Was the New Testament Originally Written in Aramaic?

[ebion]

What I think is the best English Translation of the PeshittA from Aramaic (by far) is the https://www.thearamaicscriptures.com (HAS) and they are on the web by chapter. My criteria for "best" is not only the quality of the texts and the fidelity of the translation, but their choice of words in English.

As I go through these, I'm finding some corrections to the HAS which I'll pull together here and then maybe they'll find them. I'll keep this post updated. I'm working from a copy of HAS from the Internet Archive, which may be slightly out of date.

• Mark 13:30 HAS "Generation" should be "family" viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11224&p=162009
• Acts 8:27 HAS "*trustee" should be "believer" viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11224&p=161813
• Matt. 19:12 HAS "eunuchs" should be "believer" viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11224&p=161772
• Phlm. 1:7 HAS "bowels" should be "compassion" viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11224&p=161762
• Phlm. 1:20 HAS "bowels" should be "compassion" viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11224&p=161735
• 1Cor. 16:22 HAS "will be cursed" should be "will be cursed, Maranatha"

The Eastern PeshittA does not contain the books of 3John, 2John, 2Peter Jude, Revelation so there won't be any corrections there.

[ebion]

There are a number of rebuttals to the idea of PeshittA Primacy on the web and I want to address some of them to see if they stand up to scutiny. PeshittA scholarship has come a long way in the last 30 years, especially with the tools at https://www.dukhrana.com/peshitta/ and the english translations by Younan and the HAS.

This is a rebuttal by Steven Caruso. Steven was a valued contributor to Shamasha Paul Younan's http://peshitta.org forum. They interacted in depth for years, and his scholarship was respected. He put out a anti-Peshitta primacy paper which is often used by KJOs to fight the idea of pernitious semetic languages.

In the interest of transparency, Steve uses that site to sell courses in "Galilean Aramaic" and the bulk of the paper is his claims that the PeshittA is written in a different dialect of Aramaic than the one spoken in Jerusalem/Galilee. To our eyes the premise is false on the face of it because it's the dialects of the writers of the texts that counts. And they may have chosen Classical Syriac as a common dialect to work in.

The Aramaicists at peshitta.org shredded his paper:

2

Since it is the difference between Old Galilean Aramaic and Classical Syriac that constitute the raison d'être for Steve Caruso's project, I would see his statement more as a marketing necessity than an actual opinion.

As to what dialect or rather dialects Jesus may have used in the 1st century, not one soul on this planet knows for sure. Based on the wording found in The Gospels though, it seems He knew a number of them, or that those dialects were not so dissimilar as to cause too much confusion as to what was being said. I don't see why Jesus would not be multi-dialect, and use what was best suited for the audience. He may have used some Greek and Latin as well.

5

According to what is written in Assemani's Bibliotheca Orientalis, The Text/Words which have come down to us in The Peshitta, have been the same since 78 A.D. when it was given to The Church of the East in "Edessen Letters",

Do you find it odd that Steve calls his project "The Aramaic New Testament", while using an English translation of a certain Greek text for his main source text, and then the words of Jesus in his hypothetical "Galilean Dialect", which he has to admit may or may not have been what Jesus used as to the exact words Steve produces.

I have nothing to add, except in his paper he does not address any of the KJV Howlers that we have identified. Read the threads if you want more.

This paper is used by pastors of "Church of God" ministries to argue against Peshitta Primacy. It just proves the adage: a congregation gets the pastor it deserves!

[StephenGoranson]

I am not opposed to the possibility that some portion of the NT--but surely not all of it--may have been first conveyed in Aramaic and/or in Hebrew.
Hebrew and Aramaic are different languages; Hebrew is not a dialect of Aramaic; one example of a dialect of Aramaic is Syriac.
(BTW, Jastrow's Dictionary lists ebion as Hebrew rather than Aramaic.)
Syriac evidently first emerged in a region that did not include Judaea, Samaria, and Galilee (nor Peraea).
If so, then the NT was not originally written in Syriac.
Syriac versions of the NT, then, are not original text, but are translations.

[StephenGoranson]

In case I did not make it clear enough:
no, the original NT was not written in Syriac Aramaic.

[rgprice]

Arguments about dialects and such are nonsense and miss the point. One does not need to argue for PeshittA Primacy to argue that the Pauline letters and Gospels were originally written in some form of Aramaic. The PeshittA could still actually be derived from Greek. IMO, arguing for PeshittA Primacy gets in the way of the argument that the Gospels and Pauline letters were translated from Aramaic to Greek at some point.

[ebion]

I wouldn't call this a KJV Howler, but it's at least a KJV Blooper:

Their feet are swift to shed blood: (Romans 3:15 [KJV])

That makes NO sense.

From Aramaicists

In the greek, the word according to Strongs is:

4228 pous pooce a primary word; a "foot" (figuratively or literally):--foot(-stool). 

Craziness.... A foot or a freakin' FOOT STOOL? What is Paul envisioning? Using CHAIRS AS WEAPONS?!

Funny, though, that in the Peshitta, the word is "reghlaihoon" which comes from the base word, "reghlo'". GUESS what I found in the CAL:

rgl N rgl)
1 passim foot <!-- sHuh --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/huh.gif" alt="Huh" title="Huh" /><!-- sHuh -->
2 Syr base, bottom
3 Syr foot (measure)
4 JLAGal,JBA pilgrimage festival
5 JLAGal w. %(l, b_% because of
4 Syr plant name
5 JBA festival season
LS2 712

rgl#2 N rgl)
1 Syr foot-soldier
LS2 712

rgl V
011 Syr ??
021 JLAGal to overturn
041 Syr to get off a horse
LS2 712

FOOTSOLDIERS not FOOTSTOOLS or FEET!

There are only 2 meanings to that word and one makes sense in the context (PeshittA) and one doesn't (TR).

PS: The fuller context supports the use of foot-soldiers:

Their [foot-soldiers] are swift to shed blood:
Destruction and misery are in their ways:
And the way of peace have they not known: (Romans 3:15-17 [KJV])

PS: Steven Avery points out that this verse is in a block of quotes to the OT. I'll leave it to the reader of the thread to decide if they think that a simple homonym in translation from the Aramaic is a more likely explanation than it being a quote in the OT that fits the Greek. The Aramaic works with either foot or foot-soldiers.

[rgprice]

I wouldn't call this a KJV Howler, but it's at least a KJV Blooper:

Their feet are swift to shed blood: (Romans 3:15 [KJV])

That makes NO sense.

From Aramaicists

In the greek, the word according to Strongs is:

4228 pous pooce a primary word; a "foot" (figuratively or literally):--foot(-stool). 

Craziness.... A foot or a freakin' FOOT STOOL? What is Paul envisioning? Using CHAIRS AS WEAPONS?!

Funny, though, that in the Peshitta, the word is "reghlaihoon" which comes from the base word, "reghlo'". GUESS what I found in the CAL:

rgl N rgl)
1 passim foot <!-- sHuh --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/huh.gif" alt="Huh" title="Huh" /><!-- sHuh -->
2 Syr base, bottom
3 Syr foot (measure)
4 JLAGal,JBA pilgrimage festival
5 JLAGal w. %(l, b_% because of
4 Syr plant name
5 JBA festival season
LS2 712

rgl#2 N rgl)
1 Syr foot-soldier
LS2 712

rgl V
011 Syr ??
021 JLAGal to overturn
041 Syr to get off a horse
LS2 712

FOOTSOLDIERS not FOOTSTOOLS or FEET!

There are only 2 meanings to that word and one makes sense in the context (PeshittA) and one doesn't (TR).

This is an example of a problem. Romans 3:15 refers to Isaiah 59:

Romans3:
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood,
16 Destruction and misery are in their paths,
17 And the path of peace they have not known.”
18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

Isaiah 59:
7 Their feet run to evil,
And they hasten to shed innocent blood;
Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity,
Devastation and destruction are in their highways.
8 They do not know the way of peace,
And there is no justice in their tracks;
They have made their paths crooked,
Whoever treads on them does not know peace.

So this would indicate that "feet" is actually the right word. Poorly paraphrased by Paul perhaps, but feet is the right word.

[StephenGoranson]

Since this thread is named "Was the New Testament Originally Written in Aramaic?" I suggest that it is relevant to note that the languages spoken and written in Judaea and Galilee in the first century did not include Syriac.

Also, that letters of Paul, in order to be understood in the areas that he sent them to, would need to be, not in Aramaic, but in Greek.

The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon does not cover Hebrew (though there is some shared vocabulary). According to the CAL: "What is usually called "Hebrew" script is actually an Aramaic script."
If so, then Hebrew borrowed the script, but Hebrew is not an Aramaic dialect.

ebion evidently ignores some of this, and rgprice may think it irrelevant, but I post this in case some other reader here thinks it is appropriate.

[DCHindley]

This is an example of a problem. Romans 3:15 refers to Isaiah 59:

Romans3:
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood,
16 Destruction and misery are in their paths,
17 And the path of peace they have not known.”
18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

Isaiah 59:
7 Their feet run to evil,
And they hasten to shed innocent blood;
Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity,
Devastation and destruction are in their highways.
8 They do not know the way of peace,
And there is no justice in their tracks;
They have made their paths crooked,
Whoever treads on them does not know peace.

So this would indicate that "feet" is actually the right word. Poorly paraphrased by Paul perhaps, but feet is the right word.

Not sure this will help, as it does not consider the Hebrew of the cited passages of Isa & Ps. I consider all early "Christians" who may have edited or wrote the NT books to have been gentiles, whether native Greek speakers or Aramaic speaking gentile peasants (not used pejoratively). As a result, they really did not interact with the Hebrew directly, and as a result, utilized Greek translations or commentaries on the Hebrew.

Now I can see how the Syriac word in Rom 3:15 can be interpreted as "foot soldier" or "dismounted cavalry." While this jives with the context of doing bad things, the word "paths" suggests walking by foot along paths.

This citation of Isa 59 in the middle of a large section (between 3:09 & 3:18 where "Paul" cites examples of the faults of the Judean people in keeping God's commandments), which otherwise (five examples) draw exclusively from Psalms.*

I have not previously identified 3:15-17 as an interpolation but it is strange that this pericope (3:15-17) can have military implications when the others cited only human nature faults. I suspect that this could be commentary by my proposed final editor who added the Christ doctrine, which I date post war (after 70 CE for sure, probably a decade later as I assume that it had developed over time).

There are a lot of comments in Christologically themed passages throughout the Pauline corpus that seem highly critical of Jews in general, so he may have read or heard Josephus' books on the Judean War recited privately and integrated his negative portrait of scheming Judean high priests and aristocrats and the extreme actions of factional leaders into his portrayal of Judeans as a people.

So, it may be possible this citation (to Isa 59) is to be included in the others, but I do not feel compelled to do so. IMHO, the Syriac translator of the book of Romans picked up on this change in emphasis (the Psalms passages have no necessary military implications) and chose a word for a foot soldier.

Πρὸς Ῥωμαῖοι (GNT 15th?)	Romans (RSV)	LXX/Old Greek (verse numbers from Alfred Rahlfs' 1935 edition). LXX for Books of Law & OG (Old Greek) for the rest.	Brenton's Engish Translation (verse numbers are standard for English langage bibles except in some cases). LXE
3:15 ὀξεῖς οἱ πόδες αὐτῶν ἐκχέαι αἷμα, 16 σύντριμμα καὶ ταλαιπωρία ἐν ταῖς ὁδοῖς αὐτῶν, 17 καὶ ὁδὸν εἰρήνης οὐκ ἔγνωσαν. (Isa 59:7-8)	3:15 "Their feet are swift to shed blood, 16 in their paths are ruin and misery, 17 and the way of peace they do not know." (Isa 59:7-8)	(Isa 59:7-8 OG) 7 οἱ δὲ πόδες αὐτῶν ἐπὶ πονηρίαν τρέχουσιν ταχινοὶ ἐκχέαι αἷμα καὶ οἱ διαλογισμοὶ αὐτῶν διαλογισμοὶ ἀφρόνων σύντριμμα καὶ ταλαιπωρία ἐν ταῖς ὁδοῖς αὐτῶν 8 καὶ ὁδὸν εἰρήνης οὐκ οἴδασιν καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν κρίσις ἐν ταῖς ὁδοῖς αὐτῶν αἱ γὰρ τρίβοι αὐτῶν διεστραμμέναι ἃς διοδεύουσιν καὶ οὐκ οἴδασιν εἰρήνην	(Isa 59:7-8 LXE) 7 And their feet run to wickedness, swift to shed blood; their thoughts also are thoughts of murder; destruction and misery are in their ways; 8 and the way of peace they know not, neither is there judgment in their ways; for their paths by which they go are crooked, and they know not peace

DCH

*3:10 as it is written: "None is righteous, no, not one; 11 no one understands, no one seeks for God. 12 All have turned aside, together they have gone wrong; no one does good, *not* even one." (Psa 14:1-3)
3:13a "Their throat is an open grave, they use their tongues to deceive." (Psa 5:9)
3:13b "The venom of asps is under their lips." (Psa 140:3)
3:14 "Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness." (Psa 10:7)
Romans
3:15 "Their feet are swift to shed blood, 16 in their paths are ruin and misery, 17 and the way of peace they do not know." (Isa 59:7-8)
3:18 "There is no fear of God before their eyes." (Psa 36:1)

[ebion]

early "Christians" who may have edited or wrote the NT books to have been gentiles,

Not so: the early Christians ,who may have edited or wrote the NT books, were Hebrews who spoke Aramaic as their daily language. Their leader after Jesus was his brother James the Just who was exceptionally honored in the Temple by the High Priest according to one of the Earliest Christian writers

... Hegessippus, who wrote in his BOOK V of his 5 volume work:

He alone was permitted to enter the holy place: for he did not wear any woollen garment, but fine linen only. He alone, I say, was wont to go into the temple: and he used to be found kneeling on his knees, begging forgiveness for the people-so that the skin of his knees became horny like that of a camel's,

The Jamesian church was the precursor to the Ebioneans.

Destruction and misery are in their paths,

Of course, foot-soldiers use their feet to leave destruction and misery are in their paths; I think that a simple homonym in translation is a more likely explanation than being able to find a quote in the OT that fits, bu t you are right, it's in a block of OT quotes.