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Aramaic primacy is the view that the Christian New Testament and/or its sources were originally written in the Aramaic language. Aramaic primacy is asserted over and against Greek primacy (the dominant scholarly view).

Contents 1 Brief history 2 Methods of argument 3 Aramaic phenomena 3.1 Mistranslations 3.2 Polysemy ("split words") 3.3 Puns 3.4 Absence or presence of Aramaic quotations and translations 4 Internal disagreements 4.1 Peshitta primacy approach 4.2 Peshitta-critical approach 4.3 Aramaic source criticism 5 Criticism 6 Footnotes 7 Bibliography 8 External links

[edit] Brief history

George Lamsa's translation of the Peshitta New Testament from Syriac into English brought the Aramaic Primacy issue to the West. However, his translation is poorly regarded by most scholars in the field.^[1] The Old Syriac Texts, The Sinai Palimpest and the Curetonian Gospels, have also influenced scholars concerning original Aramaic passages. Diatessaronic texts such as the Liege Dutch Harmony, the Pepysian Gospel Harmony, Codex Fuldensis, The Persian Harmony, The Arabic Diatessaron, and the Commentary on the Diatessaron by Ephrem the Syrian have provided recent insights into Aramaic origins. The Gospel of Thomas and the various versions of the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew also have provided clues to Aramaic foundations in the New Testament especially the gospels. Many modern scholars (H. Holtzmann, Wendt, Jülicher, Wernle, von Soden, Wellhausen, Harnack, B. Weiss, Nicolardot, W. Allen, Montefiore, Plummer, and Stanton)^[2] theorize that portions of Matthew and Luke were derived from a source normally referred to as Q, which, although Matthew and Luke must have consulted it in Greek (given their precise agreement on the precise wording in Greek), may reflect an early layer of tradition that goes back to the historical Jesus (who would have spoken Aramaic).

[edit] Methods of argument

On a basic level, Aramaic primacists focus on the high probability that the native language of Jesus, his Apostles, and most or all the authors of the New Testament was Aramaic, not Koine Greek; see also Aramaic of Jesus. They also note that the first Christian communities may have come into existence in mostly Aramaic-speaking areas now in modern Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, and that the first converts to Christianity were likely members of Aramaic-speaking Jewish synagogues, even when in Greek or Latin-speaking cities. Aramaic primacists also refer to the patristic writings (Papias, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius, Jerome) that indicate Aramaic was the original written language of parts of the New Testament.

[edit] Aramaic phenomena

There are many phenomena that Aramaic primacists study. For example, some of them include:

[edit] Mistranslations

Aramaic primacists suggest that in some places where the Greek New Testament reads awkwardly, that it may stem from a mistaken translation from an originally Aramaic source.

An example frequently cited is Romans 5:6-8. The Greek, translated to English, reads:

₆ For while we were yet weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. ₇ For one will hardly die for a righteous (δικαιος) man; though perhaps for the good (αγαθος) man someone would dare even to die. ₈ But God commends his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Aramaic primacists argue that the progression of the author's argument does not follow logically, in that the author claims that Jesus of Nazareth died for the "ungodly" rather than for the "righteous," so the author's statement that "one will hardly die for a righteous man" seems to be out of place given the paradox of "[God's ] own love towards us."

It is suggested that this reading lies within an Aramaic source. In Romans 5:7 of the Peshitta, where the Greek reads "righteous," we find the Aramaic word for "wicked" (רשיעא) rather than the word for "righteous" (רשינא) as expected. Furthermore, Aramaic primacists point out that in several Aramaic writing systems, contemporary to the times of Paul, the words "wicked" and "righteous" look confusingly similar. This leaves the implication that a scribe while translating, whatever the source of the discourse was, from Aramaic to Greek could have simply misread the word.

Another example concerns Matthew 24:51 and Luke 12:46. The verb used in all of the Syriac versions "Palleg" has the primary meaning of "cut in pieces" and the secondary one of "appoint to some one his portion." The primary sense leads to the unsolvable problem of how someone cut to pieces could then be assigned to something else. But if we take the secondary meaning then we are left with the fact that the Greek translator misunderstood a Syriac idiom by taking it too literally. The translation should be "and shall allot his portion and shall place him with the unfaithful" instead of the Greek "shall cut him in pieces and shall place him with the unfaithful."^[3]

[edit] Polysemy ("split words")

"Split words" some Aramaic primacists treat as a distinctive subsection of mistranslations. Sometimes it appears that a word in Aramaic with two (or more) distinct and different meanings appears to have been interpreted in the wrong sense, or even translated both ways in different documents.

Perhaps the most well known example that Aramaic primacists cite is the parable of the "camel (καμηλος) through the eye of a needle." (Mark 10:25, Matthew 19:24, Luke 18:25) In Aramaic, the word for "camel" (גמלא) is spelled identically to the word for "rope" (גמלא), suggesting that the correct phrase was "rope through the eye of a needle," making the hyperbole more symmetrical. The Aramaic word can also be translated as "beam", making a connection between this passage and the passage on removing a beam from your eye — Matthew 7:5; Luke 6:41-42.

[edit] Puns

Aramaic is a Semitic language, a family of languages where all words come from three-letter roots. As a result, speakers of the language employ puns that play on roots with similar sounding consonants, or with the same consonants re-arranged. In applying this principle, Aramaic primacists study the dialogues of the New Testament and claim that how a choice of words that apparently seem completely unrelated or awkward in Greek may originate from an original Aramaic source that employed puns.

For example, in the True Children of Abraham debate within the Gospel of John, some Aramaic primacists note possible examples of punning between the words "father" (אבא, abba), "Abraham" (אברהם, abraham) and the verb "to do" (עבד, `abad):

John 8

39

They retorted and said to him:

"Our abba (father) is Abraham!"

Jesus says to them:

"If you are Abraham's children, `abad (do) as Abraham would `abad (do)!"

--The Aramaic Behind the True Children of Abraham Debate

An alternate possibility is that the above conversation was actually conducted in Aramaic, but translated into Greek by the gospel writer.

[edit] Absence or presence of Aramaic quotations and translations

In the Greek New Testament, a number of verses include Aramaic phrases or words which are then translated into Greek. In the Peshitta, sometimes the word or phrase is quoted twice in Aramaic, indicating that the words needed to be translated from one Aramaic dialect to another.

For example, Matthew 27.46 reads:

Peshitta — And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice and said: "Ēl, Ēl, why have you forsaken me?"^[4]

Greek — And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying: "Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani?" that is, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"^[5]

However, the parallel verse in Mark 15:34 reads in both in the quotation/translation form it has in the Greek:

Peshitta — And in the ninth hour, Jesus cried out in a loud voice and said: "Ēl, Ēl lmānā shvaqtāni" that is "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"^[6]

Greek — And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying: "Eloi, Eloi, lamma sabacthani?" Which is, being interpreted, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"^[7]

Thus we see Mark in the Peshitta disambiguating the meaning.

The evidence of these verses, some claim, tend to support the claims of St. Papias and Irenaeus that the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Aramaic presumably for Aramaic speakers in Syria-Palestine, while the Gospel of Mark was written for the Greek speaking Christians of Rome, who would not have known Aramaic fluently; but, who might have become familiar with certain phrases from the preaching of the Apostles or the liturgy. This is in similar fashion to how the words "Alleluia", "Amen", "Abba", "Hosanna" and "Sabaoth" are still in common usage in the western liturgy.

On the other hand, while Mark 3:17 ("Boanerges") and Mark 15:22 ("Golgatha") is repeated and also slightly changed in the double quotation in the Peshitta , the verses Mark 5:41 ("Talitha koumi"), Mark 7.34 ("Ephphatha") do not include any doubling.

[edit] Internal disagreements

Aramaic primacists are divided into several distinct camps in terms of their methods of researching and reconstructing the Aramaic layer of the New Testament.

[edit] Peshitta primacy approach

Peshitta Primacists believe that the Aramaic Peshitta is the closest text to the original New Testament. Prominent^{[citation needed]} figures that side with this view are the late George Lamsa, Paul Younan (Peshitta.org), Andrew Gabriel Roth (Aramaic NT Truth), and Raphael Lataster (Aramaic Peshitta Bible Repository). In modern day, this movement is primarily based on the internet, although some historical Peshitta Primacy advocates include several Aramaic-speaking churches.

For example, Mar Eshai Shimun, Catholicos Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East was quoted:

With reference to....the originality of the Peshitta text, as the Patriarch and Head of the Holy Apostolic and Catholic Church of the East, we wish to state, that the Church of the East received the scriptures from the hands of the blessed Apostles themselves in the Aramaic original, the language spoken by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and that the Peshitta is the text of the Church of the East which has come down from the Biblical times without any change or revision.^[8]

[edit] Peshitta-critical approach

Peshitta-critical Aramaic primacists take both the Peshitta and the Syriac manuscripts and critically compare them, similar to how Greek Primacists take a critical approach to determining which Greek text better represents the original. Prominent figures that side with this view are James Trimm (S.A.N.J.), and Joe Viel. This movement is also primarily based on the internet.

[edit] Aramaic source criticism

Source-critical Aramaic primacists research first-century Aramaic, culture, and psychology to reconstruct the New Testament sources in dialects contemporary to its authors. Prominent figures that side with this view are Matthew Black, Bruce Chilton, Maurice Casey, Geza Vermes, Frank Zimmermann, and Steven Caruso (AramaicNT.org).

[edit] Criticism

Mainstream and modern scholars have generally had a strong agreement that the New Testament was written in Greek and that an Aramaic source text was used for portions of the New Testament especially the gospels. They acknowledge that individual sayings of Jesus as found in the Gospels—if they go back to the historical Jesus—must be translations from an Aramaic source, but hold that the Gospels' text in its current form was composed in Greek, and so were the other New Testament writings. (Indeed, even the sayings source, known as the Q document, must have been consulted by Matthew and Luke in Greek, given their close agreement on precise wording in Greek). Scholars of all stripes have had to acknowledge the presence of scattered, Aramaic expressions, transliterated and then translated. An example of how mainstream scholars have dealt with Aramaic influences within an overall view of the Gospels' original Greek-language development may be found in Martin Hengel's recent synthesis of studies of the linguistic situation in Palestine during the time of Jesus and the Gospels:

Since non-literary, simple Greek knowledge or competency in multiple languages was relatively widespread in Jewish Palestine including Galilee, and a Greek-speaking community had already developed in Jerusalem shortly after Easter, one can assume that this linguistic transformation [from "the Aramaic native language of Jesus" to "the Greek Gospels"] began very early. ... [M]issionaries, above all 'Hellenists' driven out of Jerusalem, soon preached their message in the Greek language. We find them in Damascus as early as AD 32 or 33. A certain percentage of Jesus' earliest followers were presumably bilingual and could therefore report, at least in simple Greek, what had been heard and seen. This probably applies to Cephas/Peter, Andrew, Philip or John. Mark, too, who was better educated in Jerusalem than the Galilean fishermen, belonged to this milieu. The great number of phonetically correct Aramaisms and his knowledge of the conditions in Jewish Palestine compel us to assume a Palestinian Jewish-Christian author. Also, the author's Aramaic native language is still discernible in the Marcan style.^[9]

Papias provides a very early, source for the idea that the canonical Gospels were either based on some non-Greek written sources, or (in the case of Matthew) possibly "composed" in a non-Greek language. The relevant fragments of Papias' lost work An Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord (Logiōn kuriakōn exēgēsis, c. 110-140) are preserved in quotations by Eusebius. In one fragment, Papias cites an older source who says, "When Mark was the interpreter [hermēneutēs, possibly "translator"] of Peter, he wrote down accurately everything that he recalled of the Lord's words and deeds." Papias' surviving comment about Matthew is more tantalizing, but equally cryptic: "And so Matthew composed [or collected] the sayings [or record] in the Hebrew tongue, and each one interpreted [hērmēneusen, possibly "translated"] them to the best of his ability."^[10] A similar claim comes out more clearly in a text by Irenaeus, but this testimony is later than (and probably based on) Papias.

These accounts, even if they do imply non-Greek originals have been doubted, in part with an argument that the literary quality of the Greek of these books indicates that the Greek would be the original. This argument extends to the other books where the Church Fathers accepted Greek as the original without debate. The Greek New Testament's general agreement with the Septuagint is also counted as evidence by Greek Primacists. Aramaic primacists point to quotations from the Hebrew (Masoretic) Old Testament in the Alexandrian text type that indicate at one point a non-Greek speaking audience was addressed (See Matthew 2:15, 2:18, 11:10; Mark 1:2; Luke 7:27; John 19:37; Acts 13:18; Romans 9:33, 11:35; 1Corinthians 3:19; 1Peter 2:8).^[11] Aramaic primacists question why the New Testament would quote from the Hebrew Old Testament and not from the Septuagint if it was written in Greek originally. Quotes from the Hebrew Old Testament are present in Alexandrian texts that are thought to predate Jerome's use of the Hebrew Old Testament for the Vulgate.

Furthermore, the possibility that the Jewish community was more of a polyglot in nature is often overlooked by both Aramaic-supporting and Koine-supporting scholars. It is possible that Aramaic and Koine (and even Latin) versions of the books and oral teachings of the New Testament were circulating contemporaneously, similar to the situation in present day Orthodox Jewish communities, where popular, newly written, religious works in Rabbinical Hebrew are promptly translated into English and Yiddish.

There are also alternative explanations for the cases where Aramaic Primacists claim that the Aramaic seems to read better. One example (as stated above) is in the case of the "camel through the eye of a needle." In Jewish and Christian literature we see the following:

"...who can make an elephant pass through the eye of a needle."

- Babylonian Talmud, Baba Mezi'a, 38b

"They do not show a man a palm tree of gold, nor an elephant going through the eye of a needle."

- Babylonian Talmud, Berakoth, 55b

"13 There was a rich man named Onesiphorus who said: If I believe, shall I be able to do wonders? Andrew said: Yes, if you forsake your wife and all your possessions. He was angry and put his garment about Andrew's neck and began to beat him, saying: You are a wizard, why should I do so? 14 Peter saw it and told him to leave off. He said: I see you are wiser than he. What do you say? Peter said: I tell you this: it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

- Apocryphal Acts of Peter and Andrew.

Aramaic Primacists generally respond that these sources are late compared to the account in Q, as the Mishnah, the base document of the Babylonian Talmud was compiled in 200, where the Acts of Peter and Andrew is a 3rd century work and therefore the original mis-translation of גמלא (gamlâ) pre-dates and is potentially the source of these subsequent paraphrases. The Aramaic word for camel can also mean "beam" thus implying that the saying "it easier for a beam to go through an "eye'" is referencing Matthew 7:5; Luke 6:41-42 concerning taking the log (beam) out of your eye.

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] Bibliography

• Black, M. (1967), An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts. 3rd Ed., Hendrickson Publishers 
• Burney, C. F. (1922), The Aramaic Origin of the Fourth Gospel, Oxford at the Clarendon Press 
• Casey, M. (1998), The Aramaic Sources of Marks' Gospel, Cambridge University Press 
• Casey, M. (2002), An Aramaic Approach to Q, Cambridge University Press 
• Fitzmyer, J. (1997), The Semitic Background of the New Testament, Eerdmans Publishing 
• Lamsa, G. (1976), New Testament Origin, Aramaic Bible Center 
• Torrey, C. (1941), Documents of the Primitive Church, Harper & Brothers 
• Zimmermann, F. (1979), The Aramaic Origin of the Four Gospels, Ktav Publishing House 

[edit] External links

• Aramaic Peshitta Bible Repository — copies of George Lamsa's and Paul Younan's translations of Peshitta, plus many research tools and free books
• AramaicNT.org — collection of articles on Aramaic source criticism
• Dukhrana.com — site contains the transcription of the Khaboris Codex