Translators should notice before going any farther that there will be a second turn in Paul’s thought in verse 23:

not “I belong to Paul…”
but “everything belongs to you”
nevertheless “you belong to Christ….”

Revised English Bible solves this problem by making verse 22 a parenthesis, the end of which is marked by the repetition of “everything is yours.”

Good News Bible‘s translation reflects a more natural English way of grouping the series of nouns in the Greek, which are connected by a word that is literally “or” or “and” (Good News Bible). The semicolon in Good News Bible puts these nouns into two groups. Translators need to decide how their languages would naturally show these two main groups.

Most modern translations use “Peter” (Good News Bible) instead of Cephas for the sake of consistency and to keep the reader from becoming confused. The original readers would have known that Cephas was the same person as Peter, but most modern readers are unaware of this fact.

Note that the world here has a good or at least neutral sense, not a bad sense as in verse 19.

There is no difference between “all things are yours” in verse 21 and all are yours in this verse. In some languages it may be more effective to repeat the same expression.

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 .