Compare the comments on 1 Cor. 10.6. Many Greek manuscripts, followed by Good News Bible, Revised Standard Version, Revised English Bible, New Jerusalem Bible, Translator’s New Testament, have “all” before these things. The UBS Greek text, though, has merely “these things.” This text is followed by New Revised Standard Version, Barclay, and some other translations. The manuscript evidence is rather evenly divided.

The word translated as a warning (Good News Bible‘s “examples”) is an adverb related to “types” in verse 6. Revised English Bible again has “symbolic.”

To them: the Greek is literally “those people.” It means “other people than ourselves,” not “other people than the Israelites mentioned in earlier verses.” Some translators may want to repeat “our ancestors” here, or say “the Israelites.”

The phrase they were written down can be translated “people wrote all these events down.”

For our instruction is a little ambiguous. “As a warning to us” (Good News Bible) or “in order to warn us” gives the meaning more clearly.

End is literally “ends” in the Greek. Revised Standard Version and other translations are probably correct in assuming that copyists were influenced by the plural ages and thus wrote “ends.” The meaning is most probably end. Parola Del Signore: La Bibbia in Lingua Corrente has a good translation, “We are living in a time close to the end.”

An alternative translation model for this verse is:
• All these things happened to the Israelites as examples to warn other people, and people wrote all these events down in order to warn us. For we are living in a time that is close to the end.

Quoted with permission from Ellingworth, Paul and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, 2nd edition. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1985/1994. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .