The Bible, Grammar and a Question of Syntax

This is one of the most fascinating aspects of the Bible's transmission and it's a shame that so few people have given it any thought. 

As you may or may not know, Greek and Latin (the languages in which our earliest New Testament manuscripts were written) contain no punctuation or grammar marks of any kind. Everything produced at the time was was written out in capital letters, without spaces, in what is known today as scriptio continua ("continuous script"). It took roughly 1000 years before spacing was first introduced, and while the first known punctuation marks were introduced in ancient Greece, none of them served the purpose of what we now recognize today as the comma or the full stop. Indeed, the earliest punctuation marks were made for actors, with notches indicating suggested times in a speech in which an actor should draw his breath. Most of our matters of grammar and syntax have been the product of the past 500 years. 

With that being said, how trusting are you of the grammar and punctuation in your bible? I myself have a collection of roughly 30 variations and all of them differ on these matters of syntax. Now, you may not think this is a big deal, but the entire meaning of a sentence can change with remarkably little effort. Observe: 

GODISNOWHERE can be read as "God is now here" or "God is nowhere" depending on the inclination of the reader. 

Let's try the same practice with a biblical verse. 

ANDJESUSSAIDUNTOHIMVERILYISAYUNTOTHEETODAYSHALTTHOUBEWITHMEINPARADISE (Luke 23:43) This is a well known passage where Jesus informs the good thief that he will go to paradise. The interesting thing however, is that this sentence syntax has been interpreted in two significantly different ways by two major sects (Protestants & Catholics), with both sides using it as proof of their doctrine. 

Protestant's read the critical part of this sentence as "Verily, I say unto thee, This day thou shalt me with me in Paradise", which they use as proof that there can be no purgatory because Jesus sent the thief straight to paradise, with no delay. 

Catholic doctrine however reads it as, "Verily I say unto thee this day, Thou shalt be with me in Paradise". See the difference? In the first sentence Jesus' words mean that the thief will go straight to heaven, in the second sentence the time of the thief joining him in paradise has not been set. This technicality is used by Catholics as proof that the thief's judgement did not necessarily occur on that given day, and so they are justified in their doctrinal belief in the concept of purgatory. 

Yet both sides are reading from the exact same sentence. All that has changed in the syntax, courtesy of grammar and punctuation. 

This occurs literally thousands of times throughout the Bible. Granted, many of these instances are not important to matters of doctrine--Is it "Comfort ye my people" (please go out and comfort my people) or "Comfort ye, my people" (hey guys, cheer up)? 

I guess what I want to ask you all is, how do you know that the syntax of the bible is correct? It varies heavily among different versions and translations throughout history, and nobody can be certain of the original authors' intentions because the original documents were all written in scriptio continua. 

What if some of your beliefs about the bible have come from reading incorrect syntax? How would you know? And more importantly, how do you determine what is and is not correct? If this is God's holy book shouldn't this be a matter of some importance?

PS: While I've studied this subject for a few years, the inspiration for this post was drawn from a reading of Eats, Shoots & Leaves (in which these same bible verses are used as examples to demonstrate the power and importance of the comma).You can expect a review in the near future.