2001 Translation

When you read an anicent text today, such as the Bible, you see a neatly organized book. It has chapters, verses, paragraphs, and even helpful punctuation. Well, hold onto your hats, because ancient manuscripts looked nothing like that!

Ancient texts were written in a way that might seem utterly alien to us. Imagine trying to read a book with:

• No spaces between words.
• No chapter numbers to guide you.
• No verse numbers to pinpoint a passage.
• No paragraph breaks to signal a new thought.
• No commas, no periods, no question marks!
• No quotation marks to show who is speaking.
• And if it was a Greek manuscript, everything was in ALL CAPS.

ANENDLESSSTREAMOFLETTERS

Most ancient texts were written in scriptio continua. What’s that, you ask? It literally means ‘continuous script’ – no spaces between words or sentences:

ITWOULDLOOKSOMETHINGLIKETHISWHICHCOULDBEHARDTOREAD

However, it’s about more than being hard to read. It can lead to misunderstandings, especially with names. Can you imagine trying to decipher a long list of names, like DAVIDJONATHANANDSAUL? It could get pretty confusing, especially if the names are foreign and unfamiliar to the reader or translator.

Which is correct?

David, Jonathan, and Saul?

Or:

David, Jona, Than, and Saul?

These names are well known, but what if we were reading the many long lists of unfamiliar names? This comes from 1 Chronicles; can you make this out?

SABAHAVILAHSABATHAREGMASEBETHAHA

How many names are there? Four? Five? Six? Can you tell?

Evidently, some of the ancient Greek translators or copyists could not tell, and occasionally two names got mixed up. We’re able to fix these errors today thanks to other sources, but it shows how easily this could happen.

Worse still, consider this:

HESAIDWEMUSTLEAVENOWITISTHETIMEHEREPLIED

How do you know when one person starts speaking, and another stops?

Well, which person said ‘now’? The first or the second?

He said, ‘We must leave now.’ ‘It is time,’ he replied.

He said, ‘We must leave.’ ‘Now it is time,’ he replied.

This doesn’t happen often, but when it does, the translator must decide who was saying what.

No Vowels in Hebrew

Ancient Hebrew only included consonants. Vowels were understood from context and tradition.

Much later, between the 6^th and 10^th centuries AD, scholars called the Masoretes added ‘vowel points’ to Bible texts to help readers. However, it could be that some words were originally deliberately ambiguous in their reading (perhaps to have a double-meaning), especially in things like poetry and prophecies. Adding vowel points may have taken away this original, fuller meaning, by establishing certain words to be more specific than originally intended.

Admitedly, this issue is probably very rare. But a good translator should still consider these possibilities, and preferably, let the reader know of any possible issues in a footnote.

So, Why All the Changes?

These additions were made over many centuries to:

• Make the text easier to read and understand.
• Help people navigate and find specific passages quickly.
• Make public reading and liturgical use more straightforward.

A Slow Transformation

These changes didn’t happen overnight. It was gradual:

• Spaces between words started appearing in Latin texts around the 7th-8^th centuries AD and slowly influenced Greek manuscripts.
• A more compact, lowercase Greek script (called ‘minuscule’) began to be used around the 9^th century AD, making books quicker (and cheaper) to copy and easier to read.
• Chapter divisions to the Bible, as we mostly know them, were introduced by Stephen Langton (later Archbishop of Canterbury) in the early 13^th century AD.
• Verse numbers for the New Testament were added by Robert Estienne (a Parisian printer) in his 1551 Greek-Latin New Testament. The Old Testament verses came from Jewish traditions.
• Punctuation developed very slowly and inconsistently, with early forms varying widely.

What’s the Big Deal?

Does all this ancient formatting (or lack thereof) really matter? Yes, it can matter very much. While these later formatting additions are incredibly helpful, they can sometimes introduce unintended biases or even errors.

Chapter Catastrophes

Take the division between chapter 27 and 28 of Matthew. As mentioned in our translator note, a chapter break seems to have been accidentally placed mid-sentence!

This shifts the timing of when the women arrived at Jesus’ tomb, potentially confusing the resurrection timeline. It makes it seem like they arrived on Saturday evening, but if we remove the artificial break, the original flow makes it sound like the women arrived the next morning.

Another example is the division between Luke chapters 20 and 21, splitting up the account of Jesus’ seeing the poor widow, potentially changing the meaning of the passage. A lesson about how the poor widow was being exploited for money has been twisted into a ‘lesson’ about giving money when you can’t afford it.

The Comma Conundrum

Punctuation is a big one. Since Ancient Greek had no commas, their placement in modern translations is an interpretive choice.

A classic example is Luke 23:43. Jesus tells the thief next to him on the cross:

‘Truly I say to you today you will be with me in Paradise’.

Should the comma go before ‘today’ (‘Truly I say to you, today you will be…’) or after it (‘Truly I say to you today, you will be…’)? The meaning changes dramatically!

One is used to support the idea of an immediate afterlife, the other to support the idea of a delayed afterlife.

Interestingly, the ancient 4th-century Codex Vaticanus, one of our oldest complete Greek New Testament manuscripts, has a tiny dot (a form of punctuation) after ‘today’ at this verse. This is very rare in such an early manuscript and shows that even ancient readers were debating where the pause should go! You can read more about this in our translator note.

Word Jumbles

Imagine trying to distinguish individual names in a list like this:

‘SIMONPETERANDANDREWTHEIRBROTHERS’

Without spaces, it’s easy to see how names or places could be run together or misinterpreted. So when people decided to put spaces in, some old manuscripts mess up very obscure names (characters that only appear once in the text in longer name lists). Admittedly, this hasn’t happened very much.

Whose Line Is It Anyway?

Modern books use quotation marks (“ ” or ‘ ’) and indentations to show when someone is speaking, or to indicate when an author is quoting another source, but ancient manuscripts had no such system!

This sometimes makes it hard to see:

• Who is speaking.
• When direct speech begins or ends.
• Whether the author is quoting someone else (perhaps to disagree with it).

A classic example is the Song of Solomon. It’s a poetic dialogue, primarily between a woman and her beloved. However, it’s extremely difficult to know where the woman’s words end and the shepherd boy’s begin, and vice-versa!

Translators have to make educated guesses about this.

Another significant example is 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, where Paul discusses women being silent in the congregations. Some scholars argue that Paul might actually be quoting a view prevalent in Corinth (perhaps from a letter they sent him), which he then immediately refutes in verse 36.

The lack of quotation marks makes it hard to be certain, but it dramatically changes the meaning if verses 34-35 are a quotation rather than Paul’s own directive.

[Square Brackets] Mean Added Words

You’ll often see [words in square brackets] in many Bible translations, including ours. What do these mean?

These are ‘translator insertions’. They are words added by the translators that aren’t in the original manuscripts. We add them to help clarify the meaning, or because English grammar requires extra words that aren’t needed in the original languages.

For example, a Greek sentence might make perfect sense without a verb like ‘is’ or ‘are’, but in English, we often need to add it in [square brackets] to make the sentence flow naturally.

It’s important to remember that these bracketed words are interpretive. While translators try their best, they are making an educated guess about what the original writer intended to imply. This means there’s always a small chance the insertion might not perfectly capture the nuance or could even subtly shift the meaning.

Sometimes the shift is dramatic. For example, adding the word [a] before ‘god’ in John 1:1 completely changes the meaning of the verse.

Note that some Bibles, like the King James Version, use italics instead of square brackets.

• Learn more about how we use brackets.
• See our note about putting ‘a god’ in John 1:1.

Summary

So, to sum up, many features we take for granted in modern translations are later additions. Here’s a quick rundown:

While these later additions can sometimes introduce issues, for the most part, they are incredibly helpful tools that make ancient texts accessible.

In the 2001 Translation, we pay close attention to these details:

• Where a chapter break, verse division, or lack of ancient punctuation might affect the meaning, we carefully consider what effect that may have on the text.

• We have sometimes entirely ignored verse and chapter divisions and, because of this, translated that text differently to others.

• We also highlight and explain some potential problem spots in our linked translator notes, so you can have a high degree of trust in what you’re reading and understand the reasons behind our choices.