No one has removed anything from the verse. Tell me...by what grammatical rule was a comma added in the first instance? Has “heavy textual and hermeneutical reasons underlied that change.”
Nice try, but I won't let you dodge the question.
The "translator committee" behind the Watchtower's New World Translation (NWT) removed the comma in this version. Certainly, they allowed lots of other commas to stand or the reading would've become somewhat difficult with all those runover sentences.
Again, what was the textual or hermeneutical rationale behind the removal of that specific comma, and for leaving behind all the others?
Specifically, did you know that there are six other verses in the Gospel of Luke where Jesus used this same expression, and a total of 72 instances throughout all the Gospels, but Luke 23:43 is THE ONLY ONE in which the NWT Translation Committee moved the comma, thereby changing the meaning of the expression (and also making the expression obvious and redundant).
Explain to us the reasons why this is so.
The comma was in the right place before the translators behind the NWT (and some Seventh Day Adventist versions) moved it. You are the one who needs to explain why.
~Theo