ichabod crane

I thought I'd start a thread for Yuri on the issue of the gospel of Matthew, whether it was first written in Aramaic, Hebrew or Greek (also I know judge will be interested in this). Here is one argument for saying it was originally written in Greek (at least in part):

The passage in question is Mt. 21:16. This is a most interesting passage. In the Greek text of Matthew, the wording is from the Septuagint of Psalm 8:2 (8:3 Hebrew), katertiso ainon, "prepared praise". The problem is, that the LXX here mistranslates the Hebrew, which reads yissadta `oz, "established strength".

Now given that it is extremely unlikely that Jesus, an Aramaic speaker, would have quoted from the LXX to the chief priests and the scribes, we have a significant problem. Furthermore, he could not have quoted the verse in Hebrew, because this would not make sense in the context (the children singing praises to him requires the word "praise" rather than "strength" for the quote to make sense). So clearly we have a fictional story attributed to Jesus. But the key point is that this story must have come about from someone who was relying on the LXX, in other words, someone who was writing in Greek. Anyone who checked the Hebrew would know that the story couldn't be true. (The word `oz simply doesn't mean praise).

So I checked this verse in the translation by Burkitt of the Aramaic Matthew (can be found on Yuri's website). It reads: and they say: "Dost thou not hear what these are saying?" Jesus saith to them: "Yes; have ye never read, 'Out of the mouth of children and of infants I will make praise'?"

This for me is sufficient proof that the Aramaic is a translation from the Greek original. I would be particularly interested to know the Aramaic word translated "praise" by Burkitt, just to make sure. But someone writing in Aramaic would not have made this mistake. Someone translating the gospel written in Greek, into Aramaic, however, would easily have done
this.

This doesn't mean that other parts of the gospel of Matthew weren't originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic. But it does show that the whole thing wasn't.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hello, Ichabod,

Yes, this is an interesting passage, but also a rather difficult one. Even in Greek, the meaning isn't very clear.

"Prepared praise" can also be translated as "established praise", or "perfected praise".

ICHABOD:
> The problem is, that the LXX here
> mistranslates the Hebrew, which reads yissadta `oz,
> "established strength".

YURI:
Or maybe LXX preserves an alternative/earlier Hebrew text here?

Just an idea...

> Now given that it is extremely unlikely that Jesus, an
> Aramaic speaker, would have quoted from the LXX to the
> chief priests and the scribes, we have a significant
> problem.

Yes, I guess.

> Furthermore, he could not have quoted the
> verse in Hebrew, because this would not make sense in
> the context (the children singing praises to him
> requires the word "praise" rather than "strength" for
> the quote to make sense).

Not necessarily. See below.

> So clearly we have a
> fictional story attributed to Jesus.

Perhaps so.

> But the key point
> is that this story must have come about from someone
> who was relying on the LXX, in other words, someone
> who was writing in Greek. Anyone who checked the
> who was writing in Greek. Anyone who checked the
> Hebrew would know that the story couldn't be true.
> (The word `oz simply doesn't mean praise).
>
> So I checked this verse in your linked translation by
> Burkitt of the Aramaic Matthew. It reads: and they
> say: "Dost thou not hear what these are saying?" Jesus
> saith to them: "Yes; have ye never read, 'Out of the
> mouth of children and of infants I will make praise'?"
>
> This for me is sufficient proof that the Aramaic is a
> translation from the Greek original.

Maybe so, but this is not certain.

> I would be
> particularly interested to know the Aramaic word
> translated "praise" by Burkitt, just to make sure.

The original in Sy Curetonian is ")(bd t$bwxt)". Sinaitic is deficient here. The two words are,

yabd = will make
teshbowhta = praise/glory (perhaps similar to the Hebrew word /kabod/)

> But someone writing in Aramaic would not have made
> this mistake.

But maybe it's not a mistake.

> Someone translating the gospel written in
> Greek, into Aramaic, however, would easily have done
> this.
>
> This doesn't mean that other parts of the gospel of
> Matthew weren't originally written in Hebrew or
> Aramaic. But it does show that the whole thing wasn't.
> What do you think?
>
> All the best,
>
> Ichabod Crane.

Well, we have Shem-Tob Hebrew Mt, and it has /yissadta `oz/ in Mt 21:16. So this matter is a bit more complicated, I suppose.

The next useful thing now is to check the writings of Ephrem and Aphrahat, to see how they used this passage, if they used it at all.

Also, the Aramaic Peshitta Psalms can be consulted. I'm not sure what it says here.

The Dead Sea Scrolls can also be investigated; perhaps they may preserve a Hebrew version of Psalm 8 where this passage is identical to the LXX (as so often happens).

Various Western/Peripheral witnesses, such as Diatessaronic and Bezae can also be investigated.

In any case, the Hebrew Mt version for this passage certainly makes the whole situation a lot more complicated.

All the best,

Yur

judge

Yes if we are looking at the Old Syriac gospels, then it seems there is evidence they were at least partly translated from greek. They bear the fingerprint of being the translation done by Rabbula of Edessa, the Evangelion de Mepharreshe.

ichabod crane

Granted, but the key point is the word "praise".

Very unlikely. The Hebrew text was painstakingly preserved and there are no extant manuscripts that read anything but "`oz" at this point. Furthermore, the change required would be from "tehillah" to "`oz", which does not seem to be the kind of scribal error that would be very probable, especially in a context where all sorts of checks were made of line length, checksums and so forth in copies of the Hebrew. The LXX is a somewhat unreliable translation, and it is much more probable that the translator was trying to creatively clarify the text in an interpretive manner (i.e. "dynamic equivalency"), rather than preserving an original Hebrew reading.

OK, so it seems that the Aramaic was translated from the Greek.

Interesting. But the problem is that the story is hence rendered nonsensical. It seems much more likely that the writer of the Shem-Tob Mt was translating from the Greek, but when he encountered quotes from the OT, he just used the Hebrew OT instead of translating the Greek (he probably thought that using the original was more sensible than using a translation from Hebrew to Greek and then translating back again into Hebrew). I would expect if Matthew was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic, that this story should be missing altogether. It only makes sense as an insertion by a Greek-speaking person.

Good point, but I'm not sure how to go about it! (Hang on, I'll just pull out those old Dead Sea scrolls I keep in my filing cabinet )

But is this passage in the Peshitta? If so, you have a problem. I'd be interested to know how it reads in the Peshitta.

judge

When the LXX has a different reading to the hebrew massoretic we should not assume that the hebrew text received from the massorettes is closest to the that which would have been quoted by Jesus.

The gospel quotes of Jesus do not agree with the LXX or the hebrew massoretic text always. Sometimes they seem to agree with one sometimes they seem to agree with the other.

At other times the quotes agree with Aramaic targums.

Craig A. Evans, professor of biblical studies at Trinity Western University in British Columbia, Canada.

writes...." when Jesus alludes to Scriptures in the Gospels, he usually does so in a manner that agrees with the Aramaic Targum, not the Greek or Hebrew versions. Some examples: In Mark 9:42-50, Jesus warns of judgment by speaking of Gehenna and alluding to Isaiah 66:24, "where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched." The word Gehenna does not appear in the Hebrew or Greek, but only in the Aramaic. In Matthew 26:52, Jesus commands his disciple to put away his sword, "for all those who take the sword, by the sword they will perish." These words, which aren't in our Hebrew-based Isaiah, probably allude to the Aramaic paraphrase of Isaiah 50:11: "all you who take a sword?go fall?on the sword which you have taken!" Jesus' well-known saying "Be merciful as your Father is merciful" (Luke 6:36) reflects the Aramaic expansion of Leviticus 22:28: "My people, children of Israel, as our Father is merciful in heaven, so shall you be merciful on earth." And Jesus' very proclamation of the gospel, namely, that the kingdom of God has come (Mark 1:14?15), probably reflects the Aramaic paraphrasing of passages such as Isaiah 40:9 and 52:7. In these Aramaic paraphrases we find the distinctive words "The kingdom of your God is revealed!"

Understanding the usage of Aramaic in Jesus' time explains another often puzzling passage. In the parable of the wicked vineyard tenants (Mark 12:1?12), Jesus alludes to Isaiah 5:1?7. In the Hebrew version of Isaiah (on which our English translations are based), the people of Judah as a whole (and not their leaders) are condemned as guilty of bloodshed. But when Jesus told the parable, the ruling priests understood that Jesus had told the parable "against them." This is because Jesus applies the passage in his parable in a way that reflects the Aramaic Targum's interpretation of it, in which God's judgment is directed primarily against the temple establishment. (The tower of Isaiah's parable is understood as the temple, and the wine vat is understood as the altar.)"

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/9t5/9t5098.html

So the fact that the peshitta of Matthew 21:16 reads "praise" is not evidence that the peshitta came from a greek text.

The fact is that we no longer possess the exact scriptures used in the New Testament

judge

I think the evidence is that even among the dead sea scrolls there is more than one kind of text.

Of the ancient hebrews texts discovered they seem to fall into two categories.
1.The texts found at the eleven qumran caves and some fragments from masada (these texts agree with the LXX) ref. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 132, pp.15-26,
2.Those texts found at desert caves in the Wadi Murabba'at, the Nahal Hever, and the Nahal Se'elim. this group appear to reflect the hebrew text we use today.

Of the first group Professor Siegfried H.Horn Professor Emeritus of Archaeology at Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan states that 'Paleographical studies show that the earliest Qumran scrolls were produced in the third century BC, and that the latest was in the first half of the first century AD The biblical text material from Masada predates the capture of that mountain fortress in AD 73, so all of the Qumran and Masada manuscripts were produced before the end of the first century AD''

The second group apparently were placed in these caves after 100 A.D. (I don't have areference for this though...so i will try to get one)
Anyway the point is that at the time of Christ it seems that a hebrew version of the old testament was in use that is slightly different to the one we obtained from the jews in the middle ages.
Professor Horn says... 'I am quite sure that Matthew quoted from a Hebrew text that agreed with the Vorlage that the Greek translators [of the LXX] used.

Johann_Kaspar

You want to decide over that matter by only one passage? Or by only one word? I think it is not serious. If there was a translator from Hebrew to Greek, why could he not do the same as the Shem-Tov Mt writer the otehr way round : quote the 70 instead of translating the Hebrew again?

Further, please read C. Tesmontant and B. Dubourg. They are bringing all arguments that the gospels were written in Hebrew.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Judge,

This is possible. But the same applies to the Peshitta, of course...

But, outside of the Peshitta.org, I don't think anyone really believes this.

BTW here's the Peshitta version of Mt 21:16 (Murdock translation),

"Yes. Have ye never read, Out of the mouth of children and infants thou hast _acquired praise_?"

Best,

Yuri

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hello, Ichabod!

YURI:
The Dead Sea Scrolls can also be investigated; perhaps they may preserve a Hebrew version of Psalm 8 where this passage is identical to the LXX (as so often happens).

ichabod crane:
Good point, but I'm not sure how to go about it! (Hang on, I'll just pull out those old Dead Sea scrolls I keep in my filing cabinet )

YURI:
Well, you can begin with,

_The Dead Sea scrolls Bible: the oldest known Bible_; translated for the first time into English [by] Martin Abegg, Jr., Peter Flint, and Eugene Ulrich., San Francisco, Calif. : HarperSanFrancisco, 1999.

The original Hebrew has been published in many volumes by Oxford. Among them, the following seem to be relevant,

J. A. Sanders. The Psalms Scroll of Qumran Cave 11 (11QPsa) (DJDJ IV; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965). xi + 97 pp. + xvii plates

E. Ulrich et al., eds., Qumran Cave 4.XI: Psalms to Chronicles (DJD XVI; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000).

All the best,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Judge,

Thanks for posting some good background material about the DSS.

What Evans is saying here, while it may well be accurate, comes from the Greek priority position.

But we still don't know what the Aramaic Peshitta Psalms says in this passage. Can you find that out?

Yes, that's true.

All the best,

Yuri.