Giuseppe wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 4:28 am
yes but there is a third option: that the interpolator of the Barabbas episode
knew the Hebrew and
wrote in Greek.
There are instances of this being case in the Gospels, particularly the crucifixion in Matthew and Mark to highlight the ignorance of the Jewish crowd, but in these cases [or this, shared case] it seems more probable that the author had a lackluster grasp of Aramaic, not the fluency reacquired for this feat. I just don't see a logical succession of reasonable motives to make what you are suggesting possible.
i. What was the original scene sans Pilate and Barabbas?
ii. What was the motivation to include Pilate and Barabbas?
iii. What did the first draft of the scene look like?
I realize you have hypotheses, but as you know I don't find these convincing enough to explain these features and the implications they infer.
Now I am by no means a linguistic expert. Heck I only speak English and struggle with that as it is. I have read at least one author say that the entendre present in the Johannine scene in 3:3-5 also works in Syriac. Cannot confirm or deny that claim. But thinking about it, you are not really saying that this is a pun or an entendre, but a coded cypher which is far harder to prove. Then you are no longer just arguing your claim but also trying to argue intent.
The "translation" (or better the irony) is gained by merely removing the vowels: Pilatos minus "i", "a", "o" would become PLTS (since the Hebrew is without the vowels). Hence the term "translation" is not so apt. With "Barabbas" we can talk more correctly about a "translation": "bar abbas" ("son of father") or "bar rabbas" ("son of the rabbi").
I know acrostics were a popular in-the-know technique professional writers would use, especially back then. But removing certain letters to correspond to words in an utterly alien language would be so in-the-know as to make it inefficient and thus self defeating for the author's intent.
Like I said, it's an interesting thought experiment but that is as far as I can go with it. I am more of the thinking that meanings were derived out of these texts through osmosis rather there being any single clear meaning in them at bottom.