p. 16 | Uninspired Punctuation

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 20, 1901

Uninspired Punctuation.

The commas, and, for the matter of that, other points, in the Bible are not matters of inspiration. The Bible was formerly written without marks of punctuation, or even spaces between the words, as, for instance, “Andtheyshall seeHisface.” Rev. 22:4. There was really no regular system of punctuation until A.D. 1500, introduced by Aldus Manutius, a learned printer of Venice. One instance of a misplaced comma is the point preceding “to-day” in Luke 23:43. The expression is an adverbial phrase, limiting the verb “say,” not the verb “shall be.” Limiting the first, all is harmony; if it is forced to do service for the second, it destroys the correlation between Christ’s answer and the thief’s prayer, and makes our Lord contradict Himself in John 20:17. Another instance of wrong punctuation is the full stop between verses 1 and 2 of Revelation 22. It should be no more than a comma. Read: “And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the midst of the street of it [that is, the city, ch. 21:23–27]. And on either side of the river was there the tree of life,” etc. It is the river which is in the midst of the street; the tree, or wood, was on either side of the river.