meaning of the text.
Jesus is telling the other guy that He is saying it today instead of remembering it later. The other guy was NOT going to paradise on that same day.
A little comma makes a big difference.
Luke really does seem to have a more historically evolved understanding of ‘paradise’ here; Luke’s Jesus probably does mean the same day of their crucifixion. Bart gives some good reasons for why he thinks this in his book Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife, as does Joseph Fitzmyer in his Anchor Bible commentary, not to mention many others.
I can add that Moffatt’s translation reads: “And he [the thief] added, ‘Jesus do not forget me when you come to reign.’ ‘I tell you truly,’ said Jesus, ‘you will be in paradise with me this very day.'”
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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