rlogan

Judge, why have you singled out Hebrews?

Is it nothing more than the title?

Supposedly, some of the most sophisticated greek of the Christian testament (NT) is in this book.

judge

Hi rlogan!
There was another thread where someone wanted to the exact meaning of a verse or two in the book of hebrews. They began to look to the greek underlying our english translations.
I suggested that it was highly unlikely that this book would have been written in greek as it was addressed to jews.
In the end I stared this thread.

judge

Thanks for the link.
Perhaps I do unfairly single out protestants

I do this because from what I can see it is really protestants who have perpetrated this myth. I think you will be hard pressed to find many people (if any) pushing this line before protestantism.
I suppose I am stirring the pot a little too. I find it ironic that "infidels" follow protestants who needed an inerrant authority, and today insist this is found in the greek NT.

When did Catholics adopt this view?
Consider the following quote from the sixteenth century.


"Now, when I was in Rome, I saw three Chaldeans, who arrived from the country of Prester John, having been sent for by Pope Leo X. They were masters of the Syriac language and literature, though their vernacular language was Arabic. The special language, however, wherin the books were written, as well as that of the gospels of the Christians which they brought with them was Syriac, which is also called Aramean, Babylonian, Assyrian... Pope Leo X. had sent for them, in order to correct by their Codices his exemplar of his New Testament, which was written in Latin.....Now I saw them reading this (Syriac) Psalter without points, and asked them, Have you points, or any signs to indicate the vowels? and they answered me: "No! but we have been conversant with that language from our youth till now, and therefore, know how to read without points." ( Eliahu ben Asher Ashkenazi (Elias Levita), Masoret HaMasoret (first published: Venice 1538), edited by C. D. Ginsburg, in: Harry M. Orlinsky (ed.), The Library of Biblical Studies, New York: Ktav, 1968, pp. 130-131. )

ichabod crane

But judge, the standard translation that was used by the Roman Catholic church throughout the middle ages was the vulgate, which was translated from Greek into Latin by Jerome. All of the early "Church Fathers" knew the New Testament was written in Greek. Surely you can't be seriously claiming this is a 16th century development. Was Jerome a Protestant? Was Origen a Protestant? With the renewed interest in antiquity in the Renaissance, interest in the Greek text revived (particularly in the work of Erasmus, also not a Protestant).

judge

You may wish to check out this thread
here . Western scholars err when they look at the peshitta. They look at the doctrine of addai and assume that what happened in edessa happened everywhere that christians spoke aramaic/syriac.
Over the border in Persia there was an entirely separate community of beleivers who used the peshitta.
That it was around earlier than your link suggests is proved because Mar Aphrahat quotes from the peshitta, word for word at times and at other times he paraphrases.
See the earlier posts in this thread. I have given one example of Aphrahat quoting the peshitta word for word. There are many more.

As mentioned above the peshitta must have been around before this as Aphrahat quotes from it. Western Scholars don't know quite where to place it though.

judge

I have provided a quote from jerome above where he states that he thinks Paul being a Hebrew would have written in hebrew.
Can you provide a quote from any of the "church fathers" where they state the NT was penned in greek?

Did Paul writeRomans in Greek? It appears not. The greek translator mistranslated a word. The greek version makes no sense.

ichabod crane

Aphrahat wrote in the mid fourth century, and it's entirely possible that translations into Syriac were done before that time. Old Latin and other translations were also made before that then. But I can't see how this can possibly overturn the evidence for Greek authorship. After all, Aphrahat quotes from the Syriac, but all the apostolic Church Fathers, who lived two centuries before Aphrahat, quote the Greek. On that basis alone you'd have to say that the evidence is overwhelming for a Greek origin.

ichabod crane

Romans 5:7 makes perfect sense. It says that people are hardly willing to die for a righteous man, but for such a righteous person some possibly might venture to die (tacha tis kai tolma apothanein). And verse 8 then introduces a contrast: but God proves his love for us, in that while were still sinners, Christ died for us. In other words, God does what no-one would ever do. Humans might die for a righteous man, though only maybe, but God actually sends his Son to die for wicked. The meaning seems clear enough.

Also Hebrew and Aramaic are quite different. I don't know Aramaic, so I can't say how similar "righteous" and "wicked" are, but I do know Hebrew, and they are not similar in Hebrew. Righteous is "tsadiq". There are various words for "wicked", but I can't think of one close to tsadiq.

If we thought that Romans 5:7 was an error, and I don't, surely a simpler explanation would be just that the letter alpha dropped of the word "righteous" when the manuscript was copied. In Greek, the words righteous and wicked are very similar. But I don't think such explanations are necessary.

Judge: I have provided a quote from jerome above where he states that he thinks Paul being a Hebrew would have written in hebrew.

Yes, but why would Jerome know that? He didn't have any manuscripts. He was speculating, and that's fair enough. But it's not evidence.

Judge: Can you provide a quote from any of the "church fathers" where they state the NT was penned in greek?

No, because the question didn't arise. But they always quote it in Greek. That's strong evidence in itself.

ichabod crane

One other point. In the other thread, you argue that the peshitta often is more understandable then the Greek. But, assuming that's true, that may be evidence against the pashitta. In textual criticism, where there are two variant readings, one of which is understandable and straightforward, and the other obscure, it is more likely that the obscure reading is the original. This is because if someone is editting a text, they are likely to change something obscure to be clear, rather than the other way around.

Look at it this way. We might find that an English translation of the New Testament such as the Good News Bible is much simpler and less obscure then the original Greek - in fact I'm sure it would be. Does that mean it is more original?

judge

There are two different words in the greek which you have both translated as righteous.
It says "people will hardly die for a righteous man but for agood man some might possibly die"

Why eould someone die for a good man but not for a righteous man?


.
Not true. Those "church fathers who spoke greek quote the greek versions. English speakers today quote English versions. Latvians quote Latvian translations as well.

Church of the East church fathers do not quote the greek! They quote the peshitta.