In order to defeat the idea of an eternal home in heaven with the Lord, one
denomination makes an argument based on the punctuation of Jesus’ statement to
the thief on the cross:
“I say to you, today you shall be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). In trying
to rebut Jesus’ statement that the thief would be in paradise, they argue from
the punctuation of the verse as a smokescreen thrown up to hide the fact that
denial of a future life in paradise is unscriptural. It doesn’t matter whether
Jesus told the thief he would be in paradise that very day, or at some time in
the future—there is a paradise to be enjoyed by those whom the Lord blesses. I
don’t want to dwell on the promise Jesus made, but on the premise of the
denominational argument—that punctuation has been fixed in place by inspiration.
Punctuation is intended to help the reader understand correctly what you intend by what you write. That being true, it may come as a surprise to some to learn that the original texts of the New Testament had sparse, if any, punctuation, and this should make us careful about accepting interpretations based on the punctuation found in our modern Bibles.
When you look at the earliest New Testament manuscripts you will not find the kind of punctuation that you see in modern languages. There are some so-called chapter divisions which provide guidance on where new subject matter begins but these do not correspond at all to the paragraph or chapter divisions in modern translations. Some often-used words such as names of deity are abbreviated and you will see, for instance, C, the Greek letters theta, and upsilon, which make up an abbreviation for “God.”
In most of the uncial manuscripts—those written entirely in what we would call capital letters—there are one or two places where the scribe indicates the proper place to divide one word from another, but apart from those the words were all run together. This could lead to confusion or ambiguity because the reader could understand the sentence the way he wanted to. For example an undivided English sentence printed as: GODISNOWHERE, would be understood by a believer to say “God is now here,” whereas an atheist would think it said, “God is nowhere.” Such ambiguities, however, are not frequently found in Scripture.
The lack of thorough punctuation lasted till the eighth century, and it was not till the publication of Greek texts produced on printing presses that the New Testament was divided into numbered verses. It’s uncertain why this was done, but the verse numbers make it easy to find the precise location of information you wish to share with others and facilitates Bible study. Here again, the division into verses has created some problems of which you need to be aware.
Poor verse divisions occur in Ephesians 1 where verse 4 ends with “In love” which are actually the first words of the sentence which occupies verse 5. The same sort of awkward division occurs at the end of verse 5 with the words “In Him” which belong with verse 6. While reading your Bible, consider the English punctuation to be of greater significance than the verse number and when quoting verses don’t hesitate to begin in the middle of a verse if that’s where the Scripture sentence begins.
Don’t, whatever you do, consider the chapter or verse divisions as sacred and untouchable. Also, don’t consider the punctuation to be inspired, because it’s not. Read with these things in mind and you may gain greater insight and inspiration from the Scripture you’re reading.