The books of the Bible were originally written as solid texts with no divisions such as chapters and verses. In the early 13th century, a French professor, Stephen Langton, who later became archbishop of Canterbury, decided to break down the scriptures into chapters to make Bible studying easier. About 300 years later, Robert Estienne (Stephanus) published in Paris a Greek edition of the New Testament with more division, this time into verses. These divisions make remembering and finding texts much easier. But as they are not inspired by God, but man-made, they can also occasionally contribute to errors in interpretation. Add to that punctuation, which did not exist in the original texts, and you can even have biased renditions of the scriptures which distort the meaning. For example, the scripture in Luke 23:43 frequently reads: “Truly I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.” The comma placed before the word “today” would imply that Jesus was saying the thief would be with him in paradise that very day. And yet we know this is impossible since Jesus did not go directly to paradise upon dying, but spent three days in the grave, from which he was resurrected. It would then make more sense to place the comma after the word “today”, which some translators (Rotherham, Lamsa) agree is correct, etc. “Truly I say to you today, you will be with Me in Paradise.”
