judge

You are neglecting to note that the diatessaron does not contain pauls letter to Rome


1.The diatessaron does not contain any of Pauls material.
2. The old Syriac do not contain pauls writings either.


Aphrahat quotes the peshitta of Pauls letter to Rome word for word

andrewcriddle

Aphrahat may well be closer to the Peshitta text in the Pauline letters than in the Gospels.

However there are indications here of a non-Peshitta text

For example in Demonstration XXII Aphrahat says
'They know that by the sentence of judgment death has held sway, because Adam transgressed the commandment; as the Apostle said:-Death ruled from Adam unto Moses even over those who sinned not, so that also upon all the children of Adam it passed, even as it passed upon Adam. And how did death rule from Adam unto Moses? Clearly, when God laid down the commandment for Adam, He warned him, and said:-On the day that thou shalt eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt die the death. So when he transgressed the commandment and ate of the tree, death ruled over him and over all his progeny. Even over those who had not sinned, even over them did death rule through Adam's transgression of the commandment. And why did he say:-From Adam unto Moses did Death rule? And who is so ill-furnished with knowledge as to imagine that only from Adam to Moses has death had dominion? Yet let him understand from this that he said:-Upon all men it passed. Thus, upon all men it passed from Moses until the world shall end.'

Aphrahat is clearly referring here to Romans 5:12-14 but his specific quotations 'so that also upon all the children of Adam it passed' and 'Upon all men it passed' probably mean that Aphrahat had a text of Romans 5:12 which read 'and so passed to all men' instead of the Byzantine/Peshitta reading 'and so DEATH passed to all men'. The reading with 'death' implied but not stated is a widespread 'Western' one with considerable support in the Old Latin.

Andrew Criddle

judge

So Aphrahat is either

1. Quoting the peshitta and paraphrasing.
OR
2. Quoting an aramaic version that no one in history has ever referred to as even existing
and that there is absolutely no evidence that it ever did exist.

IOW rather than just accept the simplest explanation i.e that Aphrahat is paraphrasing and quoting the peshitta you would preder to hypothesise that another version existed, that has never ever been hearde of and that Aphrahat quotes this.

Added in edit:

Unless of course you are suggesting the entire Aramaic speaking church did not even have their own version of Pauls letters, even as late as the fourth century? , that they used a Latin or greek version?

spin

Too bad. Matthew did: he maintained most of Mark's Latinisms.

Try elucidating these claims. I think you can't do it seriously.

I couldn't make general statements about early xians. I talked about Mark. Don't shift the topic, but do justify the first sentence.

There is nothing obvious about this at all. And as I have already said, Mark's Latinisms discount a Semitic original.

Just one example: "Herodian" formed in a Latin speaking community of the name plus a Latin infix is used both in Mark and Matthew. The term simply didn't come from a Semitic (or solely Greek) speaking community, but needed a Greek speaking community which would allow a Latin speaking community to form the word and then absorb it, ie a Greek community in a Latin community, ie Rome. (This is parallel to the devolopment of the word "christian".)


spin

Lugubert

I am not qualified to have an opinion of my own, but I find nothing strange in finding Hebraicisms and Aramaisms in Greek texts from this period and setting. The writers could easily have been influenced by their environment.

Parallel examples are that the grammar of official mediaeval Swedish was very German, and a rather recently introduced greeting in Swedish is a word by word translation from English.

This argument could, of course, be applied in either direction.

andrewcriddle

I am sure that Aphrahat was using a Syriac version of Paul and I agree that there is no direct evidence of a pre-Peshitta version of Paul's letters.

However such a version almost certainly existed; for example Ephraem who IIUC you agree did not use the Peshitta certainly knew a Syriac version of Paul.

Andrew Criddle

judge

Yes I said this in post #10 but the context there was the gospels. This may have been a little unclear but I will try to explain. As I understand it, inside the Roman empire, the diatessaron was used in Churches but this practice was stopped by Rabulla.
So just prior to this , which would have been Ephraems time, the diatessaron would have been used in Ephraems circles (perhaps, probably).
Would one therefore expect Ephraem, when it comes the gospels, to quote the peshitta? One would not expect it, but it would be possible I suppose. Perhaps he would quite whqt was used in Syriac speaking churches inside the Empire (the diatessaron).

The Persian Church, outside the empire was the home of Aphrahat, however, and here I think we should expect him to either paraphrase or quote the peshitta.

But what of Pauls letters?
As there was no "diatesaron" style amalgamation of them used in the Churches inside the empire we would expect anyone, including Ephraem, to either paraphrase or quote the peshitta I presume. Although one must also take into account that the church at Edessa was influenced theologically and possibly linguistically by the greeks.
This was not the case with the persian church who retained not only the Aramaic scriptures but key theological points that depend upon Aramaic imagery and language.

spin

I find the notion of Paul in the Diatessaron extremely confused. Diatessaron comes from Greek parts dia- and tessera (=four) and naturally its scope was a harmony of the four gospels. What do other works have to do with the diatessaron? Am I missing something?

(I haven't been following the Aphrahat side-thread, which judge is following up because he has nothing to show to justify his belief in Aramaic primacy.)


spin

andrewcriddle

Are you claiming that Ephraem only used a non-Peshitta text when quoting the Gospels ?

IMO it is very clear that Ephraem used a 'Western' non-Peshitta Syriac text of Acts although such a text has not survived in our existing manuscripts.

Given that Ephraem clearly used a non-Peshitta Syriac text for the Gospels and Acts his variations from the Peshitta in Paul should IMO be regarded as pointing to a non-Peshitta underlying Syriac text of Paul rather than being a matter of loose quotation.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

Of Course you are right that the Diatessaron was limited to the Gospels.

What Judge and I are discussing IIUC is this

Given that a/ early Syriac writers like Aphrahat and Ephraem quote a Syriac version of Paul that mostly agrees with the Peshitta but sometimes doesn't;
and b/ there is no evidence apart from these quotations that a non-Peshitta Syriac version of Paul existed until much later (eg the Philoxenian/Harclean)
should we suppose that these writers are quoting the Peshitta for Paul rather loosely or should we postulate a otherwise unknown non-Peshitta text of Paul ?

I hold that since a number of the divergences from the Peshitta of Paul agree with readings known outside the Syriac tradition we should postulate such a non-Peshitta Syriac text of Paul. Judge IIUC disagrees and claims that the use of Paul by these writers is evidence that they had access to the Peshitta and hence that it was already widely known in their time.

Andrew Criddle