judge

I'll have to find my notes. I have this one.

They have the Gospel according to Matthew
quite complete in Hebrew, for this Gospel is certainly still
preserved among them as it was first written, in Hebrew
letters.
(Epiphanius; Panarion 29:9:4)

But I would check it's accuracy.

Ben C Smith

I agree with you for a change, as least so far as Mark is concerned (and it would make sense for Luke, too, since he obviously travelled the Roman empire quite a bit). I know that spin has posted a bit about the Latinisms in Mark. Because this issue has cropped up now and again on this board, I have uploaded a quotation on the Marcan Latinisms from Robert Gundry, Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross (or via: amazon.co.uk), pages 1043-1044 on my gospel of Mark page (scroll down to the bottom). Warning: This quotation is dense.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

Thanks. I do happen to have that one.

Ben.

Amedeo

This is in reference to your message:

Epiphanius of Salamis [Cyprus] (310+ -403). Extractions have been made from his "Panarion" and have been called "The Gospel of the Ebionites":

http://www.earlychristianwritings.co...-panarion.html

So, in the 4th century there was a written Gospel, called "Hebrew Gospel" that was "according to [or based on] Matthew."

There is no suggestion that this was the Gospel that Matthew wrote. As a matter of fact the beginning of the Gospel that Epiphanius reports is quite different from the beginning of the canonical Matthew Gospel.

I presume the Ebionites extracted a Gospel (now written in Hebrew) from the original Matthew Gospel. Was the original Matthew Gospel in Hebrew or in Greek???

In my above post, I spoke of the Proto-Gospel which many scholars believe was the source-book of the synoptic Gospels. Of course we do not know and we have no way of knowing whether the Proto-Gospel was a complination [etc.] of the collected anecdotes in Aramaic and Hebrew, or whether the compilation was translated into Greek.

If for some time or for ever the proto-Gospel existed in the orginal languages, then the synoptic Gospels are extractions from AND translations into Greek. (The Gospel of the Ebionites was in Hebrew, but this does not help us to answer that question, since it may be based on Matthew but does NOT quote Matthew.)

Cheerful Charlie

Why not? We have letterrs from Roman times showing sailors and soldiers could write. On the other hand:

Acts 4:13 Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.

Unlearned here is actually the Greek word for illiterate, agrammatos.

CC

Roger Pearse

The disagreement results from a pronunciation difference for the last vowel in these words. It varies depending on whether we follow the West Syriac (-o) or East Syriac (-a) pronunciation of the zqafa, the vowel sound in question, in the ending of all Syriac nouns.

This is today normally transcribed in English as an 'a' with an overscore, although there is no standard way to transcribe Syriac.

Either form is correct. After all, most Syriac texts don't even write the vowels in question. Writing peshitto (and other words) with an -a is slightly more common these days because of that tendency in transcription, and indeed we certainly need a standard transcription. However I certainly write and say 'estrangelo' rather than 'estrangela'.

We have no certain idea of how Syriac was pronounced at Edessa in the 5th century, before the split. West Syriac had the benefit of St. Jacob of Edessa, who introduced Greek-style vowels above the consonants (although his attempt to get them written on the line like consonants was rejected); East Syriac continues to use a system of dots to indicate vowels. Neither bother to indicate them all. The West Syriac Serto script is quite different to the ancient Estrangelo script; the East Syriac book hand is perhaps closer, although still different.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

judge

Yes, I wasn't trying to say we know how they pronounced it. By differentiating between peshitto and peshitta we are rather differentiating between two different textual traditions.

The theology of these two communties differed on some points. One of the results of this is that some verses in the peshitto were altered to reflect their theology



As has been mentioned here before, the split is an imaginary one.
Roman Catholics propose them selves as the "true church". They apparently had the "true councils". The decisions of these councils were apparently the "truth" WRT theology.

It is unthinkable, if they are the "true church" that another "true church" might have existed independently.
Therefore they say.."those bloody nestorian heretics split from us".

Prior to Ephesus ,where Nestorius was condemned, (who incidentally was not part of the community using the peshitta anyway) the COE had, in their own council declared their indepedence from those believers to the west.

Their is not a scrap of evidence that their Christology was ever anything but that which flows naturally from the words and concepts of the peshitta.

Too late for the RCC to charge them with splitting.

So we have at least two communities which were geographically, linguistically and ecclesiastically seperate and which as a result had slighty different views of Christology. One group condenmed a certain view (that mary was not the mother of God) without even seeking the input of those Christians to the east.
Then afterwards being bound by their own council, had to condemn anyone who didn't agree that Mary was the mother of God, and so that make up this story that those Christians to the east, split from them.

judge

But if we look at the LXX which is a translation, we see bad grammar.

spin

You simply didn't understand my statement. You need to read beyond first sentences in paragraphs otherwise you make facile errors like the one you made above. There is a difference between appearance and reality. You didn't get this when I said the following to you:

Mk has an apparently Semitic substratum. There has never been any doubt about the Marcan writer's general background, but that gives you no indication whatsoever about which language he wrote in.
(Emphasis and italics added.)

This is a rejection of your claim of a Semitic linguistic substratrum to the text of Mark. And in the following paragraph from the same post in the thread you cited:

It is actually linguistically improbable that Mk was simply translated from a Semitic language. There would be no great reason why a translator should use the underlying grammatical features of the original language, unless of course he had a Semitic background, but then how do you tell whether it was the translator who maintains the Aramaic substratum or it was a person writing Greek with a Semitic substratum??

Once again from this, you cannot get from the few manifestations of Semitic culture to a linguistic substratum.

However, there are signs that a Latin language background is assumed of the readers destined to read Mark. I've stated some of the evidence before on this forum, for example here and here. Back in January 2005 I said here, "I have already stated that Mark was written for a Roman Greek speaking audience...". I guess it's just a case of judge's selective reading.


spin

spin

Could you supply some annotated examples, please?


spin