Our teachers always spent hours drilling comma rules into our memory, but for most of us, these never really stuck. Partly it was the sheer boredom of studying commas. To make matters worse, the unimportance of the matter meant that we didn't devote much time to learning them.
However, I'm here to tell you that commas change EVERYTHING.
We all know the standard example:
Let's eat, Grandpa versus Let's eat Grandpa. Punctuation. It saves lives.
But I recently discovered an even bigger effect of comma location, and this one has affected hundreds of millions of people. It comes in the form of one of Jesus's Seven Sayings Upon the Cross, from the Gospel of Luke.
Jesus is crucified upon the cross and tells the two other men also being crucified, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).
This seems simple enough, but let's consider the placement of the comma nearest “today.” The Protestants use the comma placement shown above.
However, Catholics use a different form: “Truly, I say to you today, you will be with me in paradise.” See the difference? It may seem insignificant, but it has a significant impact on the teachings of both Churches.
The Catholics use the placement of the comma to help justify the exist of Purgatory. In other words, Jesus is saying that someday these thieves will join him in paradise, but he's not saying it will happen today.
On the other hand, the Protestants say that Jesus promised the thieves that they will join him in paradise that very day, proving that Purgatory does not exist.
The problem arises from the original Greek. The original text has NO COMMAS, which led to this bonanza. So there you have it: When you don't use commas, you cause theological arguments that last for hundreds of years.
18 comments:
are you bored? lol
but it is funny :o)
Entertaining post!
Then there's the the joke about the panda:
A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons.
'Why?' asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
'Well, I'm a panda', he says, at the door. 'Look it up.'
The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. 'Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.'
lol that's pretty cool XD
-Oliver
It's a seriously erroneous generalisation to say that "Catholics use the placement of the comma to help justify the existence of Purgatory".
Some Catholics may but, for example, the translation of Luke 23:43 as approved by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops is "He replied to him, "Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise." (see http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/luke/luke23.htm), which is in accordance with the Protestant version.
BTW, the panda story is the basis of the title of a book on the subject of punctuation ("Eats, Shoots and Leaves" by Lynne Truss)
Grosser example might have been...
"Let's eat out, Grandma" versus "Let's eat out Grandma."
A few years ago, grandma might have preferred the second, but today, the first is probably the preferred choice.
Hehe, that reminds me of something I read on someone's blog a while ago. It goes like this:
"A woman without her man is nothing."
The males in the class punctuated:
"A woman, without her man, is nothing."
The females in the class punctuated:
"A woman: without her, man is nothing."
Adidas made the point I was going to. In fact, in 67 years as a Catholic, I can't recall ever hearing or seeing the argument being made that it should be punctuated "I tell you today, you will be with me in Paradise." In fact, even the Rheims translation of 1582 says, "Amen I say to thee, this day thou shalt be with me in paradise."
But commas are definitely important.
There is another example my brother gave me of the importance of commas after every item in a series. Consider a possible dedication of a book. "I wish to dedicate this book to my parents, Mother Teresa and the Pope." Compare it with "I wish to dedicate this book to my parents, Mother Teresa, and the Pope."
And of course for all I know there have been Catholics who have argued along the lines you indicate. It's just not mainstream.
Punctuation amuses me!
Commas do make a difference especially in contracts and in holy books, but what about mistranslations? Bart Ehrman has written an interesting book called "Misquoting Jesus", a compendium of all the textual errors in the New Testament. The worst of them is the mistranslation from hebrew to greek of the word "alma". Its true meaning is "young woman", but now a mistranslation as "virgin" has stuck us with an immaculate conception of Mary, certainly one of the more preposterous of our religious fairy tales.
So remember that, Jason, whenever you hear someone singing these words to Handel's music, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son..."
In response to what J said:
Yes, but
Most importantly, if Isaiah was not predicting a virgin birth, that doesn't prove that one did not take place. It would be a complete non sequitur to say, "Isaiah didn't say Mary would be a virgin. Therefore Mary was not a virgin."
Isaiah was telling King Ahaz to rely on the Lord. The birth of an heir would be a sign that the Lord was keeping the House of David going, that "God was with them." A birth 700 years later would hardly help Ahaz. It was the birth of Hezekiah that Isaiah was talking about as far as Ahaz was concerned. And of course the queen would not have been a virgin.
Furthermore, it wasn't the New Testament authors who "mistranslated" Isaiah. It was the Jewish translators in the 3rd century B.C. who produced the Septuagint who translated "almah" as "parthenos." (And BTW this point is nothing new, It was a Jesuit professor at Georgetown in my freshman year —1960-1961 — from whom I learned this.)
So why did the translators choose "parthenos?" Did they think it was a messianic prophecy of a virgin birth? Was it generally believed at the time of the translation that Isaiah was prophesying a virgin birth?
If people at the time didn't think Isaiah meant a virgin, why didn't someone say, "Hey, wait a minute, 'almah' doesn't necessarily mean 'parthenos?'"
If the gospel writers, Matthew, who quotes the Septuagint version of Isaiah, and Luke, who refers to Mary's virginity without quoting Isaiah, didn't have some pre-existing belief that Mary was a virgin, they are hardly likely to have invented it just so one of them could point to the prophecy of the birth of Hezekiah.
A lot depends on whether one believes that the scriptures are the word of God. If not, one comes to conclusions like Ehrmann's. But if so, one realizes that even if the Septuagint isn't a literal translation of the Hebrew of Isaiah 7:14, God can still have inspired Matthew to point to it as a corroboration of faith in the virgin birth.
One would think that if the scriptures or the Koran are the words of God they'd be a lot better written, and certainly more cohesive. I can no more believe in the virgin birth than I can the idea that Zeus impregnated Leda while he was disguised as a swan. Back in the old days you received no respect unless you were claimed descent from one diety or another, and that your birth was attended by stupendous astrological events.
I want to point out when you said "Jesus's Seven Sayings Upon the Cross..."
It should read Jesus' b/c his name already ends in an S I believe
Ethan, I'm not positive about the rule, but I think that you're allowed to use either: It's reached the point of stylistic choice.
However, I do prefer using your way (Jesus'), but I decided not to in this case.
So I did a little research (should have done that in the 1st place) and it seems it's kind of confusing but sometimes it's Chris' or Chris's So I guess I was right and wrong at the same time. :S
Oh well I'm sticking to the Chris' books instead (and apparently the rule has exceptions)
Who made these rules, anyway? Back in the old days the hardy pioneer just wrote things out and sounded out the spellings however he saw fit and to the devil should those go who thought to take from him his God-given right to self-expression in the raw!
I say that each of us should write however we wish! I say that u or you or yew can mean exactly the very same thing! The Hebrews did very well for themselves writing their language without a single vowel in sight! Are we more perfect than they?
I rather doubt it!!!
I've already considered the first comma placement (when Jesus tells the criminals that they'll be in heaven that very day), despite being Catholic. As far as I knew, even Catholics had the same placement, but I guess I must have missed it.
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