So I see what you are saying now. You agree with my reasoning, at least I think you do, but you say there was a core group of Aramaic speaking people who believed in Jesus Christ in all these Greek speaking cities that I just named. I have never heard of that.
I researched this a bit and now I see there were a few Jewish people in Corinth, as one example who would have spoken Aramaic, Acquila and Prescilla. Of course, the main language was still Greek.
CORINTHIANS, EPISTLES TO THE
When Paul left Corinth 18 months later, a Christian congregation flourished. The congregation was composed primarily of former pagans (1 Cor 12:2), most of them apparently from the lower classes (1 Cor 1:26 f). Some were slaves (1 Cor 7:21). A few wealthier persons (1 Cor 11:22-32) and Jews, however, (8) were among the believers.
So I see what you are saying now. You agree with my reasoning, at least I think you do, but you say there was a core group of Aramaic speaking people who believed in Jesus Christ in all these Greek speaking cities that I just named. I have never heard of that.
I researched this a bit and now I see there were a few Jewish people in Corinth, as one example who would have spoken Aramaic, Acquila and Prescilla. Of course, the main language was still Greek, but nevertheless.....
CORINTHIANS, EPISTLES TO THE
When Paul left Corinth 18 months later, a Christian congregation flourished. The congregation was composed primarily of former pagans (1 Cor 12:2), most of them apparently from the lower classes (1 Cor 1:26 f). Some were slaves (1 Cor 7:21). A few wealthier persons (1 Cor 11:22-32) and Jews, however, (8) were among the believers.
In addition to these factors we must also consider the Eastern spread of Christianity. We have heard much about the so called "Westward spread of Christianity" but little is written of the equally profound Eastward movement. While Paul made missionary journeys from his headquarters in Antioch Syria, into the Western world, most of the emissaries (apostles) traveled eastward. Bartholomew traveled eastward through Assyria into Armenia, then back down through Assyria, Babylon, Parthia (Persia) and down into India where he was flayed alive with knives. Thaddeus taught in Edessa (a city of northern Syria) Assyria and Persia, dying a martyr by arrows either in Persia or at Ararat. Thomas taught in Parthia, Persia and India. He was martyred with a spear at Mt. St. Thomas near Madras in India. To this very day a group of Christians in India are called "St. Thomas Christians. Finally Kefa (Peter) traveled to Babylon and even wrote one of his letters from there. That the emissaries brought Semitic New Testament Scriptures eastward with them is affirmed to us by the Church fathers. Eusebius writes:
Pantaenus... penetrated as far as India, where it is reported
hat he found the Gospel according to Matthew, which had been
delivered before his arrival to some who had the knowledge of
Messiah, to whom Bartholomew one of the emissaries,
as it is said, had preached, and left them
the writing of Matthew in Hebrew letters.
And as Jerome writes:
Pantaenus found that Bartholomew, one of the twelve
emissaries, had there [in India] preached the advent of our
Lord Yeshua the Messiah according to the Gospel of Matthew,
which was written in Hebrew letters...
This entire region of the Near East stretching from Israel through Syria, Assyria, Babylon, Persia (Parthia) and down into India, became known as the "Church of the East." At its high point the Church of the East stretched as far east as China! By the fifth and sixth Centuries Christological debates had split the Church of the East into two major factions, Nestorians and Jacobites . Today, the Church of the East has been split into even more groups: Nestorians , Jacobites , Chaldean Roman Catholics, and Maronites. All of whom continue to use an Aramaic New Testament text. When the Roman Catholic Portuguese invaded India in 1498 they encountered over a hundred churches belonging to the St. Thomas Christians along the coast of Malabar. These St. Thomas Christians, according to tradition, had been there since the first century. They had married clergymen, did not adore images or pray to or through saints, nor did they believe in purgatory. Most importantly they maintained use of the Aramaic New Testament which they claimed had been in use at Antioch .
The New Testament was originally written in Greek. This is what I have been taught and believed as long as I have been a Christian. But there are some who claim the New Testament was originally written in Aramaic. This would mean the Greek manuscripts are just translations of this Aramaic original. This two-part article will look at this and related claims.
Note: Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture references are taken from the Analytical-Literal Translation of the New Testament: Second Edition (ALT).
Interest in Aramaic
For the most part, the Old Testament (OT) was originally written in Hebrew. On this, there is little debate. But there are a couple of small sections that were written in Aramaic (Ezra 4:8-6:18, 7:12-26; Daniel chapters 2-7, and one verse in Jeremiah). Aramaic is similar but not identical to Hebrew. By the time of Christ, Jews living in Judea for the most part spoke Aramaic. This is seen in the movie The Passion of the Christ with the entire dialog being in Aramaic (with English subtitles). It is possibly due to this movie that there has been a resurgence of interest in Aramaic.
But long before this, one notable proponent of the idea of an Aramaic original for the New Testament (NT) was George Lamsa. His Lamsa's Bible (published in 1957) was translated from the Syriac Pedangta. Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic. In the introduction to Lasma's Bible are claimed evidences for an Aramaic Original for the NT.
Papias
One commonly cited evidence for an Aramaic original for the NT is a statement made by the Church Father Papias. The translation of this statement is rather difficult as will be discussed in a minute. But below is the translation of this statement as found in the book The Apostolic Fathers by Lightfoot and Harmer.
So then Matthew composed the oracles in the Hebrew language, and each interpreted them as he could (p. 529).
This quote is used as evidence that the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Aramaic. This claim is discussed in depth in the introduction to the commentary on Matthew in The Expositor's Bible Commentary (Vol. 8, pages 3-17). I cannot repeat all of the arguments from these pages here. But I will give a couple of highlights.
As stated, the translation of the sentence is difficult. First, the word "Hebrew" could also be rendered "Aramaic." But most important is the word "oracles." The Greek word is the plural form of "logos." It's most basic meaning is "word" or "saying." So it seems likely Matthew is referring to the words of Jesus. But the Gospel of Matthew includes much more than this. It also includes narrative by Matthew and accounts of the actions of Jesus.
Now Luke does use a form of "logos" to refer to his Gospel (Acts 1:1). But it is in the singular, not plural. And Luke specifically says that what he wrote included the things "which Jesus began both to be doing and to be teaching." So it is generally rendered as "account." But by putting it in the plural, Papias seems to indicate he is not referring to a singular, complete "account" as Luke is but of specific "words." Hence "sayings" seems to be the best translation.
So it's possible that Papias is referring to something other than the canonical Gospel. One theory is it is the so-called "Q" source of the sayings of Jesus that some have theorized the Gospel writers used. Or maybe it was an earlier draft by Matthew that he himself later used to compose his Gospel. Or it is even possible that Matthew wrote two versions of his Gospel, one in Greek and one in Aramaic.
So there are various possibilities as to what is meant by Papias' statement. As such, this one vague statement does not necessary prove that canonical Gospel Of Matthew was originally written in Aramaic. Moreover, the statement only refers to the Gospel of Matthew. It has no bearing on the original language of the rest of the NT.
The Use of the Septuagint
Expositor's goes into detail on the various reasons the Gospel of Matthew was not originally written in Aramaic. One of the strongest is that Matthew quotes from the Septuagint. The Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Hebrew OT from the third century B.C. It is abbreviated as "LXX." The name and abbreviation are based on the tradition that 70 or 72 Jewish scholars worked on the translation, six from each of the twelve tribes of Israel.
For the second edition of the ALT, I carefully reviewed all of the quotes in the NT from the OT. I included the notation "LXX" after the OT verse reference when the wording of the quote in the NT differed from the wording of the source verse in the Hebrew but was similar or even identical to that of the LXX. And there were many such instances in Matthew and the rest of the NT, far more than I had originally thought. For instance, there are six places in the Gospel of Matthew where the OT quote is clearly from the LXX (3:3; 12:21; 13:14,15; 15:8,9; 19:5; 21:16).
It should also be noted that there are also many times when the wording of the NT quotation is basically identical to that of the Hebrew text but differs from the LXX. So in those passages the NT writer was obviously quoting from the Hebrew (e.g. Matthew 2:15). And there are times when the quote in the NT, the Hebrew, and the LXX are all basically the same. So the NT writer could have been quoting from either the Hebrew or the LXX (e.g. Matthew 1:23).
So having studied the issue, it is apparent the NT writers were familiar with both the Hebrew text of the OT and with the LXX, and they freely quoted from either of these. But if Matthew were writing in Aramaic for a strictly Aramaic speaking audience, it would have been more logical for him to have used the Hebrew Scriptures throughout. Moreover, as Expositor's states, "It cannot be argued that the alleged translator decided to use the LXX for all OT quotations in order to save himself some work, for only some of them are from the LXX" (p.13).
Moreover, there are also cases where only the form of the OT verse as it appears in the LXX would "fit" in the context in which the NT writer is quoting the verse.
For instance, Matthew 21:14-16 reads:
14And lame and blind [people] came to Him in the temple, and He healed them. 15But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the marvelous [things] which He did, and the children crying out in the temple and saying, "We give praise to You, the Son of David," they expressed indignation. 16And they said to Him, "Do You hear what these [ones] are saying?" But Jesus says to them, "Yes, did you* never read, ‘Out of [the] mouth of young children and nursing infants You prepared praise for Yourself?'" [Psalm 8:2, LXX].
Verse 16 includes a quotation from Psalm 8:2. This verse reads in the NKJV (which is translated from the Hebrew), "Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength." Not only is this significantly different from how the quote appears in the NT, but this wording would not "fit" in the context. The passage is talking about "praise" not "strength."
However, this verse reads in Lancelot Brenton's translation of the LXX, "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou perfected praise." The differences in wording between this translation and how I translated the quote is simply due to translation differences; the Greek text is identical in the LXX and in NT.
So in this passage, the quote is clearly from the LXX and only the way the verse is worded in the LXX would fit in the context. So the LXX is clearly the original source for the quote, not the Hebrew text. And what makes this particularly interesting is this a statement of Jesus. So it was Jesus who originally used the LXX in his discussion with the "the chief priests and the scribes." More on the import of this in a minute. But here, it should be noted that this use of the LXX only makes sense if the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Greek. And similar instances could be given for other books of the NT.
The Language of Jesus, the Apostles, and the Writers of the NT
Lamsa claims, "The Gospels, as well as the Epistles, were written in Aramaic, the language of the Jewish people in Palestine and in the Greco-Roman world" (p.ix). And further, "For several centuries, the Christian movement was directed and guided by the Jews. All of the apostles and the evangelists were Jewish" (p.xi).
So Lamsa is claiming Jesus, the apostles, the Gospel writers, and their audience spoke Aramaic. And further he is claiming that the Church was primary Jewish and remained so for centuries. And it is true that Jesus and the original apostles were Jews. And it is true that for the most part Jews in Palestine at that time spoke Aramaic.
However, Luke, the writer of two NT books (the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts) was most likely a Gentile. Luke's writings were directed towards "most excellent Theophilus." This is a Greek name and title for a person of rank in the Roman government (see Acts 23:26; 24:30). So Theophilus was most likely a Gentile who spoke Greek.
Furthermore, Luke writes in Acts 1:18,19:
18(This one indeed then acquired a field by [the] payment of [his] unrighteousness, and having fallen headfirst, he burst open in the middle and all his inward parts were poured out. 19And it became known to all the ones living in Jerusalem, with the result that that place is called, in their own language [i.e. Aramaic], Akel Dama, that is, Field of Blood.)
This paragraph appears within a discourse by Peter. However, I put these verses in parentheses in the ALT as they do not seem to be a part of Peter's discourse. They are most likely comments added my Luke for the benefit of the readers of the Book of Acts.
In this comments Luke refers to "their own language." I added the explanatory note that this is Aramaic. Again, for the most part this is true. But note that Luke then translated the Aramaic term for his readers. So it appears he was writing in Greek for people who knew only Greek. If he had been writing in Aramaic to Aramaic readers, it would have been unnecessary to provide a translation.
It should also be noted that Luke's translation of "field of blood" appears in Lamsa's Bible as well. So it cannot be claimed that the supposed translator of the Aramaic original into Greek added this translation. It appears in the Aramaic text. This only makes sense if in fact the Book of Acts was written in Greek and was then translated into Aramaic. And with Acts being a follow-up to the Gospel of Luke, it is only logical that Luke was written in Greek as well.
Going back to the Gospel of Matthew, it contains this interesting bit of information about Matthew, "And passing by from there, Jesus saw a man sitting at the tax-office, being called Matthew, and He says to him, "Be following Me!" And having stood up, he followed Him" (Matthew 9:9).
Matthew was collecting taxes from Jews for the Roman government. To engage in such a business would have required him to have known Aramaic to be able to speak to the Jews, but he also would had to have known Greek (and maybe Latin) to have spoken to the Roman officials.
Then there's this interesting exchange in John 12:20-22:
20Now [there] were some Greeks from the ones going up so that they should prostrate themselves in worship at the feast. 21Then these [Greeks] came to Philip, the [one] from Bethsaida of Galilee, and were asking him, saying, "Lord [or, Sir], we desire to see Jesus." 22Philip comes and tells Andrew, and again Andrew and Philip tell Jesus.
So Philip, one of the apostles, was able to converse with Greeks. And it appears he brought these Greeks to Andrew and then to Jesus. Jesus' subsequent discourse is then addressed to "them" (v.23). The "them" probably included these visiting Greeks. So it's very possible Jesus' subsequent discourse was in Greek.
As for Peter, the difference between the Greek of his two epistles is instructive. The first is written in very stylistic Greek while the second is written in very simple Greek. So the first appears to be written by someone very familiar with the Greek language while someone for whom Greek was a second language probably wrote the second. Some have used this difference to claim that 2Peter was not actually written by Peter. But a better explanation is seen in the text itself.
1Peter ends with the following:
12By Silvanus, the faithful brother as I consider [him], through [whom] I wrote a few [words], encouraging and testifying this to be [the] true grace of God in which you* have stood firm (5:12).
"By Silvanus … through [whom] I wrote a few [words]" indicates that Peter probably dedicated his first epistle to Silvanus. In writing down the dictation, Silvanus probably "cleaned up" Peter's crude Greek. But the second epistle contains no such "by" line. So it was written directly by Peter and contains the kind of Greek you would expect from a fisherman for whom Greek was a second language.
So Jesus, at least some of the apostles, and the Gospel writers Matthew and Luke most likely knew Greek. Similarly, Paul, the writer of half of the books of the NT, clearly knew both Aramaic and Greek.
This is seen in the following passage from Acts:
37And Paul being about to be brought into the barracks says to the commanding officer, "Is it permitted for me to speak to you?" Then he said, "Do you know Greek? 38So you are not the Egyptian, the one having incited a riot before these days and having led the four thousand men of the assassins into the desert, are you?" 39But Paul said, "I indeed am a man, a Jew of Tarsus of Cilicia, a citizen of no insignificant [fig., an important] city. Now I implore you, permit me to speak to the people."
1"Men, brothers and fathers, now pay attention to my defense to you*." 2Now they having heard that in the Hebrew dialect he was speaking to them, they gave [him] even more silence. (Acts 21:37-22:2).
And finally, to re-iterate from before, OT quotes that are clearly taken from the LXX appear throughout the NT. Quotes from the LXX appear in all four Gospels, Acts, Romans, 1Corinthians, Ephesians, 2Timothy, Hebrews, James, and 1Peter. So writers of all of these books had to have known Greek and have been writing in Greek.
The most interesting book in this list is the Epistle to the Hebrews. There are seven quotes from or clear references to the LXX in Hebrews (1:6; 2:13; 8:12; 10:6,7; 11:20; 12:5,6; 12:12). So although written to Hebrews, the writer was clearly writing in Greek and most likely to Greek-speaking Jews.
Brenton, Sir Lancelot C. L. The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1986.
Carson, D. A. Matthew in The Expositor's Bible Commentary (Vol. 8). Frank E. Gaebelein, general editor. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1985 And other volumes in Expositor's.
Lamsa, George M. The Holy Bible from Ancient Eastern Manuscripts (a.k.a. Lamsa's Bible). Philadelphia: A. J. Holman Company, 1957.
Lightfoot, J. B. and J. R. Harmar. The Apostolic Fathers: Greek and English. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988.
New King James Version (NKJV). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publisher, 1982.
Those arguing a Greek origin for the NT will often claim that the NT quotes the Greek LXX "Old Testament".
Actually this is mainly a tendency of the Greek NT. The Hebrew and Aramaic mss. tend to find agreement with the Masoretic Text and the Pedangta Aramaic Tanak. 2) Agreements with the LXX do
not prove the LXX is being quoted. Hebrew copies of Tanak books have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls that agree with the LXX. Such agreements may be the result of these types of Hebrew manuscripts rather than any dependence on the Greek LXX.
It has often been claimed by the Hellenists, that the several quotes in the Greek New Testament which agree with the LXX prove the Greek origin of the New Testament. This argument is faulty however,
for two important reasons.
First of all, the premise of this argument presumes the conclusion to be true. It is only in the Greek New Testament that such neat agreements with the LXX occur. Hebrew Matthew (Shem Tob and DuTillet) tends to agree with the Masoretic Text, While the Aramaic versions of New Testament books (Old Syriac Gospels, Pedangta New Testament and Crawford Revelation) tend to agree in many places
with the Pedangta Old Testament.
In fact the 4th century "Church Father" Jerome esentially admitted that the Greek translaers had inserted the LXX readings into the Greek NT. As we had noted earlier Jerome wrote:
"Matthew, who is also Levi, and from a tax collector came to
be an emissary first of all evangelists composed a Gospel of
Messiah in Judea in the Hebrew language and letters, for the
benefit of those of the circumcision who had believed, who
translated it into Greek is not sufficiently ascertained.
Furthermore, the Hebrew itself is preserved to this day in
the library at Caesarea, which the martyr Pamphilus so diligently
collected. I also was allowed by the Nazarenes who use this
volume in the Syrian city of Borea to copy it. In which is to
be remarked that, wherever the evangelist... makes use of the
testimonies of the Old Scripture, he does not follow the
authority of the seventy translators [the Greek Septuagint],
but that of the Hebrew."
Here Jerome effectively admits that the Tanak quotes in the original Hebrew of Matthew did NOT agree with the LXX but that the Greek translator had ALTERED the Tanak quotes as they appear in the Greek to agree with the LXX. The Helenists have been caught red handed!
There is evidence of this, not just in the book of Matthew but in every portion of the New Testament, even in the Pauline letters.
The second fault with this argument is that recent discoveries in the Dead Sea Scrolls have produced first century Hebrew mss. of Old Testament books which in places agree with the LXX against the
current Hebrew Text (the Masoretic text) and at times agree with the Pedangta Old Testament against the Masoretic text or the LXX. Thus many, but not all agreements of the New Testament with the LXX may be due to these first century Old Testament texts which contained such agreements.
An examination of four sample Old Testament quotes as they appear in the Aramaic New Testament will demonstrate two important facts. First, the Aramaic text of the Old Syriac and Pedangta New
Testament could not have been translated from the Greek New Testament. Second, the Aramaic New Testament, as we have it today has been altered in some places so as to agree with the Greek.
Heb. 10:5-7 = Ps. 40:7-9 (6-8)
With sacrifices and offerings You are not pleased
But You have clothed me with a body
And burnt offerings which are for sins You have not asked for.
Then I said, Behold I come,
In the beginning of the book it is written concerning me
I will do your will, Eloah.
(from Aramaic)
Here the phrase "But You have clothed me with a body" best agrees with the LXX which has "You have prepared a body for me," a radical departure from the Masoretic Text which has "Ears You have cut/dug for me." However the phrase "In the beginning of the book..." is a unique reading from the Pedangta Old Testament. The Hebrew has "In the roll of the book..." while the LXX has "In the volume of the book..." agreeing with the Greek of Hebrews. Thus, this quote in the Pedangta version of Hebrews is a hybrid text sometimes agreeing with the LXX against the Masoretic Text and Pedangta Old Testament, and sometimes agreeing with the Pedangta Old Testament against both the LXX and the Masoretic Text. In fact this hybrid nature looks just like what such a quote might be
expected to look like, in light of the hybrid texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This quote could not contain agreements with both the LXX and the Pedangta Old Testament if it were translated from the Greek New Testament. If this passage were translated from the Greek it would either have agreed with the LXX only as does the Greek, or inserted the standard Pedangta reading as a substitute. This quote therefore, is not a translation from Greek nor a substitute inserted from the Pedangta Old Testament but is a reading which originated apart from the Greek text.
1Peter 1:24-25 = Isaiah 40:6-8
Because of this all flesh is grass
And all its beauty like a flower of the field
The grass dries up and the flower withers
and the Word of our Eloah abides forever
(from Aramaic)
Here the line "And all its beauty like a flower of the field" agrees with the Pedangta Old Testament and Masoretic Text against the LXX and Greek New Testament which has "and all the glory of man like the flower of grass." In fact this quote agrees with the Pedangta Old Testament exactly except for the omission of Isaiah 40:7 which agrees with the LXX. Like the previous example, it could not have been translated from the Greek text.
Acts 8:32-33 = Isaiah 53:7-8
Like a lamb he was led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep before its shearer is silent,
Even thus he did not open his mouth.
In his humiliation he was led from prison and from judgment,
And who will declare his generation?
because his life has been taken from the earth/land
(from the Aramaic)
In the first two lines the words "lamb" and "sheep" are reversed in the LXX and Greek Acts but not here, where they agree with the Masoretic Text and the Pedangta Old Testament. "from prison" agrees with the Masoretic Text and the Pedangta Old Testament against the LXX, but "In his humiliation" agrees with the LXX against both. The final line contains a special problem. In this line the Pedangta Acts agrees with the LXX and Greek Acts, but this passage could not have merely come from a variant Hebrew text. In this passage the Masoretic Text and the Pedangta Old Testament agree
against the LXX with "He was cut off out of the land of the living." An examination of the two versions makes it clear that the LXX translator misunderstood the Hebrew grammar here and took the
word "life/living" to be a direct object rather than a modifier. Thus this phrase could only have come from the LXX. It is apparent however, because of the agreements with the Masoretic Text and
Pedangta Old Testament against the LXX in the preceding lines, that this quote could not have been translated from the Greek. Thus, we may conclude that the Pedangta New Testament has been revised in
places to agree with the Greek text, as our last example will further demonstrate.
Mt. 4:4 = Deut. 8:3
Man does not live by bread alone,
but by every word which comes from the mouth of YHWH.
The word "God" here in the Greek of Mt. 4:4 and even the Pedangta ARamaic of Mt. 4:4 agrees with the LXX against both the Masoretic Text and the Pedangta Old Testament. It might first appear
that this passage was merely translated from the Greek of Matthew. However, a look at the Old Syriac version, which is recognized by most scholars as the ancestor of the Pedangta has MARYA (which the Aramaic consistently uses for YHWH) in agreement with the Masoretic Text and the Pedangta Old Testament against the LXX. Also the manuscripts of Hebrew Matthew also have YHWH. Thus, it is clear that the Pedangta was revised here to agree with the LXX and the more primitive text of the Old Syriac retains the original, unrevised
reading.
Zech. 12:10 = Jn. 19:37
...they shall look upon me whom they have pierced... (Zech.
12:10)
...they shall look upon him whom they have pierced... (Jn.
19:37)
The origin for this variance between the New Testament and the Old appears to originate in the Aramaic versions.
This is easier to show with Hebraic-Aramaic fonts but I will attempt to demonstrate it without them.
The original Hebrew of this passage (in Zech. 12:10) employs a Hebrew word that cannot be translated into any language including ARamaic. The Hebrew word is ET (alef-tav). This word is a special
preposition which points to the next word as the direct object recieving the action of the verb. If we show the invisible word ET in the text it would look like this:
...they shall look upon me {ET} whom they have pierced...
Now the Aramaic translator of the Aramaic Pedangta Tanak version of Zech 12:10 striving for a word for word translation, translated the untranslatable ET with an Aramaic word meaning "at-him" (attempting to convey the idea of a pointer to the direct object). The result is that the Aramaic Pedangta Tanak has:
...they shall look upon me at-him whom they have pierced...
Now when the quote appears in Yochanan it appears to have passed through another change. The Aramaic of Jn. 19:17 agrees with the Aramaic of Zech 12:10 except for the word meaning "upon-me" which is
omitted. Aparently a later scribe found the phrace "upon-me at-him" to be redundant and dropped the phrase "upon-me" from the quote. Thus both the Aramaic and the Greek of Jn. 19:37 have "at him" and not "upon me" in their quotations of Zech. 12:10.
This change from "upon me" to "at him" can CLEARLY be demonstrated to have occurred in the Aramaic tradition and then to have been TRANSLATED into Greek.
From the above examples it is clear that Old Testament quotes as they appear in the Aramaic New Testament demonstrate that the Pedangta New Testament could not have been simply translated from
The New Testament was originally written in Greek. This is what I have been taught and believed as long as I have been a Christian. But there are some who claim the New Testament was originally written in Aramaic. This would mean the Greek manuscripts are just translations of this Aramaic original. This two-part article will look at this and related claims.
Note: Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture references are taken from the Analytical-Literal Translation of the New Testament: Second Edition (ALT).
Interest in Aramaic
For the most part, the Old Testament (OT) was originally written in Hebrew. On this, there is little debate. But there are a couple of small sections that were written in Aramaic (Ezra 4:8-6:18, 7:12-26; Daniel chapters 2-7, and one verse in Jeremiah). Aramaic is similar but not identical to Hebrew. By the time of Christ, Jews living in Judea for the most part spoke Aramaic. This is seen in the movie The Passion of the Christ with the entire dialog being in Aramaic (with English subtitles). It is possibly due to this movie that there has been a resurgence of interest in Aramaic.
But long before this, one notable proponent of the idea of an Aramaic original for the New Testament (NT) was George Lamsa. His Lamsa's Bible (published in 1957) was translated from the Syriac Pedangta. Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic. In the introduction to Lasma's Bible are claimed evidences for an Aramaic Original for the NT.
Papias
One commonly cited evidence for an Aramaic original for the NT is a statement made by the Church Father Papias. The translation of this statement is rather difficult as will be discussed in a minute. But below is the translation of this statement as found in the book The Apostolic Fathers by Lightfoot and Harmer.
So then Matthew composed the oracles in the Hebrew language, and each interpreted them as he could (p. 529).
This quote is used as evidence that the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Aramaic. This claim is discussed in depth in the introduction to the commentary on Matthew in The Expositor's Bible Commentary (Vol. 8, pages 3-17). I cannot repeat all of the arguments from these pages here. But I will give a couple of highlights.
As stated, the translation of the sentence is difficult. First, the word "Hebrew" could also be rendered "Aramaic." But most important is the word "oracles." The Greek word is the plural form of "logos." It's most basic meaning is "word" or "saying." So it seems likely Matthew is referring to the words of Jesus. But the Gospel of Matthew includes much more than this. It also includes narrative by Matthew and accounts of the actions of Jesus.
Now Luke does use a form of "logos" to refer to his Gospel (Acts 1:1). But it is in the singular, not plural. And Luke specifically says that what he wrote included the things "which Jesus began both to be doing and to be teaching." So it is generally rendered as "account." But by putting it in the plural, Papias seems to indicate he is not referring to a singular, complete "account" as Luke is but of specific "words." Hence "sayings" seems to be the best translation.
So it's possible that Papias is referring to something other than the canonical Gospel. One theory is it is the so-called "Q" source of the sayings of Jesus that some have theorized the Gospel writers used. Or maybe it was an earlier draft by Matthew that he himself later used to compose his Gospel. Or it is even possible that Matthew wrote two versions of his Gospel, one in Greek and one in Aramaic.
So there are various possibilities as to what is meant by Papias' statement. As such, this one vague statement does not necessary prove that canonical Gospel Of Matthew was originally written in Aramaic. Moreover, the statement only refers to the Gospel of Matthew. It has no bearing on the original language of the rest of the NT.
The Use of the Septuagint
Expositor's goes into detail on the various reasons the Gospel of Matthew was not originally written in Aramaic. One of the strongest is that Matthew quotes from the Septuagint. The Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Hebrew OT from the third century B.C. It is abbreviated as "LXX." The name and abbreviation are based on the tradition that 70 or 72 Jewish scholars worked on the translation, six from each of the twelve tribes of Israel.
For the second edition of the ALT, I carefully reviewed all of the quotes in the NT from the OT. I included the notation "LXX" after the OT verse reference when the wording of the quote in the NT differed from the wording of the source verse in the Hebrew but was similar or even identical to that of the LXX. And there were many such instances in Matthew and the rest of the NT, far more than I had originally thought. For instance, there are six places in the Gospel of Matthew where the OT quote is clearly from the LXX (3:3; 12:21; 13:14,15; 15:8,9; 19:5; 21:16).
It should also be noted that there are also many times when the wording of the NT quotation is basically identical to that of the Hebrew text but differs from the LXX. So in those passages the NT writer was obviously quoting from the Hebrew (e.g. Matthew 2:15). And there are times when the quote in the NT, the Hebrew, and the LXX are all basically the same. So the NT writer could have been quoting from either the Hebrew or the LXX (e.g. Matthew 1:23).
So having studied the issue, it is apparent the NT writers were familiar with both the Hebrew text of the OT and with the LXX, and they freely quoted from either of these. But if Matthew were writing in Aramaic for a strictly Aramaic speaking audience, it would have been more logical for him to have used the Hebrew Scriptures throughout. Moreover, as Expositor's states, "It cannot be argued that the alleged translator decided to use the LXX for all OT quotations in order to save himself some work, for only some of them are from the LXX" (p.13).
Moreover, there are also cases where only the form of the OT verse as it appears in the LXX would "fit" in the context in which the NT writer is quoting the verse.
For instance, Matthew 21:14-16 reads:
14And lame and blind [people] came to Him in the temple, and He healed them. 15But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the marvelous [things] which He did, and the children crying out in the temple and saying, "We give praise to You, the Son of David," they expressed indignation. 16And they said to Him, "Do You hear what these [ones] are saying?" But Jesus says to them, "Yes, did you* never read, ‘Out of [the] mouth of young children and nursing infants You prepared praise for Yourself?'" [Psalm 8:2, LXX].
Verse 16 includes a quotation from Psalm 8:2. This verse reads in the NKJV (which is translated from the Hebrew), "Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength." Not only is this significantly different from how the quote appears in the NT, but this wording would not "fit" in the context. The passage is talking about "praise" not "strength."
However, this verse reads in Lancelot Brenton's translation of the LXX, "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou perfected praise." The differences in wording between this translation and how I translated the quote is simply due to translation differences; the Greek text is identical in the LXX and in NT.
So in this passage, the quote is clearly from the LXX and only the way the verse is worded in the LXX would fit in the context. So the LXX is clearly the original source for the quote, not the Hebrew text. And what makes this particularly interesting is this a statement of Jesus. So it was Jesus who originally used the LXX in his discussion with the "the chief priests and the scribes." More on the import of this in a minute. But here, it should be noted that this use of the LXX only makes sense if the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Greek. And similar instances could be given for other books of the NT.
The Language of Jesus, the Apostles, and the Writers of the NT
Lamsa claims, "The Gospels, as well as the Epistles, were written in Aramaic, the language of the Jewish people in Palestine and in the Greco-Roman world" (p.ix). And further, "For several centuries, the Christian movement was directed and guided by the Jews. All of the apostles and the evangelists were Jewish" (p.xi).
So Lamsa is claiming Jesus, the apostles, the Gospel writers, and their audience spoke Aramaic. And further he is claiming that the Church was primary Jewish and remained so for centuries. And it is true that Jesus and the original apostles were Jews. And it is true that for the most part Jews in Palestine at that time spoke Aramaic.
However, Luke, the writer of two NT books (the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts) was most likely a Gentile. Luke's writings were directed towards "most excellent Theophilus." This is a Greek name and title for a person of rank in the Roman government (see Acts 23:26; 24:30). So Theophilus was most likely a Gentile who spoke Greek.
Furthermore, Luke writes in Acts 1:18,19:
18(This one indeed then acquired a field by [the] payment of [his] unrighteousness, and having fallen headfirst, he burst open in the middle and all his inward parts were poured out. 19And it became known to all the ones living in Jerusalem, with the result that that place is called, in their own language [i.e. Aramaic], Akel Dama, that is, Field of Blood.)
This paragraph appears within a discourse by Peter. However, I put these verses in parentheses in the ALT as they do not seem to be a part of Peter's discourse. They are most likely comments added my Luke for the benefit of the readers of the Book of Acts.
In this comments Luke refers to "their own language." I added the explanatory note that this is Aramaic. Again, for the most part this is true. But note that Luke then translated the Aramaic term for his readers. So it appears he was writing in Greek for people who knew only Greek. If he had been writing in Aramaic to Aramaic readers, it would have been unnecessary to provide a translation.
It should also be noted that Luke's translation of "field of blood" appears in Lamsa's Bible as well. So it cannot be claimed that the supposed translator of the Aramaic original into Greek added this translation. It appears in the Aramaic text. This only makes sense if in fact the Book of Acts was written in Greek and was then translated into Aramaic. And with Acts being a follow-up to the Gospel of Luke, it is only logical that Luke was written in Greek as well.
Going back to the Gospel of Matthew, it contains this interesting bit of information about Matthew, "And passing by from there, Jesus saw a man sitting at the tax-office, being called Matthew, and He says to him, "Be following Me!" And having stood up, he followed Him" (Matthew 9:9).
Matthew was collecting taxes from Jews for the Roman government. To engage in such a business would have required him to have known Aramaic to be able to speak to the Jews, but he also would had to have known Greek (and maybe Latin) to have spoken to the Roman officials.
Then there's this interesting exchange in John 12:20-22:
20Now [there] were some Greeks from the ones going up so that they should prostrate themselves in worship at the feast. 21Then these [Greeks] came to Philip, the [one] from Bethsaida of Galilee, and were asking him, saying, "Lord [or, Sir], we desire to see Jesus." 22Philip comes and tells Andrew, and again Andrew and Philip tell Jesus.
So Philip, one of the apostles, was able to converse with Greeks. And it appears he brought these Greeks to Andrew and then to Jesus. Jesus' subsequent discourse is then addressed to "them" (v.23). The "them" probably included these visiting Greeks. So it's very possible Jesus' subsequent discourse was in Greek.
As for Peter, the difference between the Greek of his two epistles is instructive. The first is written in very stylistic Greek while the second is written in very simple Greek. So the first appears to be written by someone very familiar with the Greek language while someone for whom Greek was a second language probably wrote the second. Some have used this difference to claim that 2Peter was not actually written by Peter. But a better explanation is seen in the text itself.
1Peter ends with the following:
12By Silvanus, the faithful brother as I consider [him], through [whom] I wrote a few [words], encouraging and testifying this to be [the] true grace of God in which you* have stood firm (5:12).
"By Silvanus … through [whom] I wrote a few [words]" indicates that Peter probably dedicated his first epistle to Silvanus. In writing down the dictation, Silvanus probably "cleaned up" Peter's crude Greek. But the second epistle contains no such "by" line. So it was written directly by Peter and contains the kind of Greek you would expect from a fisherman for whom Greek was a second language.
So Jesus, at least some of the apostles, and the Gospel writers Matthew and Luke most likely knew Greek. Similarly, Paul, the writer of half of the books of the NT, clearly knew both Aramaic and Greek.
This is seen in the following passage from Acts:
37And Paul being about to be brought into the barracks says to the commanding officer, "Is it permitted for me to speak to you?" Then he said, "Do you know Greek? 38So you are not the Egyptian, the one having incited a riot before these days and having led the four thousand men of the assassins into the desert, are you?" 39But Paul said, "I indeed am a man, a Jew of Tarsus of Cilicia, a citizen of no insignificant [fig., an important] city. Now I implore you, permit me to speak to the people."
1"Men, brothers and fathers, now pay attention to my defense to you*." 2Now they having heard that in the Hebrew dialect he was speaking to them, they gave [him] even more silence. (Acts 21:37-22:2).
And finally, to re-iterate from before, OT quotes that are clearly taken from the LXX appear throughout the NT. Quotes from the LXX appear in all four Gospels, Acts, Romans, 1Corinthians, Ephesians, 2Timothy, Hebrews, James, and 1Peter. So writers of all of these books had to have known Greek and have been writing in Greek.
The most interesting book in this list is the Epistle to the Hebrews. There are seven quotes from or clear references to the LXX in Hebrews (1:6; 2:13; 8:12; 10:6,7; 11:20; 12:5,6; 12:12). So although written to Hebrews, the writer was clearly writing in Greek and most likely to Greek-speaking Jews.
Brenton, Sir Lancelot C. L. The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1986.
Carson, D. A. Matthew in The Expositor's Bible Commentary (Vol. 8). Frank E. Gaebelein, general editor. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1985 And other volumes in Expositor's.
Lamsa, George M. The Holy Bible from Ancient Eastern Manuscripts (a.k.a. Lamsa's Bible). Philadelphia: A. J. Holman Company, 1957.
Lightfoot, J. B. and J. R. Harmar. The Apostolic Fathers: Greek and English. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988.
New King James Version (NKJV). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publisher, 1982.
In Part One on this article, it was stated that some claim the New Testament (NT) was not originally written in Greek as is commonly believed. They claim the NT was actually originally written in Aramaic. One major proponent of this view was George Lamsa, as seen in the introduction to his Lamsa's Bible.
However, it was shown in Part One that the NT writers knew Greek and most likely were writing in Greek from their use of the Septuagint and from information contained within the NT. This second part of this two-part article will continue this discussion.
Note: All Scripture references are taken from the Analytical-Literal Translation of the New Testament: Second Edition (ALT).
The Language of the Early Church
Lamsa was quoted in Part One as claiming, "For several centuries, the Christian movement was directed and guided by the Jews." (p.xi). But there is much evidence within the pages of the NT, particularly in the Book of Acts, that his was not the case. Very early in time, the Church became more and more Greek, not Jewish.
This can be seen starting with Acts 6:
1And in these days, the disciples increasing [in number], there came to be a complaint from the Hellenists [fig., Greek-speaking Jews] towards the Hebrews [fig., Aramaic-speaking Jews], because their widows were being overlooked in the daily service [fig., distribution of food]. 2So the twelve having summoned the congregation of the disciples, said, "It is not desirable [for] us, having left the word of God, to be serving tables. 3Therefore, brothers [and sisters], look for seven men from [among] you*, being well spoken of, full of [the] Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we shall appoint over this need [or, necessity]. 4But we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word."
5And the word was pleasing before the whole congregation. And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of [the] Holy Spirit, and Philip and Prochorus and Nicanor and Timon and Parmenas and Nicolaus, a proselyte [i.e. convert to Judaism] from Antioch, 6whom they set before the apostles. And having prayed, they laid [their] hands on them.
7And the word of God kept spreading, and the number of the disciples kept being increased greatly in Jerusalem, and a large crowd of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith.
I quoted this passage through verse 7 to show that this dispute occurred in Jerusalem. So it was while the Church was still mainly found in Jerusalem that there was a sufficient number of Greek-speaking Jews as to cause problems within the congregation. And once the Gospel began to spread beyond Jerusalem, the number of Greek-speaking Jews entering the Church continued to grow.
19Then indeed the ones having been scattered because of the affliction [or, persecution], the one having occurred over Stephen, passed through as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except to Jews only. 20But some of them were male Cyprians and Cyrenians, who having entered into Antioch, began speaking to the Hellenists [fig., Greek-speaking Jews], proclaiming the Gospel of the Lord Jesus. 21And [the] hand of [the] Lord was with them, and a large number having believed turned to the Lord (Acts 11:19-21).
About this time, a major change occurred in the Church. Rather than the Gospel only being proclaimed to Jews, it began to be proclaimed to Gentiles. This began with Peter proclaiming the Gospel to Cornelius.
1Now [there] was a certain man in Caesarea, by name Cornelius, a centurion of a garrison [of soldiers], the one being called Italian [fig., a captain of the Italian Regiment], 2devout and fearing God [i.e. a worshipper of the one true God, but not a full convert to Judaism, also called "God-worshiping"] together with all his house, and doing [or, giving] many charitable gifts to the people and imploring God through all [fig. continually]….
34Then Peter having opened his mouth, said, "Truly, I comprehend that God is not One to accept faces [fig., to be prejudice], 35but in every nation the one fearing Him and working righteousness is acceptable to Him….
44While Peter [was] still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all the ones hearing the word. 45And the believing ones from the circumcision were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because the free gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also. 46For they were hearing them speaking with tongues [fig., other languages] and magnifying God. Then Peter answered, 47"Surely no one is able to forbid the water, can he, [for] these not to be baptized who received the Holy Spirit just as we also [did]?" 48And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord. Then they urgently asked him to stay several days (Acts 10:1,2,34,35, 44-47).
It is very doubtful that Cornelius, a Gentile, knew Aramaic. So this is further proof to add to what was seen in Part One that Peter knew Greek. But more importantly, we now have Gentiles becoming part of the Church. And these Gentiles knew Greek, not Aramaic. And as the Book of Acts continues, it becomes clear that the Church is becoming more and more composed of Greek-speaking people.
1Now it happened in Iconium [that] they entered by the same [way] into the synagogue of the Jews, and they spoke in such a manner [that] a large number of both Jews and Greeks believed (Acts 14:1).
1Then he came to Derbe and Lystra. And look! A certain disciple was there, by name Timothy, a son of a certain believing Jewish woman but of a Greek father, 2who was well spoken of by the brothers [and sisters] in Lystra and Iconium (Acts 16:1,2).
4And some of them believed and were joined with Paul and Silas, both a large number of the God-worshiping Greeks and not a few [fig., a large number] of the first [fig., prominent] women (Acts 17:4)
4Now he was reasoning in the synagogue every Sabbath, and he was persuading Jews and Greeks (Acts 18:4).
10Now this took place for two years, with the result that all the ones living in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks (Acts 19:10).
17Now from Miletus, having sent to Ephesus, he summoned the elders of the assembly. 18Then when they came to him, he said to them, "You* know from [the] first day from which I set foot in Asia how I was with you* all the time, 19serving as a slave to the Lord with all humility and many tears and trials, the [trials] having happened to me by the plots of the Jews; 20how I did not keep back any of the [things] benefiting [you*, but I] declared to you* and taught you* publicly and in every house, 21solemnly testifying both to Jews and to Greeks [about] repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus (Acts 20:17-21).
So it clear that by the time the Book of Acts closes (circa 63 AD), the Church is now composed of just as many if not more Greeks than Jews. And again, many of even the Jews would have been Greek-speaking Jews. So it is safe to say that within a few decades, the Church had more Greek speaking members than Hebrew speaking members. The importance of this will be seen as we look at when the NT books were written.
Dating and "Target Audiences" of NT Books
Lamsa claims, "[The Gospels] were written a few years after the resurrection and some portions were written by Matthew while Jesus was preaching. They were not handed down orally and then written after the Pauline Epistles, as some western scholars say; they were written many years before those Epistles" (p.ix).
As the Church became more and more composed of Greek-speaking Jews and Gentiles rather than Aramaic-speaking Jews, it becomes more likely that the Gospels would have been written in Greek. It simply would make no sense for them to be written in Aramaic if the "target audience" mostly spoke Greek. So Lamsa needs to claim the Gospels were written very early. But his claim goes counter to most any Biblical scholar of today.
This can be seen in the introductions to the Gospels contained in study Bibles and commentaries. They will almost unanimously date the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) to between 50-70 AD. And John's Gospel is usually dated much later, around 90 AD. And it should be noted that these are the dates given by conservative Bible scholars. Liberal scholars would probably date the Gospels even later.
There is not sufficient space in this article to go into all of the proofs given for these dates. So I will refer the reader to any of the wealth of study Bibles and commentaries currently available.
Further is the target audience of the Gospels. Again, information in this regard can be found in study Bibles and commentaries. But it is generally agreed that Matthew was probably directed towards Jews. So a case could be made on this basis that it was written in Aramaic. However, Mark was most likely addressed to Gentiles living in Rome. And Part One of this article discussed that Luke (along with Acts) was addressed to Theophilus, a Gentile (see Luke 1:3; Acts 1:1). So Mark, Luke, and Acts would most logically have been written in Greek.
John's Gospel seems to be the most universal of the Gospels, with his many references to the Gospel being for "the world" (e.g. 1:9-13, 29; 3:16,17; 4:42; 6:14,33,51; 8:12; 9:5; 11:49-52; 12:46; 17:21). With this universal emphasis, it would seem most likely that John would be written in the universal language of the time, which was Greek, not Aramaic.
John's epistles and the Revelation are also generally dated to the 90's AD. And 1John and the Revelation also have a universal aspect to them (e.g. 1John 2:2; Rev 5:9,10; 7:9,10; 14:6,7).
As for Paul, Lamsa claims that his epistles were directed towards Jews. Lamsa writes, "Paul, in nearly all of his epistles, speaks of the Hebrew fathers, subjugation in Egypt, crossing the Red sea, eating manna, and wandering in the desert. This proves beyond a doubt that these letters were written to members of the Hebrew race and not to the Gentile world who knew nothing of Hebrew history and divine promises to them (p.xi).
However, most of Paul's epistles were written to churches that he had founded and had extensive ministry among. And this ministry would have included the teaching of the OT. So even his Gentile readers would have familiar with the OT.
Furthermore, Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles (Gal 2:9). He always presented the Gospel "to the Jew first" (Romans 1:16); but invariably, the Jews for the most part would reject the Gospel, so Paul then turned to the Gentiles (e.g. Acts 13:46). So the churches he directed his epistles towards would have been primarily made up of Gentiles.
Moreover, there were many Greek-speaking Jews outside of Jerusalem. So many of even Paul's Jewish converts mostly likely spoke Greek. So the majority of the readers of Paul's epistle would have spoken Greek. All of this argues for Paul writing his epistles in Greek.
That leaves the general epistles. I've already mentioned about John's epistles. The rest were written between 50-70 AD. So my comments about the synoptic Gospels would apply here.
Now Peter was the apostle to the circumcision, but he would have been writing to Jews outside of Judea. This can be seen from his reference to "the Dispersion" (1:1). As I indicate in the ALT, this is the scattering of Jews outside of Judea. And as was discussed previously, Jews outside of Judea were more likely to be speaking Greek than Aramaic. Peter also mentions about his being "in Babylon" (5:13). Opinions vary as to what city Peter meant by this, but it most definitely was not in Judea.
James is possibly the earliest book of the NT to be written, and it most likely was written to Jews. But these were "scattered abroad" (1:1). So they also would have been living outside of Judea.
Jude is closely related to 2Peter. Which came first is a matter of debate. But both books appear to have been somewhat later, in the 60's AD.
So overall, the dating of the NT books and their target audiences strongly argue for them being written in Greek not Aramaic. Again, much more on these points can be found in study Bibles and commentaries.
Manuscript Evidence
There are over 5000 extant Greek manuscripts of the NT. And some of these date to the early second century. Meanwhile, only a handful of Aramaic texts exist, and these date from the fourth to the seventh centuries (Aland, pp. xxxiv-xxxv). With this limited amount of manuscript evidence, it is hard to determine the original Aramaic text.
Believing in the providence of God as I do, this would be a rather intolerable situation. What God has preserved for us is a wealth of Greek manuscripts. And through textual criticism we can determine very accurately what the original Greek NT contained. See my book Differences Between Bible Version for much in this regard.
Matthew 19:24
One last claim Lamsa makes is that there are verses that don't make much sense in the Greek text but that make more sense in the Aramaic. He claims this is due to the Greek text having been "mistranslated" from the Aramaic.
One such example he gives is Matthew 19:24, "Now again I say to you*, it is easier [for] a camel to pass through an eye of a needle, than [for] a rich [person] to enter into the kingdom of God."
Lamsa states that the Aramaic word for "camel" resembles the word for "rope." So he claims the original Aramaic had "rope" but the alleged translator mistook the word and rendered it as "camel." So his implication is that "rope" makes more sense here than "camel."
But the use of "camel" in this verse makes perfect sense. Jesus was using hyperbole by referring to the largest animal in Judea and how ridiculous it would be to try to thread it through a needle. He uses a similar hyperbole when He declares to the Pharisees, "Blind guides! The ones straining out the gnat, but swallowing the camel! (Matt 23:24).
Conclusion
Overall, the only book of the NT for which there is any significant possible evidence of an Aramaic original is Matthew. But even then, there are good contrary arguments. But for the rest of the NT, the evidence strongly supports what is generally taught and believed in the Church, that the NT was originally written in Greek. It is for this reason that so many in Church history have taken the time to learn Greek.
And feeling it is important for even non-Greek readers to get as close as possible to this original Greek text, I translated my Analytical-Literal Translation of the New Testament. If I hadn't believed in the originality and importance of the Greek text, I would not put in the time and effort involved in producing this translation.
Aland, Kurt, et. al. The Greek New Testament: Third Corrected Edition. Federal Republic of Germany: United Bible Societies, 1983.
Barker, Kenneth, general editor. The NIV Study Bible. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1985.
Carson, D. A. Matthew in The Expositor's Bible Commentary (Vol. 8). Frank E. Gaebelein, general editor. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1985 And other volumes in Expositor's.
Lamsa, George M. The Holy Bible from Ancient Eastern Manuscripts (a.k.a. Lamsa's Bible). Philadelphia: A. J. Holman Company, 1957.
Sproul, R. C. general editor. New Geneva Study Bible. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1995.
The above article originally appeared in the free Darkness to Light newsletter.
In Part One on this article, it was stated that some claim the New Testament (NT) was not originally written in Greek as is commonly believed. They claim the NT was actually originally written in Aramaic. One major proponent of this view was George Lamsa, as seen in the introduction to his Lamsa's Bible.
However, it was shown in Part One that the NT writers knew Greek and most likely were writing in Greek from their use of the Septuagint and from information contained within the NT. This second part of this two-part article will continue this discussion.
Note: All Scripture references are taken from the Analytical-Literal Translation of the New Testament: Second Edition (ALT).
The Language of the Early Church
Lamsa was quoted in Part One as claiming, "For several centuries, the Christian movement was directed and guided by the Jews." (p.xi). But there is much evidence within the pages of the NT, particularly in the Book of Acts, that his was not the case. Very early in time, the Church became more and more Greek, not Jewish.
This can be seen starting with Acts 6:
1And in these days, the disciples increasing [in number], there came to be a complaint from the Hellenists [fig., Greek-speaking Jews] towards the Hebrews [fig., Aramaic-speaking Jews], because their widows were being overlooked in the daily service [fig., distribution of food]. 2So the twelve having summoned the congregation of the disciples, said, "It is not desirable [for] us, having left the word of God, to be serving tables. 3Therefore, brothers [and sisters], look for seven men from [among] you*, being well spoken of, full of [the] Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we shall appoint over this need [or, necessity]. 4But we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word."
5And the word was pleasing before the whole congregation. And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of [the] Holy Spirit, and Philip and Prochorus and Nicanor and Timon and Parmenas and Nicolaus, a proselyte [i.e. convert to Judaism] from Antioch, 6whom they set before the apostles. And having prayed, they laid [their] hands on them.
7And the word of God kept spreading, and the number of the disciples kept being increased greatly in Jerusalem, and a large crowd of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith.
I quoted this passage through verse 7 to show that this dispute occurred in Jerusalem. So it was while the Church was still mainly found in Jerusalem that there was a sufficient number of Greek-speaking Jews as to cause problems within the congregation. And once the Gospel began to spread beyond Jerusalem, the number of Greek-speaking Jews entering the Church continued to grow.
19Then indeed the ones having been scattered because of the affliction [or, persecution], the one having occurred over Stephen, passed through as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except to Jews only. 20But some of them were male Cyprians and Cyrenians, who having entered into Antioch, began speaking to the Hellenists [fig., Greek-speaking Jews], proclaiming the Gospel of the Lord Jesus. 21And [the] hand of [the] Lord was with them, and a large number having believed turned to the Lord (Acts 11:19-21).
About this time, a major change occurred in the Church. Rather than the Gospel only being proclaimed to Jews, it began to be proclaimed to Gentiles. This began with Peter proclaiming the Gospel to Cornelius.
1Now [there] was a certain man in Caesarea, by name Cornelius, a centurion of a garrison [of soldiers], the one being called Italian [fig., a captain of the Italian Regiment], 2devout and fearing God [i.e. a worshipper of the one true God, but not a full convert to Judaism, also called "God-worshiping"] together with all his house, and doing [or, giving] many charitable gifts to the people and imploring God through all [fig. continually]….
34Then Peter having opened his mouth, said, "Truly, I comprehend that God is not One to accept faces [fig., to be prejudice], 35but in every nation the one fearing Him and working righteousness is acceptable to Him….
44While Peter [was] still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all the ones hearing the word. 45And the believing ones from the circumcision were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because the free gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also. 46For they were hearing them speaking with tongues [fig., other languages] and magnifying God. Then Peter answered, 47"Surely no one is able to forbid the water, can he, [for] these not to be baptized who received the Holy Spirit just as we also [did]?" 48And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord. Then they urgently asked him to stay several days (Acts 10:1,2,34,35, 44-47).
It is very doubtful that Cornelius, a Gentile, knew Aramaic. So this is further proof to add to what was seen in Part One that Peter knew Greek. But more importantly, we now have Gentiles becoming part of the Church. And these Gentiles knew Greek, not Aramaic. And as the Book of Acts continues, it becomes clear that the Church is becoming more and more composed of Greek-speaking people.
1Now it happened in Iconium [that] they entered by the same [way] into the synagogue of the Jews, and they spoke in such a manner [that] a large number of both Jews and Greeks believed (Acts 14:1).
1Then he came to Derbe and Lystra. And look! A certain disciple was there, by name Timothy, a son of a certain believing Jewish woman but of a Greek father, 2who was well spoken of by the brothers [and sisters] in Lystra and Iconium (Acts 16:1,2).
4And some of them believed and were joined with Paul and Silas, both a large number of the God-worshiping Greeks and not a few [fig., a large number] of the first [fig., prominent] women (Acts 17:4)
4Now he was reasoning in the synagogue every Sabbath, and he was persuading Jews and Greeks (Acts 18:4).
10Now this took place for two years, with the result that all the ones living in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks (Acts 19:10).
17Now from Miletus, having sent to Ephesus, he summoned the elders of the assembly. 18Then when they came to him, he said to them, "You* know from [the] first day from which I set foot in Asia how I was with you* all the time, 19serving as a slave to the Lord with all humility and many tears and trials, the [trials] having happened to me by the plots of the Jews; 20how I did not keep back any of the [things] benefiting [you*, but I] declared to you* and taught you* publicly and in every house, 21solemnly testifying both to Jews and to Greeks [about] repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus (Acts 20:17-21).
So it clear that by the time the Book of Acts closes (circa 63 AD), the Church is now composed of just as many if not more Greeks than Jews. And again, many of even the Jews would have been Greek-speaking Jews. So it is safe to say that within a few decades, the Church had more Greek speaking members than Hebrew speaking members. The importance of this will be seen as we look at when the NT books were written.
Dating and "Target Audiences" of NT Books
Lamsa claims, "[The Gospels] were written a few years after the resurrection and some portions were written by Matthew while Jesus was preaching. They were not handed down orally and then written after the Pauline Epistles, as some western scholars say; they were written many years before those Epistles" (p.ix).
As the Church became more and more composed of Greek-speaking Jews and Gentiles rather than Aramaic-speaking Jews, it becomes more likely that the Gospels would have been written in Greek. It simply would make no sense for them to be written in Aramaic if the "target audience" mostly spoke Greek. So Lamsa needs to claim the Gospels were written very early. But his claim goes counter to most any Biblical scholar of today.
This can be seen in the introductions to the Gospels contained in study Bibles and commentaries. They will almost unanimously date the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) to between 50-70 AD. And John's Gospel is usually dated much later, around 90 AD. And it should be noted that these are the dates given by conservative Bible scholars. Liberal scholars would probably date the Gospels even later.
There is not sufficient space in this article to go into all of the proofs given for these dates. So I will refer the reader to any of the wealth of study Bibles and commentaries currently available.
Further is the target audience of the Gospels. Again, information in this regard can be found in study Bibles and commentaries. But it is generally agreed that Matthew was probably directed towards Jews. So a case could be made on this basis that it was written in Aramaic. However, Mark was most likely addressed to Gentiles living in Rome. And Part One of this article discussed that Luke (along with Acts) was addressed to Theophilus, a Gentile (see Luke 1:3; Acts 1:1). So Mark, Luke, and Acts would most logically have been written in Greek.
John's Gospel seems to be the most universal of the Gospels, with his many references to the Gospel being for "the world" (e.g. 1:9-13, 29; 3:16,17; 4:42; 6:14,33,51; 8:12; 9:5; 11:49-52; 12:46; 17:21). With this universal emphasis, it would seem most likely that John would be written in the universal language of the time, which was Greek, not Aramaic.
John's epistles and the Revelation are also generally dated to the 90's AD. And 1John and the Revelation also have a universal aspect to them (e.g. 1John 2:2; Rev 5:9,10; 7:9,10; 14:6,7).
As for Paul, Lamsa claims that his epistles were directed towards Jews. Lamsa writes, "Paul, in nearly all of his epistles, speaks of the Hebrew fathers, subjugation in Egypt, crossing the Red sea, eating manna, and wandering in the desert. This proves beyond a doubt that these letters were written to members of the Hebrew race and not to the Gentile world who knew nothing of Hebrew history and divine promises to them (p.xi).
However, most of Paul's epistles were written to churches that he had founded and had extensive ministry among. And this ministry would have included the teaching of the OT. So even his Gentile readers would have familiar with the OT.
Furthermore, Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles (Gal 2:9). He always presented the Gospel "to the Jew first" (Romans 1:16); but invariably, the Jews for the most part would reject the Gospel, so Paul then turned to the Gentiles (e.g. Acts 13:46). So the churches he directed his epistles towards would have been primarily made up of Gentiles.
Moreover, there were many Greek-speaking Jews outside of Jerusalem. So many of even Paul's Jewish converts mostly likely spoke Greek. So the majority of the readers of Paul's epistle would have spoken Greek. All of this argues for Paul writing his epistles in Greek.
That leaves the general epistles. I've already mentioned about John's epistles. The rest were written between 50-70 AD. So my comments about the synoptic Gospels would apply here.
Now Peter was the apostle to the circumcision, but he would have been writing to Jews outside of Judea. This can be seen from his reference to "the Dispersion" (1:1). As I indicate in the ALT, this is the scattering of Jews outside of Judea. And as was discussed previously, Jews outside of Judea were more likely to be speaking Greek than Aramaic. Peter also mentions about his being "in Babylon" (5:13). Opinions vary as to what city Peter meant by this, but it most definitely was not in Judea.
James is possibly the earliest book of the NT to be written, and it most likely was written to Jews. But these were "scattered abroad" (1:1). So they also would have been living outside of Judea.
Jude is closely related to 2Peter. Which came first is a matter of debate. But both books appear to have been somewhat later, in the 60's AD.
So overall, the dating of the NT books and their target audiences strongly argue for them being written in Greek not Aramaic. Again, much more on these points can be found in study Bibles and commentaries.
Manuscript Evidence
There are over 5000 extant Greek manuscripts of the NT. And some of these date to the early second century. Meanwhile, only a handful of Aramaic texts exist, and these date from the fourth to the seventh centuries (Aland, pp. xxxiv-xxxv). With this limited amount of manuscript evidence, it is hard to determine the original Aramaic text.
Believing in the providence of God as I do, this would be a rather intolerable situation. What God has preserved for us is a wealth of Greek manuscripts. And through textual criticism we can determine very accurately what the original Greek NT contained. See my book Differences Between Bible Version for much in this regard.
Matthew 19:24
One last claim Lamsa makes is that there are verses that don't make much sense in the Greek text but that make more sense in the Aramaic. He claims this is due to the Greek text having been "mistranslated" from the Aramaic.
One such example he gives is Matthew 19:24, "Now again I say to you*, it is easier [for] a camel to pass through an eye of a needle, than [for] a rich [person] to enter into the kingdom of God."
Lamsa states that the Aramaic word for "camel" resembles the word for "rope." So he claims the original Aramaic had "rope" but the alleged translator mistook the word and rendered it as "camel." So his implication is that "rope" makes more sense here than "camel."
But the use of "camel" in this verse makes perfect sense. Jesus was using hyperbole by referring to the largest animal in Judea and how ridiculous it would be to try to thread it through a needle. He uses a similar hyperbole when He declares to the Pharisees, "Blind guides! The ones straining out the gnat, but swallowing the camel! (Matt 23:24).
Conclusion
Overall, the only book of the NT for which there is any significant possible evidence of an Aramaic original is Matthew. But even then, there are good contrary arguments. But for the rest of the NT, the evidence strongly supports what is generally taught and believed in the Church, that the NT was originally written in Greek. It is for this reason that so many in Church history have taken the time to learn Greek.
And feeling it is important for even non-Greek readers to get as close as possible to this original Greek text, I translated my Analytical-Literal Translation of the New Testament. If I hadn't believed in the originality and importance of the Greek text, I would not put in the time and effort involved in producing this translation.
Aland, Kurt, et. al. The Greek New Testament: Third Corrected Edition. Federal Republic of Germany: United Bible Societies, 1983.
Barker, Kenneth, general editor. The NIV Study Bible. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1985.
Carson, D. A. Matthew in The Expositor's Bible Commentary (Vol. 8). Frank E. Gaebelein, general editor. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1985 And other volumes in Expositor's.
Lamsa, George M. The Holy Bible from Ancient Eastern Manuscripts (a.k.a. Lamsa's Bible). Philadelphia: A. J. Holman Company, 1957.
Sproul, R. C. general editor. New Geneva Study Bible. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1995.
The above article originally appeared in the free Darkness to Light newsletter.
So critical textualism is an interesting field, and from my observations is kind of a combination of anthropology, archaeology, and theology.
One interesting thing to consider when going back and forth over which was the "original" language of the NT is from an anthropology type viewpoint. Many of the people of that time were bilingual and trilingual. We certainly have fine examples of this today in many regions of the world. Europeans typically speak 2 or 3 languages. Residents of India usually speak at least a local dialect and English in school. And there are so many more examples.
In NT times from what I have put together from anthropology readings, like those done by Alfred Edersheim, is that the languages around Jerusalem during the Messiah's time seems to have been Aramaiac for everyday conversation, Hebrew for the educated, and Greek was the occupied language as well as the language of business or trade. Most of the 12 apostles would have spoken mostly Aramaiac. Few of those would have had a great deal of education, so Hebrew would have been less understood. And Greek would have been understood less, used functionally to interact with local government and probably the business or trade language locally. It is no stretch that writings by these would most likely have been Aramaiac. Also, later letters in the NT such as Hebrews and James, just by their content and who they address were most likely written in Hebrew.
Paul/Saul himself was very unique from a language perspective. He was not a Greek native, as clearly mentioned in one of his letters to Timothy who was half Greek. The common speculation was that Timothy assisted Paul in original Greek translation work. Paul was highly educated under Gamaliel, so had the education, language and background to speak, write, lecture in Hebrew, and did consistently in his travels. He undoubtedly spoke Aramaiac as part of the common language at home. However, Tarsus as a city was on a trade route in the Greek world, so it is highly probably that Paul growing up would also have been exposed to more Greek in the business world than someone raised elsewhere. He was "free born", meaning Greek citizenship. Paul was most likely trilingual and possibly spoke more languages than that. He also in his philosophy of travels stated that he "became all things to all men". Undoubtedly this practice would have carried over into the language realm. It is not a stretch of the imagination to picture that Paul's letters to primarily Greek cities of converts, like Corinth, Romans, Philippi, Colosse would have logically been penned in Greek first. They were to primarily Greek speaking converts. Some of the other cities it may not be so clear. Possibly those letters may have been Aramaiac originally. And as they were encouraged to be passed around surely they would have been translated back and forth as they were passed.
The gospel writers most textualists place as doing that work as a history book written around 90 - 100AD. At least 3 of them with the exception of the physician it's highly likely they did their work in Aramaiac first. Luke's work has some aspects of phrasing that are poetic / subtle in the Greek that leads at least me to believe it was likely to have been done in Greek first as opposed to Aramaiac, as translated works many times don't evidence that. But that is just IMO personally.
Either way with respect to us today, it is highly likely that the versions we have access to may have been translated back and forth between more than one language.
And then there's the Gideons, whose mission is to translate it into local language and place it near the traveler. Interpretation and reading is up to the traveler.
Just a few culture and common sense points to consider in discussion.
Some of the longer posts are difficult to read and perhaps bias towards a certain viewpoint. However, some long posts are easier to read, yet scholarly while exhibiting a non-bias approach.
And frankly, I am just amazed at all the bible scholars and researchers on the internet who cover this subject. And all I had to do to research this is type in a search engine "what language was the New Testament originally written in?"
Now while many of the emissaries were spreading the Messianic movement eastward, Paul was taking the movement into the Western world. From his headquarters at Antioch, the capitol of Syria, Paul conducted several missionary journeys into Europe. At this time there came a need for Greek versions of New Testament books. As time progressed several events occurred which resulted in a great rise of anti-Semitism in the West. This began when the Jews revolted against the Roman Empire in 70 C.E.. A second revolt by Jews in Egypt occurred in 116 C.E.. Things were further complicated by the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132 C.E.. In the Roman Empire anti-Semitism became very popular, and even patriotic. In the West, Gentile Christianity sought to distance itself from Judaism and Jewish customs. The Greek text began to be favored over the Semitic text and many Semitic writings were subsequently destroyed. By 325 C.E. anti-Semitism and the priority given in the West to the Greek Scriptures had solidified. Constantine invaded Rome, making himself emperor. Constantine proclaimed Christianity to be the Catholic (universal) religion, thus making Christianity the enforced state religion of the Roman Empire. Before this occurred one could be killed for being a Christian, afterward one could be killed for not being a "Christian." Constantine, who was an anti-Semite, called the council of Nicea in 325 C.E. to standardize Christianity. Jews were excluded from the meeting. Jewish practices were officially banned and the Greek translations officially replaced the original Semitic Scriptures.
Having alienated the Jewish Nazarenes in 325 at the Council of Nicea, subsequent councils alienated the Assyrians and Syrians over Christological debates. The Nestorian Assyrians were alienated in 431 C.E. at the Council of Ephesus while the Jacobite Syrians were alienated in 451 C.E. at the Council of Chalcedon. The division between the Semitic peoples of the Near East, and the Roman Catholic Church grew ever steeper. With the rise of Islam in the Near East the Near Eastern Christians were even further separated from their European counterparts in the West. Relations between the Christian West and the Islamic Near East were non-existent. As time progressed, in the West the Roman Catholic Church began to suppress the Scriptures in Europe. Those who would try to make the Scriptures available to the common man were often burned alive. Such suppression was impossible in the Near East, where the Scriptures were already in Aramaic, the common language of the people. When the Protestant reformation emerged, claiming the Greek New Testament as the original, it was a time when most Europeans were not even aware that an Aramaic version existed.
It was in this atmosphere, in 1516 that the first printed edition of the Greek New Testament was published in Europe. This edition, published by Erasmus, would become known as the Textus Receptus, and serve as the standard Greek text until the 19th Century. The first edition of this work was based solely on six manuscripts, while later editions used only ten. None of these manuscripts were complete, and only one was even particularly old, dating to the tenth century. Since none of his manuscripts were complete, Erasmus was forced to invent many of his Greek portions of Revelation by translating from the Latin Vulgate into Greek. It was this poor edition which served as the evidence by which the West would embrace the Greek as the original. This edition would later serve as the basis for the King James Version.
The disciples were first called "Christians" in Antioch. "Christ-ians" is a Greek word. If the believers were speaking Aramaic and Luke was writing in Aramaic, they would have been called "Messianians." This was a name for the group, and as such it would not have been changed to "Christians" even if it was first written in Aramaic and translated to Greek. The believers at Antioch are clearly called "Greeks," not "core group of Aramaic speaking Jews" as James calls them (Acts 10:20).
Much has been made of Josephus. But by the time he wrote, the Hebrews as a society were virtually dead (and most of their language users with it). At the fall of the temple in 69 AD, literally one half of the 2 million population of Israel were dead as a result of the war. The slash and burn strategy of the Romans made much of the country unlivable. They literally burned and uprooted every house, building and tree over many square miles. Politically, it's a language of disgraced losers-- something the Romans actually put on coins.(The coins say, "Judea captive")
If Acts had been first written in Aramaic, most of the conversations in it would have to have been translated from Greek.
Paul's trials before Festus, Felix, Gallio, Sergius Paulus had to have been in Greek. Romans rulers don't know (nor want to know) Aramaic. The riot in the Ephesus theater after Paul's healing of a fortune teller was certainly in Greek. Cornelius the centurion was certainly not a Jew and would not have known Aramaic. He and his friends are clearly called "Gentiles." Nor did the Greeks in Antioch who first accepted the Gospel, who are clearly called "Greeks." The Romans soldier who rescued Paul spoke Greek and Paul had no trouble defending himself in Greek. Paul's nephew spoke to a Roman commander about the Jews' plot to kill Paul in Greek, the nephew apparently fluent. Paul spoke to the centurion and soldiers of the Imperial Regiment on ship on his way to Rome. After the shipwreck, Paul spoke to Publius, the chief of Malta, and the Maltese, again in Greek. When Paul gave up on the Jews at Corinth and said he was going to the Gentiles, they would not have known Aramaic. Throughout the book of Acts, both before and After Paul began his mission trips, the vast majority of the conversations recorded were clearly with Gentiles who could not have known any semitic language.It would make no sense for the vast majority of the original events in the book of Acts to have occurred in Greek and written down after the start of the Roman-Jewish war by a guy (Luke) with a Greek name to another guy with a Greek name (who no one can verify was a Jew of any kind) and yet be recorded in a language (Aramaic) foreign to them all.
The disciples were first called "Christians" in Antioch. "Christ-ians" is a Greek word. If the believers were speaking Aramaic and Luke was writing in Aramaic, they would have been called "Messianians." This was a name for the group, and as such it would not have been changed to "Christians" even if it was first written in Aramaic and translated to Greek. The believers at Antioch are clearly called "Greeks," not "core group of Aramaic speaking Jews" as James calls them (Acts 10:20).
I assume you refer to Acts 11:20 not 10:20. Yes it says they were first CALLED "Christians" at Antioch. In other words someone else was calling them that. Who was the someone else? Well they were in Antioch (capitol of Syria) where the native tongue was Syriac (Aramaic) so these would have been Hellenists or Roman Soldiers.
Here are some interesting facts about the term "Christian(s)"
1. It appears only three times in the entire Bible.
2. No believer is ever described as calling themselves a Christian. It appears to have been a derogatory term used by non-believers.
3. Paul never uses the term. It never appears in any of his letters, and it never passes from his lips in Acts. Though in Acts he does identify himself as a Pharisee.
Much has been made of Josephus. But by the time he wrote, the Hebrews as a society were virtually dead (and most of their language users with it). At the fall of the temple in 69 AD, literally one half of the 2 million population of Israel were dead as a result of the war. The slash and burn strategy of the Romans made much of the country unlivable. They literally burned and uprooted every house, building and tree over many square miles. Politically, it's a language of disgraced losers-- something the Romans actually put on coins.(The coins say, "Judea captive")
This is simply false. In fact the Jews of Judea revolted again in 132 CE with a three year success i which they even minted their own currency... with Hebrew inscriptions on them.
It would make no sense for the vast majority of the original events in the book of Acts to have occurred in Greek and written down after the start of the Roman-Jewish war by a guy (Luke) with a Greek name to another guy with a Greek name (who no one can verify was a Jew of any kind) and yet be recorded in a language (Aramaic) foreign to them all.
The question of the Luke/Acts tradition holds particular interest to us. This is because the common wisdom has been to portray Luke as a Greek speaking, Greek writing Gentile who wrote his account to the Gentiles. The reality of the matter is (whether Luke himself knew Greek or not) that Luke was most certainly written in a Semitic language. as Charles Cutler Torrey states:
In regard to Lk. it remains to be said, that of all the Four Gospels it is the one which gives by far the plainest and most constant evidence of being a translation.
- C.C. Torrey; Our Translated Gospels p. lix
It is commonly argued that Luke was a Greek who would have written in Greek.
Actually Luke was a Syrian of Antioch (Eusebius; Eccl. Hist. 3:4) so his native language would have been Syriac, an Aramaic dialect.
It is often also argued that Luke and Acts were written to a Greek named "Theophilus".
Actually Theophilus was a Jew who had been High Priest from 37-41 CE (Josephus; Ant. 18:5:3). A Syrian convert to Judaism such as Luke would likely have written the High Priest in Aramaic
It has long been recognized that the New Testament is written in very poor Greek grammar, but very good Semitic grammar. Many sentences are inverted with a verb > noun format characteristic of
Semitic languages. Furthermore, there are several occurrences of the redundant "and". A number of scholars have shown in detail the Semitic grammar embedded in the Greek New Testament books.
(See: Our Translated Gospels By Charles Cutler Torrey; Documents of the Primitive Church by Charles Cutler Torrey; An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts by Matthew Black; The Aramaic Origin of the Fourth Gospel by Charles Fox Burney; The Aramaic Origin of the Four Gospels by Frank Zimmerman and Semitisms of the Book of Acts by Max Wilcox)
In addition to the evidence for Semitic grammar embedded in the Greek New Testament, the fact that serious grammatical errors are found in the Greek New Testament books may be added. Speaking of the
Greek of Revelation, Charles Cutler Torrey states that it "...swarms with major offenses against Greek grammar." He calls it "linguistic anarchy", and says, "The grammatical monstrosities of the book, in their number and variety and especially in their startling character, stand alone in the history of literature." Torrey gives ten examples listed below:
1. Rev. 1:4 "Grace to you, and peace, from he who is and who was and
who is to come" (all nom. case)
2. Rev. 1:15 "His legs were like burnished brass (neut. gender
dative case) as in a furnace purified" (Fem. gender sing.
no., gen. case)
3. Rev. 11:3 "My witness (nom.) shall prophesy for many days clothed
(accus.) in sackcloth."
4. Rev. 14:14 "I saw on the cloud one seated like unto a Son of Man
(accus.) having (nom.) upon his head a golden crown."
5. Rev. 14:19 "He harvested the vintage of the earth, and cast it
into the winepress (fem), the great [winepress] (masc.) of the wrath
of God."
6. Rev. 17:4 "A golden cup filled with abominations (gen.) and with
unclean things" (accus.)
7. Rev. 19:20 "The lake of blazing (fem.) fire (neut.).
8. Rev. 20:2 "And he seized the dragon (accus.), the old serpent
(nom.) who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him."
8 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End," says the Lord, "who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty."
NKJV
Rev 1:11-12
11 saying, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last," and, "What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia: to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea."
NKJV
Rev 21:4-6
5 Then He who sat on the throne said, "Behold, I make all things new." And He said to me, "Write, for these words are true and faithful." 6 And He said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts.
NKJV
Rev 22:12-13
13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last."
NKJV
Here is another of the many examples of the original language of the New Testament, the alpha and the omega. Sorry but these are not Aramaic. Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet and omega is the last letter of the Greek alphabet.
8 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End," says the Lord, "who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty."
NKJV
Rev 1:11-12
11 saying, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last," and, "What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia: to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea."
NKJV
Rev 21:4-6
5 Then He who sat on the throne said, "Behold, I make all things new." And He said to me, "Write, for these words are true and faithful." 6 And He said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts.
NKJV
Rev 22:12-13
13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last."
NKJV
Here is another of the many examples of the original language of the New Testament, the alpha and the omega. Sorry but these are not Aramaic. Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet and omega is the last letter of the Greek alphabet.
You are using circular reasoning, quoting the Greek NT (or an English translation of it) to prove the Greek origin. In fact the Aramaic text of Revelation has ALEF and TAV in three of these places, and omits the phrase from one:
7 Behold, He comes with clouds, and all eyes will see Him, even also those who pierced
Him: and all the tribes of the land will mourn concerning Him. Yes and Amen.
8 I am Alef and Tav, says Adonai YHWH: He who is, and was, and is to come; who
is the Almighty.
(Rev. 1:7-8 HRV)
That said, Those [things] that you see, write in a book and send to the seven
assemblies: to Ephesus, and to Smyrna, and to Pergamos, and to Thyatira, and to Sardis,
and to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.
12 And I turned, to know the voice that spoke with me: and when I turned, I saw seven
menorahs of gold.
(Rev. 1:11-12 HRV)
4 And He will wipe all tears from their eyes, and there will be no more death, neither
grief nor crying, nor will there be any more pain, for His sake,
5 And it went away. And He who sat on the throne said to me: Behold, I make all
[things] new. And He said to me: Write: these words are Faithful and True.
6 And He said to me: I am Alef and I am Tav--the beginning and the end. To the
thirsty, I will give from the fountain of living water, freely.
(Rev. 21:4-6 HRV)
12 Behold, I come quickly, and My reward [is] with Me: and I will give to every man
according to his work.
13 I am Alef and I am Tav, the first and the last, and the beginning and the end.
(Rev. 22:12-13 HRV)
Now if the terms ALPHA and OMEGA in the Greek version of Revelation prove a Greek origin (and they don't), then the use of ALEF and TAV (HEBREW/ARAMAIC LETTERS) in the Aramaic version would also prove an Aramaic origin.
You may be confusing Aramaic with Hebrew. Do you know Aramaic and do you know Hebrew? And your complaining about biblical Greek here sounds very political. I am sure there are many more Greek texts of the New Testament than Aramaic.
I don't know Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek, but here is a link I found.
You may be confusing Aramaic with Hebrew. Do you know Aramaic and do you know Hebrew? And your complaining about biblical Greek here sounds very political. I am sure there are many more Greek texts of the New Testament than Aramaic.
I know both, they are cognate languages. They are both written with the same set of 22 letters (ALEF being the first and TAV being the last). They share many of the same root words, and a great deal of the same vocabulary.
This in Hebrew it is SHALOM and in Aramaic SHLAMA
In Hebrew camel is GAMEL in Aramaic it is GAMLA
Parts of the Tanak (Old Testament) are written in Aramaic. The Talmuds and Zohar are written in Aramaic.
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Abigail
Okay, well forwarned is forearmed, etc. Nevermind that he calls himself Rabbi. Nevermind that he is another huckster with a "doctorate" from a non-accredited college. Nevermind that he calls his "a
Twinky
This and some other of James Trimm's topics are very interesting - but need to be in Doctrinal, surely, not in About The Way?
Tom
Point to note here for those who think this argument is circular because James has pasted this reponse before: James said he would post something new (unpasted) if anyone would post an objection not
Mark Sanguinetti
So I see what you are saying now. You agree with my reasoning, at least I think you do, but you say there was a core group of Aramaic speaking people who believed in Jesus Christ in all these Greek speaking cities that I just named. I have never heard of that.
I researched this a bit and now I see there were a few Jewish people in Corinth, as one example who would have spoken Aramaic, Acquila and Prescilla. Of course, the main language was still Greek.
CORINTHIANS, EPISTLES TO THE
When Paul left Corinth 18 months later, a Christian congregation flourished. The congregation was composed primarily of former pagans (1 Cor 12:2), most of them apparently from the lower classes (1 Cor 1:26 f). Some were slaves (1 Cor 7:21). A few wealthier persons (1 Cor 11:22-32) and Jews, however, (8) were among the believers.
(from Nelson's Illustrated Bible Dictionary, Copyright ©1986, Thomas Nelson Publishers)
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James Trimm
And get this:
1Cor. 10:1 "OUR FATHERS were all under the cloud and all passed through the [Red] sea...."(with Moses, see 10:2)
When did Greek Gentile Corinthians cross the Red Sea with Moses?
Clearly the target audience was a core group of Jews...
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James Trimm
In addition to these factors we must also consider the Eastern spread of Christianity. We have heard much about the so called "Westward spread of Christianity" but little is written of the equally profound Eastward movement. While Paul made missionary journeys from his headquarters in Antioch Syria, into the Western world, most of the emissaries (apostles) traveled eastward. Bartholomew traveled eastward through Assyria into Armenia, then back down through Assyria, Babylon, Parthia (Persia) and down into India where he was flayed alive with knives. Thaddeus taught in Edessa (a city of northern Syria) Assyria and Persia, dying a martyr by arrows either in Persia or at Ararat. Thomas taught in Parthia, Persia and India. He was martyred with a spear at Mt. St. Thomas near Madras in India. To this very day a group of Christians in India are called "St. Thomas Christians. Finally Kefa (Peter) traveled to Babylon and even wrote one of his letters from there. That the emissaries brought Semitic New Testament Scriptures eastward with them is affirmed to us by the Church fathers. Eusebius writes:
Pantaenus... penetrated as far as India, where it is reported
hat he found the Gospel according to Matthew, which had been
delivered before his arrival to some who had the knowledge of
Messiah, to whom Bartholomew one of the emissaries,
as it is said, had preached, and left them
the writing of Matthew in Hebrew letters.
And as Jerome writes:
Pantaenus found that Bartholomew, one of the twelve
emissaries, had there [in India] preached the advent of our
Lord Yeshua the Messiah according to the Gospel of Matthew,
which was written in Hebrew letters...
This entire region of the Near East stretching from Israel through Syria, Assyria, Babylon, Persia (Parthia) and down into India, became known as the "Church of the East." At its high point the Church of the East stretched as far east as China! By the fifth and sixth Centuries Christological debates had split the Church of the East into two major factions, Nestorians and Jacobites . Today, the Church of the East has been split into even more groups: Nestorians , Jacobites , Chaldean Roman Catholics, and Maronites. All of whom continue to use an Aramaic New Testament text. When the Roman Catholic Portuguese invaded India in 1498 they encountered over a hundred churches belonging to the St. Thomas Christians along the coast of Malabar. These St. Thomas Christians, according to tradition, had been there since the first century. They had married clergymen, did not adore images or pray to or through saints, nor did they believe in purgatory. Most importantly they maintained use of the Aramaic New Testament which they claimed had been in use at Antioch .
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Mark Sanguinetti
http://www.dtl.org/bible/article/language/part_one.htm
The Original Language of the New Testament
Part One
By Gary F. Zeolla
The New Testament was originally written in Greek. This is what I have been taught and believed as long as I have been a Christian. But there are some who claim the New Testament was originally written in Aramaic. This would mean the Greek manuscripts are just translations of this Aramaic original. This two-part article will look at this and related claims.
Note: Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture references are taken from the Analytical-Literal Translation of the New Testament: Second Edition (ALT).
Interest in Aramaic
For the most part, the Old Testament (OT) was originally written in Hebrew. On this, there is little debate. But there are a couple of small sections that were written in Aramaic (Ezra 4:8-6:18, 7:12-26; Daniel chapters 2-7, and one verse in Jeremiah). Aramaic is similar but not identical to Hebrew. By the time of Christ, Jews living in Judea for the most part spoke Aramaic. This is seen in the movie The Passion of the Christ with the entire dialog being in Aramaic (with English subtitles). It is possibly due to this movie that there has been a resurgence of interest in Aramaic.
But long before this, one notable proponent of the idea of an Aramaic original for the New Testament (NT) was George Lamsa. His Lamsa's Bible (published in 1957) was translated from the Syriac Pedangta. Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic. In the introduction to Lasma's Bible are claimed evidences for an Aramaic Original for the NT.
Papias
One commonly cited evidence for an Aramaic original for the NT is a statement made by the Church Father Papias. The translation of this statement is rather difficult as will be discussed in a minute. But below is the translation of this statement as found in the book The Apostolic Fathers by Lightfoot and Harmer.
So then Matthew composed the oracles in the Hebrew language, and each interpreted them as he could (p. 529).
This quote is used as evidence that the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Aramaic. This claim is discussed in depth in the introduction to the commentary on Matthew in The Expositor's Bible Commentary (Vol. 8, pages 3-17). I cannot repeat all of the arguments from these pages here. But I will give a couple of highlights.
As stated, the translation of the sentence is difficult. First, the word "Hebrew" could also be rendered "Aramaic." But most important is the word "oracles." The Greek word is the plural form of "logos." It's most basic meaning is "word" or "saying." So it seems likely Matthew is referring to the words of Jesus. But the Gospel of Matthew includes much more than this. It also includes narrative by Matthew and accounts of the actions of Jesus.
Now Luke does use a form of "logos" to refer to his Gospel (Acts 1:1). But it is in the singular, not plural. And Luke specifically says that what he wrote included the things "which Jesus began both to be doing and to be teaching." So it is generally rendered as "account." But by putting it in the plural, Papias seems to indicate he is not referring to a singular, complete "account" as Luke is but of specific "words." Hence "sayings" seems to be the best translation.
So it's possible that Papias is referring to something other than the canonical Gospel. One theory is it is the so-called "Q" source of the sayings of Jesus that some have theorized the Gospel writers used. Or maybe it was an earlier draft by Matthew that he himself later used to compose his Gospel. Or it is even possible that Matthew wrote two versions of his Gospel, one in Greek and one in Aramaic.
So there are various possibilities as to what is meant by Papias' statement. As such, this one vague statement does not necessary prove that canonical Gospel Of Matthew was originally written in Aramaic. Moreover, the statement only refers to the Gospel of Matthew. It has no bearing on the original language of the rest of the NT.
The Use of the Septuagint
Expositor's goes into detail on the various reasons the Gospel of Matthew was not originally written in Aramaic. One of the strongest is that Matthew quotes from the Septuagint. The Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Hebrew OT from the third century B.C. It is abbreviated as "LXX." The name and abbreviation are based on the tradition that 70 or 72 Jewish scholars worked on the translation, six from each of the twelve tribes of Israel.
For the second edition of the ALT, I carefully reviewed all of the quotes in the NT from the OT. I included the notation "LXX" after the OT verse reference when the wording of the quote in the NT differed from the wording of the source verse in the Hebrew but was similar or even identical to that of the LXX. And there were many such instances in Matthew and the rest of the NT, far more than I had originally thought. For instance, there are six places in the Gospel of Matthew where the OT quote is clearly from the LXX (3:3; 12:21; 13:14,15; 15:8,9; 19:5; 21:16).
It should also be noted that there are also many times when the wording of the NT quotation is basically identical to that of the Hebrew text but differs from the LXX. So in those passages the NT writer was obviously quoting from the Hebrew (e.g. Matthew 2:15). And there are times when the quote in the NT, the Hebrew, and the LXX are all basically the same. So the NT writer could have been quoting from either the Hebrew or the LXX (e.g. Matthew 1:23).
So having studied the issue, it is apparent the NT writers were familiar with both the Hebrew text of the OT and with the LXX, and they freely quoted from either of these. But if Matthew were writing in Aramaic for a strictly Aramaic speaking audience, it would have been more logical for him to have used the Hebrew Scriptures throughout. Moreover, as Expositor's states, "It cannot be argued that the alleged translator decided to use the LXX for all OT quotations in order to save himself some work, for only some of them are from the LXX" (p.13).
Moreover, there are also cases where only the form of the OT verse as it appears in the LXX would "fit" in the context in which the NT writer is quoting the verse.
For instance, Matthew 21:14-16 reads:
14And lame and blind [people] came to Him in the temple, and He healed them. 15But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the marvelous [things] which He did, and the children crying out in the temple and saying, "We give praise to You, the Son of David," they expressed indignation. 16And they said to Him, "Do You hear what these [ones] are saying?" But Jesus says to them, "Yes, did you* never read, ‘Out of [the] mouth of young children and nursing infants You prepared praise for Yourself?'" [Psalm 8:2, LXX].
Verse 16 includes a quotation from Psalm 8:2. This verse reads in the NKJV (which is translated from the Hebrew), "Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength." Not only is this significantly different from how the quote appears in the NT, but this wording would not "fit" in the context. The passage is talking about "praise" not "strength."
However, this verse reads in Lancelot Brenton's translation of the LXX, "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou perfected praise." The differences in wording between this translation and how I translated the quote is simply due to translation differences; the Greek text is identical in the LXX and in NT.
So in this passage, the quote is clearly from the LXX and only the way the verse is worded in the LXX would fit in the context. So the LXX is clearly the original source for the quote, not the Hebrew text. And what makes this particularly interesting is this a statement of Jesus. So it was Jesus who originally used the LXX in his discussion with the "the chief priests and the scribes." More on the import of this in a minute. But here, it should be noted that this use of the LXX only makes sense if the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Greek. And similar instances could be given for other books of the NT.
The Language of Jesus, the Apostles, and the Writers of the NT
Lamsa claims, "The Gospels, as well as the Epistles, were written in Aramaic, the language of the Jewish people in Palestine and in the Greco-Roman world" (p.ix). And further, "For several centuries, the Christian movement was directed and guided by the Jews. All of the apostles and the evangelists were Jewish" (p.xi).
So Lamsa is claiming Jesus, the apostles, the Gospel writers, and their audience spoke Aramaic. And further he is claiming that the Church was primary Jewish and remained so for centuries. And it is true that Jesus and the original apostles were Jews. And it is true that for the most part Jews in Palestine at that time spoke Aramaic.
However, Luke, the writer of two NT books (the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts) was most likely a Gentile. Luke's writings were directed towards "most excellent Theophilus." This is a Greek name and title for a person of rank in the Roman government (see Acts 23:26; 24:30). So Theophilus was most likely a Gentile who spoke Greek.
Furthermore, Luke writes in Acts 1:18,19:
18(This one indeed then acquired a field by [the] payment of [his] unrighteousness, and having fallen headfirst, he burst open in the middle and all his inward parts were poured out. 19And it became known to all the ones living in Jerusalem, with the result that that place is called, in their own language [i.e. Aramaic], Akel Dama, that is, Field of Blood.)
This paragraph appears within a discourse by Peter. However, I put these verses in parentheses in the ALT as they do not seem to be a part of Peter's discourse. They are most likely comments added my Luke for the benefit of the readers of the Book of Acts.
In this comments Luke refers to "their own language." I added the explanatory note that this is Aramaic. Again, for the most part this is true. But note that Luke then translated the Aramaic term for his readers. So it appears he was writing in Greek for people who knew only Greek. If he had been writing in Aramaic to Aramaic readers, it would have been unnecessary to provide a translation.
It should also be noted that Luke's translation of "field of blood" appears in Lamsa's Bible as well. So it cannot be claimed that the supposed translator of the Aramaic original into Greek added this translation. It appears in the Aramaic text. This only makes sense if in fact the Book of Acts was written in Greek and was then translated into Aramaic. And with Acts being a follow-up to the Gospel of Luke, it is only logical that Luke was written in Greek as well.
Going back to the Gospel of Matthew, it contains this interesting bit of information about Matthew, "And passing by from there, Jesus saw a man sitting at the tax-office, being called Matthew, and He says to him, "Be following Me!" And having stood up, he followed Him" (Matthew 9:9).
Matthew was collecting taxes from Jews for the Roman government. To engage in such a business would have required him to have known Aramaic to be able to speak to the Jews, but he also would had to have known Greek (and maybe Latin) to have spoken to the Roman officials.
Then there's this interesting exchange in John 12:20-22:
20Now [there] were some Greeks from the ones going up so that they should prostrate themselves in worship at the feast. 21Then these [Greeks] came to Philip, the [one] from Bethsaida of Galilee, and were asking him, saying, "Lord [or, Sir], we desire to see Jesus." 22Philip comes and tells Andrew, and again Andrew and Philip tell Jesus.
So Philip, one of the apostles, was able to converse with Greeks. And it appears he brought these Greeks to Andrew and then to Jesus. Jesus' subsequent discourse is then addressed to "them" (v.23). The "them" probably included these visiting Greeks. So it's very possible Jesus' subsequent discourse was in Greek.
As for Peter, the difference between the Greek of his two epistles is instructive. The first is written in very stylistic Greek while the second is written in very simple Greek. So the first appears to be written by someone very familiar with the Greek language while someone for whom Greek was a second language probably wrote the second. Some have used this difference to claim that 2Peter was not actually written by Peter. But a better explanation is seen in the text itself.
1Peter ends with the following:
12By Silvanus, the faithful brother as I consider [him], through [whom] I wrote a few [words], encouraging and testifying this to be [the] true grace of God in which you* have stood firm (5:12).
"By Silvanus … through [whom] I wrote a few [words]" indicates that Peter probably dedicated his first epistle to Silvanus. In writing down the dictation, Silvanus probably "cleaned up" Peter's crude Greek. But the second epistle contains no such "by" line. So it was written directly by Peter and contains the kind of Greek you would expect from a fisherman for whom Greek was a second language.
So Jesus, at least some of the apostles, and the Gospel writers Matthew and Luke most likely knew Greek. Similarly, Paul, the writer of half of the books of the NT, clearly knew both Aramaic and Greek.
This is seen in the following passage from Acts:
37And Paul being about to be brought into the barracks says to the commanding officer, "Is it permitted for me to speak to you?" Then he said, "Do you know Greek? 38So you are not the Egyptian, the one having incited a riot before these days and having led the four thousand men of the assassins into the desert, are you?" 39But Paul said, "I indeed am a man, a Jew of Tarsus of Cilicia, a citizen of no insignificant [fig., an important] city. Now I implore you, permit me to speak to the people."
1"Men, brothers and fathers, now pay attention to my defense to you*." 2Now they having heard that in the Hebrew dialect he was speaking to them, they gave [him] even more silence. (Acts 21:37-22:2).
And finally, to re-iterate from before, OT quotes that are clearly taken from the LXX appear throughout the NT. Quotes from the LXX appear in all four Gospels, Acts, Romans, 1Corinthians, Ephesians, 2Timothy, Hebrews, James, and 1Peter. So writers of all of these books had to have known Greek and have been writing in Greek.
The most interesting book in this list is the Epistle to the Hebrews. There are seven quotes from or clear references to the LXX in Hebrews (1:6; 2:13; 8:12; 10:6,7; 11:20; 12:5,6; 12:12). So although written to Hebrews, the writer was clearly writing in Greek and most likely to Greek-speaking Jews.
The Original Language of the New Testament
Part Two
http://www.dtl.org/bible/article/language/part_two.htm
References:
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture references taken from the Analytical-Literal Translation of the New Testament of the Holy Bible: Second Edition. Copyright © 2005 by Gary F. Zeolla of Darkness to Light ministry (www.dtl.org). Previously copyrighted © 1999, 2001 by Gary F. Zeolla.
Brenton, Sir Lancelot C. L. The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1986.
Carson, D. A. Matthew in The Expositor's Bible Commentary (Vol. 8). Frank E. Gaebelein, general editor. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1985 And other volumes in Expositor's.
Lamsa, George M. The Holy Bible from Ancient Eastern Manuscripts (a.k.a. Lamsa's Bible). Philadelphia: A. J. Holman Company, 1957.
Lightfoot, J. B. and J. R. Harmar. The Apostolic Fathers: Greek and English. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988.
New King James Version (NKJV). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publisher, 1982.
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James Trimm
Those arguing a Greek origin for the NT will often claim that the NT quotes the Greek LXX "Old Testament".
Actually this is mainly a tendency of the Greek NT. The Hebrew and Aramaic mss. tend to find agreement with the Masoretic Text and the Pedangta Aramaic Tanak. 2) Agreements with the LXX do
not prove the LXX is being quoted. Hebrew copies of Tanak books have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls that agree with the LXX. Such agreements may be the result of these types of Hebrew manuscripts rather than any dependence on the Greek LXX.
It has often been claimed by the Hellenists, that the several quotes in the Greek New Testament which agree with the LXX prove the Greek origin of the New Testament. This argument is faulty however,
for two important reasons.
First of all, the premise of this argument presumes the conclusion to be true. It is only in the Greek New Testament that such neat agreements with the LXX occur. Hebrew Matthew (Shem Tob and DuTillet) tends to agree with the Masoretic Text, While the Aramaic versions of New Testament books (Old Syriac Gospels, Pedangta New Testament and Crawford Revelation) tend to agree in many places
with the Pedangta Old Testament.
In fact the 4th century "Church Father" Jerome esentially admitted that the Greek translaers had inserted the LXX readings into the Greek NT. As we had noted earlier Jerome wrote:
"Matthew, who is also Levi, and from a tax collector came to
be an emissary first of all evangelists composed a Gospel of
Messiah in Judea in the Hebrew language and letters, for the
benefit of those of the circumcision who had believed, who
translated it into Greek is not sufficiently ascertained.
Furthermore, the Hebrew itself is preserved to this day in
the library at Caesarea, which the martyr Pamphilus so diligently
collected. I also was allowed by the Nazarenes who use this
volume in the Syrian city of Borea to copy it. In which is to
be remarked that, wherever the evangelist... makes use of the
testimonies of the Old Scripture, he does not follow the
authority of the seventy translators [the Greek Septuagint],
but that of the Hebrew."
Here Jerome effectively admits that the Tanak quotes in the original Hebrew of Matthew did NOT agree with the LXX but that the Greek translator had ALTERED the Tanak quotes as they appear in the Greek to agree with the LXX. The Helenists have been caught red handed!
There is evidence of this, not just in the book of Matthew but in every portion of the New Testament, even in the Pauline letters.
The second fault with this argument is that recent discoveries in the Dead Sea Scrolls have produced first century Hebrew mss. of Old Testament books which in places agree with the LXX against the
current Hebrew Text (the Masoretic text) and at times agree with the Pedangta Old Testament against the Masoretic text or the LXX. Thus many, but not all agreements of the New Testament with the LXX may be due to these first century Old Testament texts which contained such agreements.
An examination of four sample Old Testament quotes as they appear in the Aramaic New Testament will demonstrate two important facts. First, the Aramaic text of the Old Syriac and Pedangta New
Testament could not have been translated from the Greek New Testament. Second, the Aramaic New Testament, as we have it today has been altered in some places so as to agree with the Greek.
Heb. 10:5-7 = Ps. 40:7-9 (6-8)
With sacrifices and offerings You are not pleased
But You have clothed me with a body
And burnt offerings which are for sins You have not asked for.
Then I said, Behold I come,
In the beginning of the book it is written concerning me
I will do your will, Eloah.
(from Aramaic)
Here the phrase "But You have clothed me with a body" best agrees with the LXX which has "You have prepared a body for me," a radical departure from the Masoretic Text which has "Ears You have cut/dug for me." However the phrase "In the beginning of the book..." is a unique reading from the Pedangta Old Testament. The Hebrew has "In the roll of the book..." while the LXX has "In the volume of the book..." agreeing with the Greek of Hebrews. Thus, this quote in the Pedangta version of Hebrews is a hybrid text sometimes agreeing with the LXX against the Masoretic Text and Pedangta Old Testament, and sometimes agreeing with the Pedangta Old Testament against both the LXX and the Masoretic Text. In fact this hybrid nature looks just like what such a quote might be
expected to look like, in light of the hybrid texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This quote could not contain agreements with both the LXX and the Pedangta Old Testament if it were translated from the Greek New Testament. If this passage were translated from the Greek it would either have agreed with the LXX only as does the Greek, or inserted the standard Pedangta reading as a substitute. This quote therefore, is not a translation from Greek nor a substitute inserted from the Pedangta Old Testament but is a reading which originated apart from the Greek text.
1Peter 1:24-25 = Isaiah 40:6-8
Because of this all flesh is grass
And all its beauty like a flower of the field
The grass dries up and the flower withers
and the Word of our Eloah abides forever
(from Aramaic)
Here the line "And all its beauty like a flower of the field" agrees with the Pedangta Old Testament and Masoretic Text against the LXX and Greek New Testament which has "and all the glory of man like the flower of grass." In fact this quote agrees with the Pedangta Old Testament exactly except for the omission of Isaiah 40:7 which agrees with the LXX. Like the previous example, it could not have been translated from the Greek text.
Acts 8:32-33 = Isaiah 53:7-8
Like a lamb he was led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep before its shearer is silent,
Even thus he did not open his mouth.
In his humiliation he was led from prison and from judgment,
And who will declare his generation?
because his life has been taken from the earth/land
(from the Aramaic)
In the first two lines the words "lamb" and "sheep" are reversed in the LXX and Greek Acts but not here, where they agree with the Masoretic Text and the Pedangta Old Testament. "from prison" agrees with the Masoretic Text and the Pedangta Old Testament against the LXX, but "In his humiliation" agrees with the LXX against both. The final line contains a special problem. In this line the Pedangta Acts agrees with the LXX and Greek Acts, but this passage could not have merely come from a variant Hebrew text. In this passage the Masoretic Text and the Pedangta Old Testament agree
against the LXX with "He was cut off out of the land of the living." An examination of the two versions makes it clear that the LXX translator misunderstood the Hebrew grammar here and took the
word "life/living" to be a direct object rather than a modifier. Thus this phrase could only have come from the LXX. It is apparent however, because of the agreements with the Masoretic Text and
Pedangta Old Testament against the LXX in the preceding lines, that this quote could not have been translated from the Greek. Thus, we may conclude that the Pedangta New Testament has been revised in
places to agree with the Greek text, as our last example will further demonstrate.
Mt. 4:4 = Deut. 8:3
Man does not live by bread alone,
but by every word which comes from the mouth of YHWH.
The word "God" here in the Greek of Mt. 4:4 and even the Pedangta ARamaic of Mt. 4:4 agrees with the LXX against both the Masoretic Text and the Pedangta Old Testament. It might first appear
that this passage was merely translated from the Greek of Matthew. However, a look at the Old Syriac version, which is recognized by most scholars as the ancestor of the Pedangta has MARYA (which the Aramaic consistently uses for YHWH) in agreement with the Masoretic Text and the Pedangta Old Testament against the LXX. Also the manuscripts of Hebrew Matthew also have YHWH. Thus, it is clear that the Pedangta was revised here to agree with the LXX and the more primitive text of the Old Syriac retains the original, unrevised
reading.
Zech. 12:10 = Jn. 19:37
...they shall look upon me whom they have pierced... (Zech.
12:10)
...they shall look upon him whom they have pierced... (Jn.
19:37)
The origin for this variance between the New Testament and the Old appears to originate in the Aramaic versions.
This is easier to show with Hebraic-Aramaic fonts but I will attempt to demonstrate it without them.
The original Hebrew of this passage (in Zech. 12:10) employs a Hebrew word that cannot be translated into any language including ARamaic. The Hebrew word is ET (alef-tav). This word is a special
preposition which points to the next word as the direct object recieving the action of the verb. If we show the invisible word ET in the text it would look like this:
...they shall look upon me {ET} whom they have pierced...
Now the Aramaic translator of the Aramaic Pedangta Tanak version of Zech 12:10 striving for a word for word translation, translated the untranslatable ET with an Aramaic word meaning "at-him" (attempting to convey the idea of a pointer to the direct object). The result is that the Aramaic Pedangta Tanak has:
...they shall look upon me at-him whom they have pierced...
Now when the quote appears in Yochanan it appears to have passed through another change. The Aramaic of Jn. 19:17 agrees with the Aramaic of Zech 12:10 except for the word meaning "upon-me" which is
omitted. Aparently a later scribe found the phrace "upon-me at-him" to be redundant and dropped the phrase "upon-me" from the quote. Thus both the Aramaic and the Greek of Jn. 19:37 have "at him" and not "upon me" in their quotations of Zech. 12:10.
This change from "upon me" to "at him" can CLEARLY be demonstrated to have occurred in the Aramaic tradition and then to have been TRANSLATED into Greek.
From the above examples it is clear that Old Testament quotes as they appear in the Aramaic New Testament demonstrate that the Pedangta New Testament could not have been simply translated from
Greek as the Hellenists claim.
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Mark Sanguinetti
http://www.dtl.org/bible/article/language/part_two.htm
The Original Language of the New Testament
Part Two
By Gary F. Zeolla
In Part One on this article, it was stated that some claim the New Testament (NT) was not originally written in Greek as is commonly believed. They claim the NT was actually originally written in Aramaic. One major proponent of this view was George Lamsa, as seen in the introduction to his Lamsa's Bible.
However, it was shown in Part One that the NT writers knew Greek and most likely were writing in Greek from their use of the Septuagint and from information contained within the NT. This second part of this two-part article will continue this discussion.
Note: All Scripture references are taken from the Analytical-Literal Translation of the New Testament: Second Edition (ALT).
The Language of the Early Church
Lamsa was quoted in Part One as claiming, "For several centuries, the Christian movement was directed and guided by the Jews." (p.xi). But there is much evidence within the pages of the NT, particularly in the Book of Acts, that his was not the case. Very early in time, the Church became more and more Greek, not Jewish.
This can be seen starting with Acts 6:
1And in these days, the disciples increasing [in number], there came to be a complaint from the Hellenists [fig., Greek-speaking Jews] towards the Hebrews [fig., Aramaic-speaking Jews], because their widows were being overlooked in the daily service [fig., distribution of food]. 2So the twelve having summoned the congregation of the disciples, said, "It is not desirable [for] us, having left the word of God, to be serving tables. 3Therefore, brothers [and sisters], look for seven men from [among] you*, being well spoken of, full of [the] Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we shall appoint over this need [or, necessity]. 4But we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word."
5And the word was pleasing before the whole congregation. And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of [the] Holy Spirit, and Philip and Prochorus and Nicanor and Timon and Parmenas and Nicolaus, a proselyte [i.e. convert to Judaism] from Antioch, 6whom they set before the apostles. And having prayed, they laid [their] hands on them.
7And the word of God kept spreading, and the number of the disciples kept being increased greatly in Jerusalem, and a large crowd of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith.
I quoted this passage through verse 7 to show that this dispute occurred in Jerusalem. So it was while the Church was still mainly found in Jerusalem that there was a sufficient number of Greek-speaking Jews as to cause problems within the congregation. And once the Gospel began to spread beyond Jerusalem, the number of Greek-speaking Jews entering the Church continued to grow.
19Then indeed the ones having been scattered because of the affliction [or, persecution], the one having occurred over Stephen, passed through as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except to Jews only. 20But some of them were male Cyprians and Cyrenians, who having entered into Antioch, began speaking to the Hellenists [fig., Greek-speaking Jews], proclaiming the Gospel of the Lord Jesus. 21And [the] hand of [the] Lord was with them, and a large number having believed turned to the Lord (Acts 11:19-21).
About this time, a major change occurred in the Church. Rather than the Gospel only being proclaimed to Jews, it began to be proclaimed to Gentiles. This began with Peter proclaiming the Gospel to Cornelius.
1Now [there] was a certain man in Caesarea, by name Cornelius, a centurion of a garrison [of soldiers], the one being called Italian [fig., a captain of the Italian Regiment], 2devout and fearing God [i.e. a worshipper of the one true God, but not a full convert to Judaism, also called "God-worshiping"] together with all his house, and doing [or, giving] many charitable gifts to the people and imploring God through all [fig. continually]….
34Then Peter having opened his mouth, said, "Truly, I comprehend that God is not One to accept faces [fig., to be prejudice], 35but in every nation the one fearing Him and working righteousness is acceptable to Him….
44While Peter [was] still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all the ones hearing the word. 45And the believing ones from the circumcision were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because the free gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also. 46For they were hearing them speaking with tongues [fig., other languages] and magnifying God. Then Peter answered, 47"Surely no one is able to forbid the water, can he, [for] these not to be baptized who received the Holy Spirit just as we also [did]?" 48And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord. Then they urgently asked him to stay several days (Acts 10:1,2,34,35, 44-47).
It is very doubtful that Cornelius, a Gentile, knew Aramaic. So this is further proof to add to what was seen in Part One that Peter knew Greek. But more importantly, we now have Gentiles becoming part of the Church. And these Gentiles knew Greek, not Aramaic. And as the Book of Acts continues, it becomes clear that the Church is becoming more and more composed of Greek-speaking people.
1Now it happened in Iconium [that] they entered by the same [way] into the synagogue of the Jews, and they spoke in such a manner [that] a large number of both Jews and Greeks believed (Acts 14:1).
1Then he came to Derbe and Lystra. And look! A certain disciple was there, by name Timothy, a son of a certain believing Jewish woman but of a Greek father, 2who was well spoken of by the brothers [and sisters] in Lystra and Iconium (Acts 16:1,2).
4And some of them believed and were joined with Paul and Silas, both a large number of the God-worshiping Greeks and not a few [fig., a large number] of the first [fig., prominent] women (Acts 17:4)
4Now he was reasoning in the synagogue every Sabbath, and he was persuading Jews and Greeks (Acts 18:4).
10Now this took place for two years, with the result that all the ones living in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks (Acts 19:10).
17Now from Miletus, having sent to Ephesus, he summoned the elders of the assembly. 18Then when they came to him, he said to them, "You* know from [the] first day from which I set foot in Asia how I was with you* all the time, 19serving as a slave to the Lord with all humility and many tears and trials, the [trials] having happened to me by the plots of the Jews; 20how I did not keep back any of the [things] benefiting [you*, but I] declared to you* and taught you* publicly and in every house, 21solemnly testifying both to Jews and to Greeks [about] repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus (Acts 20:17-21).
So it clear that by the time the Book of Acts closes (circa 63 AD), the Church is now composed of just as many if not more Greeks than Jews. And again, many of even the Jews would have been Greek-speaking Jews. So it is safe to say that within a few decades, the Church had more Greek speaking members than Hebrew speaking members. The importance of this will be seen as we look at when the NT books were written.
Dating and "Target Audiences" of NT Books
Lamsa claims, "[The Gospels] were written a few years after the resurrection and some portions were written by Matthew while Jesus was preaching. They were not handed down orally and then written after the Pauline Epistles, as some western scholars say; they were written many years before those Epistles" (p.ix).
As the Church became more and more composed of Greek-speaking Jews and Gentiles rather than Aramaic-speaking Jews, it becomes more likely that the Gospels would have been written in Greek. It simply would make no sense for them to be written in Aramaic if the "target audience" mostly spoke Greek. So Lamsa needs to claim the Gospels were written very early. But his claim goes counter to most any Biblical scholar of today.
This can be seen in the introductions to the Gospels contained in study Bibles and commentaries. They will almost unanimously date the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) to between 50-70 AD. And John's Gospel is usually dated much later, around 90 AD. And it should be noted that these are the dates given by conservative Bible scholars. Liberal scholars would probably date the Gospels even later.
There is not sufficient space in this article to go into all of the proofs given for these dates. So I will refer the reader to any of the wealth of study Bibles and commentaries currently available.
Further is the target audience of the Gospels. Again, information in this regard can be found in study Bibles and commentaries. But it is generally agreed that Matthew was probably directed towards Jews. So a case could be made on this basis that it was written in Aramaic. However, Mark was most likely addressed to Gentiles living in Rome. And Part One of this article discussed that Luke (along with Acts) was addressed to Theophilus, a Gentile (see Luke 1:3; Acts 1:1). So Mark, Luke, and Acts would most logically have been written in Greek.
John's Gospel seems to be the most universal of the Gospels, with his many references to the Gospel being for "the world" (e.g. 1:9-13, 29; 3:16,17; 4:42; 6:14,33,51; 8:12; 9:5; 11:49-52; 12:46; 17:21). With this universal emphasis, it would seem most likely that John would be written in the universal language of the time, which was Greek, not Aramaic.
John's epistles and the Revelation are also generally dated to the 90's AD. And 1John and the Revelation also have a universal aspect to them (e.g. 1John 2:2; Rev 5:9,10; 7:9,10; 14:6,7).
As for Paul, Lamsa claims that his epistles were directed towards Jews. Lamsa writes, "Paul, in nearly all of his epistles, speaks of the Hebrew fathers, subjugation in Egypt, crossing the Red sea, eating manna, and wandering in the desert. This proves beyond a doubt that these letters were written to members of the Hebrew race and not to the Gentile world who knew nothing of Hebrew history and divine promises to them (p.xi).
However, most of Paul's epistles were written to churches that he had founded and had extensive ministry among. And this ministry would have included the teaching of the OT. So even his Gentile readers would have familiar with the OT.
Furthermore, Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles (Gal 2:9). He always presented the Gospel "to the Jew first" (Romans 1:16); but invariably, the Jews for the most part would reject the Gospel, so Paul then turned to the Gentiles (e.g. Acts 13:46). So the churches he directed his epistles towards would have been primarily made up of Gentiles.
Moreover, there were many Greek-speaking Jews outside of Jerusalem. So many of even Paul's Jewish converts mostly likely spoke Greek. So the majority of the readers of Paul's epistle would have spoken Greek. All of this argues for Paul writing his epistles in Greek.
That leaves the general epistles. I've already mentioned about John's epistles. The rest were written between 50-70 AD. So my comments about the synoptic Gospels would apply here.
Now Peter was the apostle to the circumcision, but he would have been writing to Jews outside of Judea. This can be seen from his reference to "the Dispersion" (1:1). As I indicate in the ALT, this is the scattering of Jews outside of Judea. And as was discussed previously, Jews outside of Judea were more likely to be speaking Greek than Aramaic. Peter also mentions about his being "in Babylon" (5:13). Opinions vary as to what city Peter meant by this, but it most definitely was not in Judea.
James is possibly the earliest book of the NT to be written, and it most likely was written to Jews. But these were "scattered abroad" (1:1). So they also would have been living outside of Judea.
Jude is closely related to 2Peter. Which came first is a matter of debate. But both books appear to have been somewhat later, in the 60's AD.
So overall, the dating of the NT books and their target audiences strongly argue for them being written in Greek not Aramaic. Again, much more on these points can be found in study Bibles and commentaries.
Manuscript Evidence
There are over 5000 extant Greek manuscripts of the NT. And some of these date to the early second century. Meanwhile, only a handful of Aramaic texts exist, and these date from the fourth to the seventh centuries (Aland, pp. xxxiv-xxxv). With this limited amount of manuscript evidence, it is hard to determine the original Aramaic text.
Believing in the providence of God as I do, this would be a rather intolerable situation. What God has preserved for us is a wealth of Greek manuscripts. And through textual criticism we can determine very accurately what the original Greek NT contained. See my book Differences Between Bible Version for much in this regard.
Matthew 19:24
One last claim Lamsa makes is that there are verses that don't make much sense in the Greek text but that make more sense in the Aramaic. He claims this is due to the Greek text having been "mistranslated" from the Aramaic.
One such example he gives is Matthew 19:24, "Now again I say to you*, it is easier [for] a camel to pass through an eye of a needle, than [for] a rich [person] to enter into the kingdom of God."
Lamsa states that the Aramaic word for "camel" resembles the word for "rope." So he claims the original Aramaic had "rope" but the alleged translator mistook the word and rendered it as "camel." So his implication is that "rope" makes more sense here than "camel."
But the use of "camel" in this verse makes perfect sense. Jesus was using hyperbole by referring to the largest animal in Judea and how ridiculous it would be to try to thread it through a needle. He uses a similar hyperbole when He declares to the Pharisees, "Blind guides! The ones straining out the gnat, but swallowing the camel! (Matt 23:24).
Conclusion
Overall, the only book of the NT for which there is any significant possible evidence of an Aramaic original is Matthew. But even then, there are good contrary arguments. But for the rest of the NT, the evidence strongly supports what is generally taught and believed in the Church, that the NT was originally written in Greek. It is for this reason that so many in Church history have taken the time to learn Greek.
And feeling it is important for even non-Greek readers to get as close as possible to this original Greek text, I translated my Analytical-Literal Translation of the New Testament. If I hadn't believed in the originality and importance of the Greek text, I would not put in the time and effort involved in producing this translation.
References:
All Scripture references taken from the Analytical-Literal Translation of the New Testament of the Holy Bible: Second Edition. Copyright © 2005 by Gary F. Zeolla of Darkness to Light ministry (www.dtl.org). Previously copyrighted © 1999, 2001 by Gary F. Zeolla.
Aland, Kurt, et. al. The Greek New Testament: Third Corrected Edition. Federal Republic of Germany: United Bible Societies, 1983.
Barker, Kenneth, general editor. The NIV Study Bible. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1985.
Carson, D. A. Matthew in The Expositor's Bible Commentary (Vol. 8). Frank E. Gaebelein, general editor. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1985 And other volumes in Expositor's.
Lamsa, George M. The Holy Bible from Ancient Eastern Manuscripts (a.k.a. Lamsa's Bible). Philadelphia: A. J. Holman Company, 1957.
Sproul, R. C. general editor. New Geneva Study Bible. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1995.
The above article originally appeared in the free Darkness to Light newsletter.
It was posted on this Web site in May 2, 2005.
Edited by Mark SanguinettiLink to comment
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James Trimm
TOP 10 REASONS GIVEN BY GREEK PRIMACISTS FOR MAINTAINING A GREEK
ORIGIN FOR THE NEW TESTAMENT
(and the 10 reasons they are wrong on each account)
1. The oldest manuscripts are Greek.
RESPONSE:
Yes it is true that our oldest Hebrew copies of Matthew and Hebrews
(the only NT books we have in Hebrew) only date back to the middle
ages. And it is true that our oldest Aramaic copies of New Testament
books date back to the 4th century C.E..
However there are some important facts that those making the above
argument fail to account for.
To begin with, prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947
our oldest Hebrew copies of any Tanak ("Old Testament") books dated
back
only to the Middle Ages. And our oldest copies of any Tanak books
were Greek LXX copies from the fourth century. Yet no one would have
argued that this pointed to a Greek origin for the Tanak.
Since no copies of Ester were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, our
oldest copies of Ester are still Greek LXX copies from the 4th
century. And our oldest copies of Ester in Hebrew only date back to
the
Middle Ages. Yet this does not in any way indicate that the original
language of Ester was Greek.
The time-lapse from the time of the composition of the Book of Ester
to our oldest Hebrew copies of Ester is about 1,500 years. This is
about the same as the time lapse from the composition of Matthew to
our oldest Hebrew copies of Matthew. So the fact that our oldest
Hebrew copy of Matthew dates to about 1,500 years after the initial
composition of Matthew does NOT negate the Hebrew from being the
original.
Although there have been no Papyri fragments of Hebrew Matthew found
among the Christian Papyri fragments there have also been no Papyri
fragments of Hebrew Isaiah or of the Hebrew of any of the other "Old
Testament" books found among them. The only Hebrew Papyri fragments
of Tanak books have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls and not
among any
discoveries of Christian Papyri fragments. Why should we expect
Hebrew
Matthew (or any Hebrew or Aramaic NT books) to have been better
preserved than the Hebrew Tanak? Whoever were the owners of the NT
Papyri fragments we have found clearly had no copies of ANY Hebrew
books of the Bible at all even from the "Old Testament" books which
we know were composed in Hebrew. So the fact that we have found no
Hebrew or Aramaic copies of NT books among them is no more
significant than the fact that we find no Hebrew copies of "Old
Testament" books among them.
The oldest Greek Papyri fragment of any NT book is P52 which is a
fragment of a few verses of John. The word order of this fragment
agrees with the Greek Western Type of text which has close agreement
with the Aramaic Old Syriac text.
Our oldest **complete** Greek manuscripts of NT books date to the
fourth century and that is also the age of our oldest coplete Aramaic
manuscripts of NT books.
The Hebrew and Aramaic origin of the New Testament cannot be
dismissed or disproven by the existence of Greek papyri fragments
that predate the oldest Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts.
2. The NT quotes the Greek LXX "Old Testament".
RESPONSE: 1) Actually this is mainly a tendency of the Greek NT.
The Hebrew and Aramaic mss. tend to find agreement with the Masoretic
Text and the Pedangta Aramaic Tanak. 2) Agreements with the LXX do
not prove the LXX is being quoted. Hebrew copies of Tanak books have
been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls that agree with the LXX. Such
agreements may be the result of these types of Hebrew manuscripts
rather than any dependence on the Greek LXX.
3. Testimonials "Such-and-such scholar said so".
RESPONSE: These do not prove anything. In fact once can also quote
various scholars which have declared that parts or all of the NT were
written in Hebrew or Aramaic.
4. Luke was a Greek who would have written in Greek.
RESPONSE: Actually Luke was a Syrian of Antioch (Eusebius; Eccl.
Hist. 3:4) so his native language would have been Syriac, an Aramaic
dialect.
5. Luke and Acts were written to a Greek named "Theophilus".
RESPONSE: Actually Theophilus was a Jew who had been High Priest from
37-41 CE (Josephus; Ant. 18:5:3). A Syrian convert to Judaism such
as Luke would likely have written the High Priest in Aramaic.
6. Greek was the common language of Jews at the time.
RESPONSE:
The first century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37-c.100 C.E.)
testifies to the fact that Hebrew was the language of first century
Jews. Moreover, he testifies that Hebrew, and not Greek, was the
language of his place and time. Josephus gives us the only first
hand account of the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. According
to Josephus, the Romans had to have him translate the call to the
Jews to surrender into "their own language" (Wars 5:9:2) . Josephus
gives us a point-blank statement regarding the language of his people
during his time:
I have also taken a great deal of pains
to obtain the learning of the Greeks,
and understanding the elements of the Greek
language although I have so long accustomed
myself to speak our own language, that I cannot
pronounce Greek with sufficient exactness:
for our nation does not encourage those
that learn the languages of many nations.
(Ant. 20:11:2)
Thus, Josephus makes it clear that first century Jews could not even
speak or understand Greek, but spoke "their own language."
Confirmation of Josephus's claims has been found by Archaeologists.
The Bar Kokhba coins are one example. These coins were struck by
Jews during the Bar Kokhba revolt (c. 132 C.E.). All of these coins
bear only Hebrew inscriptions. Countless other inscriptions found at
excavations of the Temple Mount, Masada and various Jewish tombs,
have revealed first century Hebrew inscriptions
Even more profound evidence that Hebrew was a living language
during the first century may be found in ancient Documents from about
that time, which have been discovered in Israel. These include the
Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Bar Kokhba letters.
The Dead Sea Scolls consist of over 40,000 fragments of more
than 500 scrolls dating from 250 B.C.E . to 70 C.E.. Theses Scrolls
are primarily in Hebrew and Aramaic. A large number of the "secular
scrolls" (those which are not Bible manuscripts) are in Hebrew.
The Bar Kokhba letters are letters beteween Simon Bar Kokhba
and his army, written during the Jewish revolt of 132 C.E.. These
letters were discovered by Yigdale Yadin in 1961 and are almost all
written in Hebrew and Aramaic. Two of the letters are written in
Greek, both were written by men with Greek names to Bar Kokhba. One
of the two Greek letters actually apologizes for writing to Bar
Kokhba in Greek, saying "the letter is written in Greek, as we have
no one who knows Hebrew here."
The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bar Kokhba letters not only
include first and second century Hebrew documents, but give an even
more significant evidence in the dialect of that Hebrew. The dialect
of these documents was not the Biblical Hebrew of the Tenach (Old
Testament), nor was it the Mishnaic Hebrew of the Mishna (c. 220
C.E.). The Hebrew of these documents is coloquial, it is a fluid
living language in a state of flux somewhere in the evolutionary
process from Biblical to Mishnaic Hebrew. Moreover, the Hebrew of
the Bar Kokhba letters represents Galilean Hebrew (Bar Kokhba was a
Galilean) , while the Dead Sea Scrolls give us an example of Judean
Hebrew. Comparing the documents shows a living distinction of
geographic dialect as well, a sure sign that Hebrew was not a dead
language.
Final evidence that first century Jews conversed in Hebrew
and Aramaic can be found in other documents of the period, and even
later. These include: the Roll Concerning Fasts in Aramaic (66-70
C.E.), The Letter of Gamaliel in Aramaic (c. 30 - 110 C.E.), Wars
of the Jews by Josephus in Hebrew (c. 75 C.E.), the Mishna in
Hebrew (c. 220 C.E.) and the Gemara in Aramaic (c. 500 C.E.)
But regarding Paul's letters to the diaporia, Aramaic is the issue.
It is known that Aramaic remained a language of Jews living in the
diasporia, and in fact Jewish Aramaic inscriptions have been found at
Rome, Pompei and even England.
(see Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology "Note on a
Bilingual Inscription in Latin and Aramaic Recently Found at South
Shields"; A. Lowy' Dec. 3, 1878; pp. 11-12; "Five Transliterated
Aramaic Inscriptions" The American Journal of Archaeology; W.R.
Newbold; 1926; Vol. 30; pp. 288ff)
7. Paul was a helenist and would have written in Greek.
RESPONSE:
In addressing the issue of the Pauline Epistles, we must first
examine the background of Tarsus. Was Tarsus a Greek speaking city?
Would Paul have learned Greek there? Tarsus probably began as a
Hittite city-state. Around 850 B.C.E. Tarsus became part of the
great Assyrian Empire. When the Assyrian Empire was conqured by the
Babylonian Empire around 605 B.C.E. Tarsus became a part of that
Empire as well. Then, in 540 B.C.E. The Babylonian Empire, including
Tarsus, was incorporated into the Persian Empire. Aramaic was the
chief language of all three of these great Empires. By the first
century Aramaic remained a primary language of Tarsus. Coins struck
at Tarsus and recovered by archaeologists have Aramaic inscriptions
on them .
Regardless of the language of Tarsus, there is also great
question as to if Paul was actually brought up in Tarsus or just
incidentally born there. The key text in question is Acts 22:3:
I am indeed a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city of Cilicia,
but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel,
taught according to the strictness of our father's Torah.
and was zealous toward God as you all are today.
Paul sees his birth at Tarsus as irrelevant and points to his
being "brought up" in Jerusalem. Much argument has been given by
scholars to this term "brought up" as it appears here. Some have
argued that it refers only to Paul's adolescent years. A key,
however, to the usage of the term may be found in a somewhat
parrallel passage in Acts 7:20-23:
At this time Moses was born, and was well pleasing to God;
and he was brought up in his father's house for three months.
And when he was set out, Pharaoh's daughter took him away
and brought him up as her own son.
And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians...
Note the sequence; "born" (Greek = gennao; Aramaic =
ityiled); "brought up" (Greek = anatrepho; Aramaic =
itrabi); "learned/taught" (Greek = paideuo; Aramaic = itr'di).
Through this parallel sequence which presumably was idiomatic in the
language, we can see that Paul was born at Tarsus, raised in
Jerusalem, and then taught. Paul's entire context is that his being
raised in Jerusalem is his primary upbringing, and that he was merely
born at Tarsus.
The claim that Paul was a Hellenist is also a
misunderstanding that should be dealt with. As we have already seen,
Paul was born at Tarsus, a city where Aramaic was spoken. Whatever
Hellenist influences may have been at Tarsus, Paul seems to have left
there at a very early age and been "brought up" in Jerusalem. Paul
describes himself as a "Hebrew" (2Cor. 11:2) and a "Hebrew of
Hebrews" (Phil. 3:5), and "of the tribe of Benjamin" (Rom. 11:1). It
is important to realize how the term "Hebrew" was used in the first
century. The term Hebrew was not used as a geneological term, but as
a cultural/linguistic term. An example of this can be found in Acts
6:1 were a dispute arises between the "Hebrews" and
the "Hellenists." Most scholars agree that the "Hellenists" here are
Hellenist Jews. No evangelistic efforts had yet been made toward non-
Jews (Acts 11:19) much less Greeks (see Acts 16:6-10). In Acts 6:1 a
clear contrast is made between Hellenists and Hebrews which are
clearly non-Hellenists. Hellenists were not called Hebrews, a term
reserved for non-Hellenist Jews. When Paul calls himself a "Hebrew"
he is claiming to be a non-Hellenist, and when he calls himself
a "Hebrew of Hebrews" he is claiming to be strongly non-Hellenist.
This would explain why Paul disputed against the Hellenists and why
they attempted to kill him (Acts. 9:29) and why he escaped to Tarsus
(Acts 9:30). If there was no non-Hellenist Jewish population in
Tarsus, this would have been a very bad move.
Paul's Pharisee background gives us further reason to doubt
that he was in any way a Hellenist. Paul claimed to be a "Pharisee,
the son of a Pharisee" (Acts 23:6) meaning that he was at least a
second generation Pharisee. The Aramaic text, as well as some Greek
mss. have "Pharisee the son of Pharisees," a Semitic idiomatic
expresion meaning a third generation Pharisee. If Paul were a second
or third generation Pharisee, it would be difficult to accept that he
had been raised up as a Hellenist. Pharisees were staunchly opposed
to Hellenism. Paul's claim to be a second or third generation
Pharisee is further amplified by his claim to have been a student of
Gamliel (Acts 22:3). Gamliel was the grandson of Hillel and the head
of the school of Hillel. He was so well respected that the Mishna
states that upon his death "the glory of the Torah ceased, and purity
and modesty died." The truth of Paul's claim to have studied under
Gamliel is witnessed by Paul's constant use of Hillelian
Hermaneutics. Paul makes extensive use, for example, of the first
rule of Hillel. It is an unlikely proposition that a Hellenist would
have studied under Gamliel at the school of Hillel, then the center
of Pharisaic Judaism.
8. Paul wrote to groups in their own languages.
RESPONSE:
Paul's audience is another element which must be considered when
tracing the origins of his Epistles. Paul's Epistles were addressed
to various congregations in the diasporia. These congregations were
mixed groups made up of a core group of Jews and a complimentary
group of Gentiles. The Thessalonian congregation was just such an
assembly (Acts 17:1-4) as were the Corinthians. Certain passages in
the Corinthian Epistles are clearly aimed exclusively at Jews (1Cor.
10:1-2 for example.) Paul was writing first and foremost to the
Jewish leadership of mixed congregations.
If Paul wrote his Epistle's in Aramaic to a core group of Jews at
each congregation who then passed the message on to their Gentile
counterparts then this might give some added dimension to Paul's
phrase "to the Jew first and then to the Greek" (Rom. 1:16; 2:9-
10). It would also shed more light on the passage which Paul writes:
What advantage then has the Jew,
or what is the profit of circumcision?
Much in every way!
To them first, were committed the Words of God.
- Rom. 3:1-2
One final issue which must be discussed regarding the origin of
Paul's Epistles, is their intended purpose. It appears that Paul
intended the purpose of his Epistles to be:
1) To be read in the Congregations (Col. 4:16; 1Thes. 5:27)
2) To have doctrinal authority (1Cor. 14:37)
All Synagogue liturgy during the Second Temple era, was in Hebrew and
Aramaic (see The Words of Jesus By Gustaf Dalman; Edinburg, England;
1909) Paul would not have written material which he intended to be
read in the congregations in any other language. Moreover all
religious writings of Jews which claimed halachic (doctrinal)
authority, were written in Hebrew or Aramaic. Paul could not have
expected that his Epistles would be accepted as having the authority
he claimed for them, without having written them in Hebrew or
Aramaic.
9. There are built in explainations of Hebrew and Aramaic words in
the NT and there would not be if it had been written in Hebrew and/or
Aramaic.
RESPONSES: These "expanations" are an added feature to the Greek
translations and are not a feature of the Hebrew and Aramaic texts.
10. The NT was written for use by Gentiles and Gentiles of the time
spoke Greek.
RESPONSE: The original believers in Yeshua were Jews. The first
gentile "Christians" were centered at Antioch in SYRIA (Acts
11:26). Syrians spoke Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic. These "first"
groups would have had a need for Scriptures in Hebrew and Aramaic.
Even *IF* parts of the NT were intended for gentiles, this does not
mean they were initially Greek speaking Gentiles. To the contrary
the ealiest Gentile believers were Aramaic speaking Syrians and
Assyrians.
MATTHEW - Written according to Origen "for the Jewish believers...
in Hebrew" (Origen quoted by Eusebius; Eccl. Hist. 6:25) and
according to Jerome "in Hebrew... for the benifit of those of the
circumcision who had believed" (Jerome; Of Illustrius Men 3). This
book may have been addressed to Pharisees.
MARK - Mark probably wrote his Gospel for use by Gentile Assyrians
he encountered while in Babylon with Kefa (Peter) (1Kefa 5:13).
LUKE/ACTS - Luke a Syrian (Eccl. Hist. 3:4) wrote his Gospel to
Theophilus who had been the Jewish High Priest from 37-41 CE
(Josephus; Ant. 18:5:3).
YOCHANAN - To the "chosen lady" (2Jn. 1:1) a euphamism for Israel.
Yochanan (John) probably wrote his "mystical" Gospel to
the "mystical" Essene sect of Jews.
JAKOV (JAMES) - "to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad"
(James 1:1)
KEFA (Peter) - "to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus,
Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, the Chosen..." (1Pt. 1:1-2)
I.E. The scattered Chosen people, Israel.
Y'HUDAH (Jude) - Probably written to the Jews.
PAULINE EPISTLES (Except Hebrews) - Written to core groups of Jewish
leaders in mixxed congregations throughout the world. For example
1Corinthians is written to a group whose "fathers were under the
cloud and all passed through the sea; and were all baptized unto
Moses in the cloud and in the sea" (1Cor. 10:1-2) These would be
Jewish Corinthians not native Corinthians.
Hebrews - Obviously written to Jews.
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chockfull
So critical textualism is an interesting field, and from my observations is kind of a combination of anthropology, archaeology, and theology.
One interesting thing to consider when going back and forth over which was the "original" language of the NT is from an anthropology type viewpoint. Many of the people of that time were bilingual and trilingual. We certainly have fine examples of this today in many regions of the world. Europeans typically speak 2 or 3 languages. Residents of India usually speak at least a local dialect and English in school. And there are so many more examples.
In NT times from what I have put together from anthropology readings, like those done by Alfred Edersheim, is that the languages around Jerusalem during the Messiah's time seems to have been Aramaiac for everyday conversation, Hebrew for the educated, and Greek was the occupied language as well as the language of business or trade. Most of the 12 apostles would have spoken mostly Aramaiac. Few of those would have had a great deal of education, so Hebrew would have been less understood. And Greek would have been understood less, used functionally to interact with local government and probably the business or trade language locally. It is no stretch that writings by these would most likely have been Aramaiac. Also, later letters in the NT such as Hebrews and James, just by their content and who they address were most likely written in Hebrew.
Paul/Saul himself was very unique from a language perspective. He was not a Greek native, as clearly mentioned in one of his letters to Timothy who was half Greek. The common speculation was that Timothy assisted Paul in original Greek translation work. Paul was highly educated under Gamaliel, so had the education, language and background to speak, write, lecture in Hebrew, and did consistently in his travels. He undoubtedly spoke Aramaiac as part of the common language at home. However, Tarsus as a city was on a trade route in the Greek world, so it is highly probably that Paul growing up would also have been exposed to more Greek in the business world than someone raised elsewhere. He was "free born", meaning Greek citizenship. Paul was most likely trilingual and possibly spoke more languages than that. He also in his philosophy of travels stated that he "became all things to all men". Undoubtedly this practice would have carried over into the language realm. It is not a stretch of the imagination to picture that Paul's letters to primarily Greek cities of converts, like Corinth, Romans, Philippi, Colosse would have logically been penned in Greek first. They were to primarily Greek speaking converts. Some of the other cities it may not be so clear. Possibly those letters may have been Aramaiac originally. And as they were encouraged to be passed around surely they would have been translated back and forth as they were passed.
The gospel writers most textualists place as doing that work as a history book written around 90 - 100AD. At least 3 of them with the exception of the physician it's highly likely they did their work in Aramaiac first. Luke's work has some aspects of phrasing that are poetic / subtle in the Greek that leads at least me to believe it was likely to have been done in Greek first as opposed to Aramaiac, as translated works many times don't evidence that. But that is just IMO personally.
Either way with respect to us today, it is highly likely that the versions we have access to may have been translated back and forth between more than one language.
And then there's the Gideons, whose mission is to translate it into local language and place it near the traveler. Interpretation and reading is up to the traveler.
Just a few culture and common sense points to consider in discussion.
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WordWolf
James,
you've been pasting a LOT on a few subjects.
I'd like to point out something.
This is the board of twi SURVIVORS, where people learn (if they didn't learn it sooner)
that the person who most pushed the Aramaic primacy in their experience was an
evil, error-ridden fraud. This automatically predisposes most of the posters
to be suspicious of anything and everything they said.
That means that, if you're looking for people to agree with you,
this is another board where you're going to post and post and barely see any agreement.
Whether you want people to agree with you because you think you're right, or because
it means more book sales, or it means more people looking to you as some authority,
you're looking at "diminishing returns"- especially because you're inspiring the
"too long, didn't read" phenomenon. Coming from me, a notice that someone is posting
too long really should tell you something...
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cman
Thanks WordWolf, well said.
Usually I will skip a post that is twice as long as my screen.
Although I will read those from some members here.
These super large paragraphs make eyes glaze over though.
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soul searcher
I'm certainly not reading them.
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James Trimm
I am actually trying to keep my own posts short at this point, unless I am responding to a long post. (And there were two of those recently).
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Mark Sanguinetti
Some of the longer posts are difficult to read and perhaps bias towards a certain viewpoint. However, some long posts are easier to read, yet scholarly while exhibiting a non-bias approach.
And frankly, I am just amazed at all the bible scholars and researchers on the internet who cover this subject. And all I had to do to research this is type in a search engine "what language was the New Testament originally written in?"
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James Trimm
Now while many of the emissaries were spreading the Messianic movement eastward, Paul was taking the movement into the Western world. From his headquarters at Antioch, the capitol of Syria, Paul conducted several missionary journeys into Europe. At this time there came a need for Greek versions of New Testament books. As time progressed several events occurred which resulted in a great rise of anti-Semitism in the West. This began when the Jews revolted against the Roman Empire in 70 C.E.. A second revolt by Jews in Egypt occurred in 116 C.E.. Things were further complicated by the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132 C.E.. In the Roman Empire anti-Semitism became very popular, and even patriotic. In the West, Gentile Christianity sought to distance itself from Judaism and Jewish customs. The Greek text began to be favored over the Semitic text and many Semitic writings were subsequently destroyed. By 325 C.E. anti-Semitism and the priority given in the West to the Greek Scriptures had solidified. Constantine invaded Rome, making himself emperor. Constantine proclaimed Christianity to be the Catholic (universal) religion, thus making Christianity the enforced state religion of the Roman Empire. Before this occurred one could be killed for being a Christian, afterward one could be killed for not being a "Christian." Constantine, who was an anti-Semite, called the council of Nicea in 325 C.E. to standardize Christianity. Jews were excluded from the meeting. Jewish practices were officially banned and the Greek translations officially replaced the original Semitic Scriptures.
Having alienated the Jewish Nazarenes in 325 at the Council of Nicea, subsequent councils alienated the Assyrians and Syrians over Christological debates. The Nestorian Assyrians were alienated in 431 C.E. at the Council of Ephesus while the Jacobite Syrians were alienated in 451 C.E. at the Council of Chalcedon. The division between the Semitic peoples of the Near East, and the Roman Catholic Church grew ever steeper. With the rise of Islam in the Near East the Near Eastern Christians were even further separated from their European counterparts in the West. Relations between the Christian West and the Islamic Near East were non-existent. As time progressed, in the West the Roman Catholic Church began to suppress the Scriptures in Europe. Those who would try to make the Scriptures available to the common man were often burned alive. Such suppression was impossible in the Near East, where the Scriptures were already in Aramaic, the common language of the people. When the Protestant reformation emerged, claiming the Greek New Testament as the original, it was a time when most Europeans were not even aware that an Aramaic version existed.
It was in this atmosphere, in 1516 that the first printed edition of the Greek New Testament was published in Europe. This edition, published by Erasmus, would become known as the Textus Receptus, and serve as the standard Greek text until the 19th Century. The first edition of this work was based solely on six manuscripts, while later editions used only ten. None of these manuscripts were complete, and only one was even particularly old, dating to the tenth century. Since none of his manuscripts were complete, Erasmus was forced to invent many of his Greek portions of Revelation by translating from the Latin Vulgate into Greek. It was this poor edition which served as the evidence by which the West would embrace the Greek as the original. This edition would later serve as the basis for the King James Version.
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Mark Sanguinetti
Where are you copying and pasting your information from James?
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James Trimm
From my own writings, past posts on the internet and from my book.
Much of the material can be found (along with much more detailed, documented, internal and external evidence) in my book:
The Hebrew and Aramaic Origin of the New Testament
http://www.lulu.com/nazarene
also some of it is in the introduction to:
the Hebraic Roots Version Scriptures
Printed edition:
http://www.isr-messianic.org/pubs/hrv.shtml
Etext:
http://www.lulu.com/nazarene
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johnj
The disciples were first called "Christians" in Antioch. "Christ-ians" is a Greek word. If the believers were speaking Aramaic and Luke was writing in Aramaic, they would have been called "Messianians." This was a name for the group, and as such it would not have been changed to "Christians" even if it was first written in Aramaic and translated to Greek. The believers at Antioch are clearly called "Greeks," not "core group of Aramaic speaking Jews" as James calls them (Acts 10:20).
Much has been made of Josephus. But by the time he wrote, the Hebrews as a society were virtually dead (and most of their language users with it). At the fall of the temple in 69 AD, literally one half of the 2 million population of Israel were dead as a result of the war. The slash and burn strategy of the Romans made much of the country unlivable. They literally burned and uprooted every house, building and tree over many square miles. Politically, it's a language of disgraced losers-- something the Romans actually put on coins.(The coins say, "Judea captive")
If Acts had been first written in Aramaic, most of the conversations in it would have to have been translated from Greek.
Paul's trials before Festus, Felix, Gallio, Sergius Paulus had to have been in Greek. Romans rulers don't know (nor want to know) Aramaic. The riot in the Ephesus theater after Paul's healing of a fortune teller was certainly in Greek. Cornelius the centurion was certainly not a Jew and would not have known Aramaic. He and his friends are clearly called "Gentiles." Nor did the Greeks in Antioch who first accepted the Gospel, who are clearly called "Greeks." The Romans soldier who rescued Paul spoke Greek and Paul had no trouble defending himself in Greek. Paul's nephew spoke to a Roman commander about the Jews' plot to kill Paul in Greek, the nephew apparently fluent. Paul spoke to the centurion and soldiers of the Imperial Regiment on ship on his way to Rome. After the shipwreck, Paul spoke to Publius, the chief of Malta, and the Maltese, again in Greek. When Paul gave up on the Jews at Corinth and said he was going to the Gentiles, they would not have known Aramaic. Throughout the book of Acts, both before and After Paul began his mission trips, the vast majority of the conversations recorded were clearly with Gentiles who could not have known any semitic language.It would make no sense for the vast majority of the original events in the book of Acts to have occurred in Greek and written down after the start of the Roman-Jewish war by a guy (Luke) with a Greek name to another guy with a Greek name (who no one can verify was a Jew of any kind) and yet be recorded in a language (Aramaic) foreign to them all.
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year2027
God first
thanks everybody
what it matter whether Aramaic was the Language
because there no is nothing but copy of copies
what did Moses speak?
did not Moses go a Egyptian school?
was Moses raise by Egyptian people?
are you studying Egyptian along side of Aramaic?
with love and a holy kiss Roy
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James Trimm
I assume you refer to Acts 11:20 not 10:20. Yes it says they were first CALLED "Christians" at Antioch. In other words someone else was calling them that. Who was the someone else? Well they were in Antioch (capitol of Syria) where the native tongue was Syriac (Aramaic) so these would have been Hellenists or Roman Soldiers.
Here are some interesting facts about the term "Christian(s)"
1. It appears only three times in the entire Bible.
2. No believer is ever described as calling themselves a Christian. It appears to have been a derogatory term used by non-believers.
3. Paul never uses the term. It never appears in any of his letters, and it never passes from his lips in Acts. Though in Acts he does identify himself as a Pharisee.
This is simply false. In fact the Jews of Judea revolted again in 132 CE with a three year success i which they even minted their own currency... with Hebrew inscriptions on them.
The question of the Luke/Acts tradition holds particular interest to us. This is because the common wisdom has been to portray Luke as a Greek speaking, Greek writing Gentile who wrote his account to the Gentiles. The reality of the matter is (whether Luke himself knew Greek or not) that Luke was most certainly written in a Semitic language. as Charles Cutler Torrey states:
In regard to Lk. it remains to be said, that of all the Four Gospels it is the one which gives by far the plainest and most constant evidence of being a translation.
- C.C. Torrey; Our Translated Gospels p. lix
It is commonly argued that Luke was a Greek who would have written in Greek.
Actually Luke was a Syrian of Antioch (Eusebius; Eccl. Hist. 3:4) so his native language would have been Syriac, an Aramaic dialect.
It is often also argued that Luke and Acts were written to a Greek named "Theophilus".
Actually Theophilus was a Jew who had been High Priest from 37-41 CE (Josephus; Ant. 18:5:3). A Syrian convert to Judaism such as Luke would likely have written the High Priest in Aramaic
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James Trimm
It has long been recognized that the New Testament is written in very poor Greek grammar, but very good Semitic grammar. Many sentences are inverted with a verb > noun format characteristic of
Semitic languages. Furthermore, there are several occurrences of the redundant "and". A number of scholars have shown in detail the Semitic grammar embedded in the Greek New Testament books.
(See: Our Translated Gospels By Charles Cutler Torrey; Documents of the Primitive Church by Charles Cutler Torrey; An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts by Matthew Black; The Aramaic Origin of the Fourth Gospel by Charles Fox Burney; The Aramaic Origin of the Four Gospels by Frank Zimmerman and Semitisms of the Book of Acts by Max Wilcox)
In addition to the evidence for Semitic grammar embedded in the Greek New Testament, the fact that serious grammatical errors are found in the Greek New Testament books may be added. Speaking of the
Greek of Revelation, Charles Cutler Torrey states that it "...swarms with major offenses against Greek grammar." He calls it "linguistic anarchy", and says, "The grammatical monstrosities of the book, in their number and variety and especially in their startling character, stand alone in the history of literature." Torrey gives ten examples listed below:
1. Rev. 1:4 "Grace to you, and peace, from he who is and who was and
who is to come" (all nom. case)
2. Rev. 1:15 "His legs were like burnished brass (neut. gender
dative case) as in a furnace purified" (Fem. gender sing.
no., gen. case)
3. Rev. 11:3 "My witness (nom.) shall prophesy for many days clothed
(accus.) in sackcloth."
4. Rev. 14:14 "I saw on the cloud one seated like unto a Son of Man
(accus.) having (nom.) upon his head a golden crown."
5. Rev. 14:19 "He harvested the vintage of the earth, and cast it
into the winepress (fem), the great [winepress] (masc.) of the wrath
of God."
6. Rev. 17:4 "A golden cup filled with abominations (gen.) and with
unclean things" (accus.)
7. Rev. 19:20 "The lake of blazing (fem.) fire (neut.).
8. Rev. 20:2 "And he seized the dragon (accus.), the old serpent
(nom.) who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him."
9. Rev. 21:9 "Seven angels holding seven bowls (accus.) filled (gen.)
with the seven last plagues."
10. Rev. 22:5 "They have no need of lamplight (gen.) nor of sunlight
(accus.)."
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Mark Sanguinetti
Rev 1:7-8
8 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End," says the Lord, "who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty."
NKJV
Rev 1:11-12
11 saying, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last," and, "What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia: to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea."
NKJV
Rev 21:4-6
5 Then He who sat on the throne said, "Behold, I make all things new." And He said to me, "Write, for these words are true and faithful." 6 And He said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts.
NKJV
Rev 22:12-13
13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last."
NKJV
Here is another of the many examples of the original language of the New Testament, the alpha and the omega. Sorry but these are not Aramaic. Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet and omega is the last letter of the Greek alphabet.
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James Trimm
You are using circular reasoning, quoting the Greek NT (or an English translation of it) to prove the Greek origin. In fact the Aramaic text of Revelation has ALEF and TAV in three of these places, and omits the phrase from one:
7 Behold, He comes with clouds, and all eyes will see Him, even also those who pierced
Him: and all the tribes of the land will mourn concerning Him. Yes and Amen.
8 I am Alef and Tav, says Adonai YHWH: He who is, and was, and is to come; who
is the Almighty.
(Rev. 1:7-8 HRV)
That said, Those [things] that you see, write in a book and send to the seven
assemblies: to Ephesus, and to Smyrna, and to Pergamos, and to Thyatira, and to Sardis,
and to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.
12 And I turned, to know the voice that spoke with me: and when I turned, I saw seven
menorahs of gold.
(Rev. 1:11-12 HRV)
4 And He will wipe all tears from their eyes, and there will be no more death, neither
grief nor crying, nor will there be any more pain, for His sake,
5 And it went away. And He who sat on the throne said to me: Behold, I make all
[things] new. And He said to me: Write: these words are Faithful and True.
6 And He said to me: I am Alef and I am Tav--the beginning and the end. To the
thirsty, I will give from the fountain of living water, freely.
(Rev. 21:4-6 HRV)
12 Behold, I come quickly, and My reward [is] with Me: and I will give to every man
according to his work.
13 I am Alef and I am Tav, the first and the last, and the beginning and the end.
(Rev. 22:12-13 HRV)
Now if the terms ALPHA and OMEGA in the Greek version of Revelation prove a Greek origin (and they don't), then the use of ALEF and TAV (HEBREW/ARAMAIC LETTERS) in the Aramaic version would also prove an Aramaic origin.
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Mark Sanguinetti
You may be confusing Aramaic with Hebrew. Do you know Aramaic and do you know Hebrew? And your complaining about biblical Greek here sounds very political. I am sure there are many more Greek texts of the New Testament than Aramaic.
I don't know Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek, but here is a link I found.
http://www.aent.org/pdf/ALEF%20TAV.pdf
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James Trimm
I know both, they are cognate languages. They are both written with the same set of 22 letters (ALEF being the first and TAV being the last). They share many of the same root words, and a great deal of the same vocabulary.
This in Hebrew it is SHALOM and in Aramaic SHLAMA
In Hebrew camel is GAMEL in Aramaic it is GAMLA
Parts of the Tanak (Old Testament) are written in Aramaic. The Talmuds and Zohar are written in Aramaic.
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