How punctuation changed the world.

I have always been fascinated by the evolution of heresy and the development of dogma in the Christian Church.  We have Theodosius and Constantine to thank for defining and then codifying the current view of the Trinity. I’ve been reading Paula Fredricksen’s Ancient Christianities: the First Five Hundred Years and ran across this explanation of a passage from John showing just how difficult translating and defining can be.

One place where Paul might seem to tip over from being a late Second Temple Jew to being a fourth-century Christian comes in his letter to the Romans 9.5. In English, this passage could read: “of their people [meaning Paul’s fellow Jews] according to the flesh is the Christ God, who is over all, be blessed forever!” Or it could read: “of their people according to the flesh is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever!” The English translation depends on how the sentence is punctuated, with or without a full stop after “Christ.”

On this issue, there are several things to bear in mind. The first is that Paul’s original letter had neither punctuation nor even space between the letters. Modern readers are the ones whose punctuation shapes Paul’s sentences. Second, given that Christ has a plenipotentiary role in Paul’s story of redemption, he could be the “god over all who is blessed forever,” without confusing him or identifying him with God the Father. “God” in antiquity was a very elastic term. Third, the identification of Christ with God the Father, the claim that he was equally as divine as the Father, took until the imperially sponsored councils of the fourth and fifth centuries to formulate. Were Paul identifying Christ with God in the mid-first century, it was a point that eluded theologians for the next three hundred years.

And, I might add, caused numerous wars. Thank goodness when I had Greek and Latin in high school, editors had kindly added punctuation where they thought it was appropriate. One can only hope they were right with Veni, vidi, vici and not Veni, vidi; vici. Or, Veni: vidi, vici.

It reminds me of my 8th grade English class where Mrs. Kenworthy (a teacher with whom most of the 8th grade males were madly in love — notice how I avoided ending the sentence with a preposition — another hideous error; and I won’t even describe the horror of “very unique.”) showed us how changing the placement of a comma in a sentence can radically change the meaning, which is why I have become paranoid about the use of commas and semi-colons.

This is obviously a problem for translators who often were forced to make their own interpretations of the meaning. Bart Ehrman, in Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, frequently explains that the original manuscripts of the New Testament were written in scriptio continua—a style where letters are run together without spaces, paragraphs, or punctuation. Because these ancient Greek texts lack these features, the responsibility of adding them falls to modern translators and editors, who must use their own understanding of grammar, context, and theological interpretation to decide where sentences begin and end.

Ehrman argues that punctuation is an interpretive act rather than an original feature of the text. When translators insert punctuation, they are effectively making theological decisions that can significantly alter the meaning of a passage.

He often points to Romans 9:5 as a primary example of how a single comma (or lack thereof) can change a fundamental theological claim:

• Reading A: "...the Messiah, who is over all, God be blessed forever. Amen." (This treats the final phrase as a doxology/blessing to God, rather than a description of Christ.)

• Reading B: "...the Messiah, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen." (This identifies Jesus explicitly as "God over all.")

Ehrman notes that since the original Greek lacked diacritics and punctuation, it is impossible to know for certain which reading the original author intended based on the manuscripts alone. Consequently, what a reader sees in their modern Bible is often a reflection of the translator's editorial judgment.

You’d think God would be more careful.