Fascinating Comma Usage!!
Please do head over to Participatory Bible Study Blog!
Henry Neufeld has written an excellent post about KJV-onlyism – a fascinating movement that’s more protective of their “1611″ text than a good number of Muslim extremists are of the Koran.
But the comma usage! My goodness, I don’t even know what it means!
Henry Neufeld, You are the one, in error here.
Look at that comma pair! What does it mean? Is it parenthetical? “Henry Neufeld in error here.”
Or is the first one marking a vocative and the second one performing some myserious act of comma-ness?
The world may never know!
I’m a terrible comma abuser. I usually go through and delete about half of my commas if I bother to proof read.
Nathan Stitt
March 30, 2008 at 8:20 pm
maybe the commenter was david caruso (or a david caruso impressionist).
Tim Ricchuiti
March 31, 2008 at 1:25 am
I think there is obvious interference by a later redactor here: The original no doubt looked something like this: “Henry Neufeld, You are the one [who wrote about the KJV], [and I would be] in error here [if I failed to mention that I appreciate your comments].
This literary reconstruction makes perfect sense of both the words and the punctuation. It is therefore to be preferred to the (manifestly later) redacted version appearing in the blog itself.
Matthew R. Malcolm
March 31, 2008 at 8:37 am
Perhaps the commenter was incorporating some traditional material into his comment?
I think that the commenter, with the phrase, “You are the one,” intended for his readers to have the Matrix come to mind. In combination with your literary reconstruction, it would then seem that the intention of the comment was not to condemn or criticize Henry Neufeld, but really give him the highest praise.
Mike
March 31, 2008 at 10:08 am
The commenter’s cultural context is illuminating: A Google search indicates over 85,000 instances of the phrase “You are the one” in relation to the movie “The Matrix”. Of course, it is impossible to PROVE dependence of the commenter on this important tradition, but this demonstration of the tradition’s influential role in the cultural thought-world of the commenter hardly leaves us in any doubt: It would seem fair to say that we have moved from the realm of “hypothesis” to the realm of “established fact”.
Matthew R. Malcolm
March 31, 2008 at 10:55 am
I see a monograph coming…
Mike
March 31, 2008 at 10:56 am
I have found a prophecy from last year that indicates that Henry is indeed, the one. See comment five here.
Nathan Stitt
March 31, 2008 at 11:07 am
Wow… Gentleman, case closed! Another exegetical mystery resolved.
Matthew R. Malcolm
March 31, 2008 at 11:54 am