Freethought & Rationalism Archive

No Robots · 10-30-2006, 10:08 AM

Quote:

Regardless of what language the Gospels were originally written in, they derive from a wholly Jewish cultural context.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malachi151

I don't think there is any dispute about that (except perhaps the term "wholly").

Indeed? Ever hear of a dude named Earl Doherty?

Malachi151 · 10-30-2006, 10:14 AM

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Originally Posted by No Robots

Indeed? Ever hear of a dude named Earl Doherty?

Doherty talks mostly about "Paul"...

No Robots · 10-30-2006, 10:28 AM

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Originally Posted by Malachi151

Doherty talks mostly about "Paul"...

Check this post:

New Testament scholarship has done it's best over the last 60 years or so to completely skewer the mainstream 'take' on the origins of Christianity *away from* its non-Jewish roots and precedents.

No Robots · 10-30-2006, 10:31 AM

Contrast the above with these statements from the self-avowed atheist Biblical scholar William Arnal in his book, The Symbolic Jesus: Historical Scholarship, Judaism, and the Construction of Contemporary Identity:

No one in mainstream New Testament scholarship denies that Jesus was a Jew. (p. 5)

And:

In the case of critical scholarship on the New Testament, earliest Christianity, and especially the historical Jesus, thing have been improving for the last thirty years or so. Beginning in the 1970s and continuing to the present, numerous studies have appeared which not only acknowledge his identity as a Jew, but which emphasize it, and make it central to their reconstructions…. Thus is it a normal feature of the recent works emphasizing Jesus' Judaism that they tend to normalize him, make him an understandable and more ordinary figure among his contemporaries, comparable to other Jewish figures from the same time and place. (p. 15-16)

Yuri Kuchinsky · 10-30-2006, 02:34 PM

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Originally Posted by seebs

Is it necessarily the case that all of it was in the same language originally?

That's a very sensible question...

In fact, one would naturally assume that the original documents were in more than one language.

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky · 10-30-2006, 03:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malachi151

There are a few points here.

1) The closeness of the texts of Mark, Matthew, and Luke, indicate that Matthew and Luke both copied directly from Mark or at least that these three copied from some third source,

So this source could have been Semitic.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malachi151

and that all of this copying was done in the same language,

Not necessarily.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malachi151

due to the exact word for word, punctuation mark for punctuation mark,

LOL!

There was no punctuation marks!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malachi151

[snip]

3) No one in history ever claimed that any text of the gospels was originally written in Aramaic except for Matthew, which no one had evidence of, they just said that they heard it from someone else.

Not true. Some church fathers claimed to have handled these texts.

Yuri.

Malachi151 · 10-30-2006, 03:41 PM

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LOL!

There was no punctuation marks!

True, I was thinking that there was based on Greek representations of the text I have seen, but these apparently have had the punctuations added since.

Still, the point remains the same.

Quote:

Not true. Some church fathers claimed to have handled these texts.

As far as I know these also are tales of "so-and-so said that so-and-so told him that so-and-so had handled an original Aramaic version", etc., and again this only applied to Matthew. I've read one of these such accounts before, but I can't remember from whom, probably Irenaeus or something...

I've never seen an account of someone saying "I personally saw an Aramaic copy of Matthew", etc., its always a friend of a friend of a cousin.... (at least as far as I have seen)

Of course there wouldn't be anything odd about there being Aramaic translations of the gospel, its just that the Aramaic didn't come first.

rlogan · 10-30-2006, 04:26 PM

Isn't it odd to see judge posting on this?

Ipetrich - this one has had quite a bit of discussion and there should be numerous threads in the archives on this. And they are pretty informative with linguistic experts in there.

judge · 10-30-2006, 05:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malachi151

5) Many of the claimed phrases that work better in Aramaic don't.

Really?

What other phrases are you referring to here?

judge · 10-30-2006, 05:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malachi151

2) Mark clearly appears to have been written in Greek, if for no other reason than the fact that he "quotes Jesus" in Aramaic and then provides the translations into Greek, for example:

33At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. 34And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"—which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

.

Ok ok....this is just classic this is.

Someone argues for a greek original without even bothering to check the aramaic version.

Everyone already knows it was written in greek , right, so there is no need to even check the Aramaic, why waste our time?

This is exactly the problem...no one even bothers to check the Aramaic.

The Aramaic here contains a translation from one aramaic dialect into another aramaic dialect.
Gallileans spoke a different dialect to Judeans.

See here.

Mark 15 in Aramaic/english

The greek translator kept one dialect and translated it into greek.

10-30-2006, 10:31 AM	#14
No Robots Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Edmonton Posts: 5,679	Contrast the above with these statements from the self-avowed atheist Biblical scholar William Arnal in his book, The Symbolic Jesus: Historical Scholarship, Judaism, and the Construction of Contemporary Identity: No one in mainstream New Testament scholarship denies that Jesus was a Jew. (p. 5) And: In the case of critical scholarship on the New Testament, earliest Christianity, and especially the historical Jesus, thing have been improving for the last thirty years or so. Beginning in the 1970s and continuing to the present, numerous studies have appeared which not only acknowledge his identity as a Jew, but which emphasize it, and make it central to their reconstructions…. Thus is it a normal feature of the recent works emphasizing Jesus' Judaism that they tend to normalize him, make him an understandable and more ordinary figure among his contemporaries, comparable to other Jewish figures from the same time and place. (p. 15-16)

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10-30-2006, 04:26 PM	#18
rlogan Banned Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Alaska Posts: 9,159	Isn't it odd to see judge posting on this? Ipetrich - this one has had quite a bit of discussion and there should be numerous threads in the archives on this. And they are pretty informative with linguistic experts in there.

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