Q - I heard that there was no Punctuations in the original Bible is that true?

A - You may not be aware that in the original Greek manuscripts there were no chapters, verses, or punctuation.

In the Bible Dictionary section of a King James Bible (Zondervan Publishing House) it is said that "the Bible was divided into chapters probably by Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury in the 13th century and that the Old Testament was first divided into verses by Rabbi Nathan. The New Testament published in 1551 by the French printer, Robert Stephanus, was the first to use verse divisions."

This means that the derived verses and sentence order of the Bible may not reflect the original first century Greek messages, as the Chapters were religiously derived and the Verses were added by a French Printer.

These changes were made some 13 to 15 centuries after the original Greek messages were written.

This is why there are added English words in the Old English version to try to make sense of the religious translation and interpretation.

To me this indicates that the English version of things may not be exactly what the original Greek intended.

So when studying the Bible I have found it helpful to keep that fact in mind and if need be remove the punctuations so you can better see what the original Greek manuscripts was saying.

Also some of the words lost their true meaning when they were translated to English so try not to get all hung up on the wording of one verse and base your beliefs on that because as I have said many time we must read the Bible a one complete book as all of it is from God therefore it must all agree with itself and if it seems to contradict itself that's because of translation errors and added words and the use of chapters, verses, and punctuation.

However it is very easy to still know what the original meaning is by doing some research on scriptures that seem to contradict themselves and by knowing what the rest of the Bible teaches you can see what these verses mean in every case it will be because of man's additions to the original text.

If you read the Bible as one complete book you get one story and that story is the truth, if you look at one verse here and another verse there and try to understand what they mean you will be way out in leftfield and you will never find the truth studying the Bible in this way.