Steven Avery

Right. Whatever one thinks of Jerome and the Vulgate NT, we are dealing with one very knowledgable writer. And when he discusses various Gospels, it is good to read him carefully. We see the Hebrew and Aramaic canonical Matthew proponents tend to read him superficially. Jerome actually moved to Israel, lived in Bethlehem, used the Caesarea library, and studied with knowledgable Jews, so his views on Tanach and Hebrew issues are early and first-hand.

My understanding is that they are quoting an argument that was originally given by Paul Younan, who does know the language. Just a note, since that doesn't make it any less absurd. If I find some of these I need to bookmark them, as an example of aramaic primacy run amok. Wonder if Christopher Lancaster touches this in his web book, will have to check.

Matthew 28:18-20
And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying,
All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you:
and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

The various arguments against Matthew 28:19 are about as weak a textual case as exists anywhere, they generally mix up doctrinal preferences with textual questions.

The standard ending has 99.9% textual support, across all Greek, Vulgate Latin, Old Latin and Aramaic lines as well as other languages. The Eusebius use of "name of the Lord" is not unusual even today. And we have a good bunch of early church writers before Eusebius who affirm the standard evidence. I sent them to over to Holding and he has some of them at
http://www.tektonics.org/lp/matt2819.html
Is Matt. 28:19 a Late Interpolation?

Overall, there is rarely a weaker textual argument than those against Matthew 28:19

Apparently Howard tries to use the textual omission/corruption in ShemTob as a part of this argument. If that is the case, it doesn't say much for his overall gestalt. And you can see folks all over the net quoting the orphan ShemTob corruption as an argument against the traditional Matthew 28:19.

Here is a bit that I have found on some of the issues. It would be nice to get the text of the separate Howard article your reference from Tren or something, and/or the three pages below.

http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/vol04/Howard1999.html Pg 192-194 - Howard
.. I consider the short ending of Matthew in Shem-Tob's Hebrew Matthew and a similar short ending that F. C. Conybeare observed in some manuscripts of Eusebius. Conybeare suggested that the short ending in Eusebius, lacking the Trinitarian baptismal formula, was reflected in Justin Martyr (Dial. 39, 53) and Hermas (Sim. 9.27.4) (see Conybeare 1901). Others have added new evidence for a short ending of Matthew, and this evidence is discussed as well.

http://tinyurl.com/dk6ou - Derek Copold (2000)
"Also Mt 28:19 is missing entirely. (The problem with this particular
instance is that it provides for a strange lacuna. It reads something
like "Go...and teach them." [Who's "them?"]) "

Moshe Shulman (has the Hebrew manuscript of ShemTob, as does a friend)
"the verse seems to have been defective. The grammer is strange and difficult. Considering the rest of the manuscript and the language there, it is out of place. It is possible that this was lost or not transcribed correctly. "

http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/vol04/Howard1999.html - George Howard
"Go and teach them to carry out all the things which I have commanded you forever." This is said apparently only in reference to the Jews, and nothing is said about teaching or baptizing the Gentile nations.

http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/vol03/Petersen1998a.html - William Petersen
"Go and teach them to carry out all the things which I have commanded you forever." No mention is made of "making disciples of all nations," nor does Jesus promise to be "with you always, even unto the end of the world."

http://www.paleotimes.org/whatsNew/2...ly_29_2003.htm
The Search for the Hebrew Matthew - Michael Banak
(qodesh name perspective, fair amount of history and analysis)
Professor Howard reports that almost none of these readings of Jerome from the Nazarenes' Hebrew matches the Shem Tob text. The same can be said for the Gospel owned by the Ebionites, which Epiphanius quoted, and for a host of other Hebrew quotations from the Hebrew Matthew which various writers through history have recorded. To compound matters even more, history mentions several Hebrew Matthews going by several different names. Schonfield mentions some of them: 'The Gospel', 'The Gospel of the Lord', 'The Gospel of the Twelve', 'The Gospel of the Apostles', 'The Gospel of the Hebrews' and 'The Hebrew Matthew.'

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

S.C.Carlson

I'm leaning in that direction, pending further study, but I'm not really confident about it.

Stephen

Yuri Kuchinsky

Lots of Church fathers.

You're not representing Howard's views accurately.

Papias is just one voice among many. Lots of other Church fathers say that Matthew was written originally in a Semitic tongue. _None of them_ say that Matthew was originally written in Greek.

Here are just some of these testimonies,

Church Fathers' Witnesses on the original language of the Gospel according to Matthew
http://www.angelfire.com/id/nasrani/pb/HebMatthew.html

Regards,

Yuri.

Chris Weimer

Wow Yuri! I'm absolutely shocked at this. I thought you above this sort of appeal. Did you even read this thread? That issue was clearly taken care of quite a while ago. Where've you been?

S.C.Carlson

The wording on that page seems rather familiar........ I think I've seen it before.......

Stephen

countjulian

Does it matter? Papias shows great ignorance of our canonical Matt, so its pretty obvious that our Matt is the same as his logia Matt.

Julian

Hmmm, that does seem to be lifted verbatim from your site, doesn't it. And without giving you any credit, I see. I would be grumbling by now, if I were you...

Julian

Revenge of Montezuma

Precisely. It is interesting to note how these curious tortuous "explainings away" get passed around. I last heard the above bit of absurdity from a Christadelphian - quite a world away from a member of the Orthodox Church, I would have thought. The truth is, though, that anything will do to get round these problematical (for believers) texts. Thus, I have heard that this text might perhaps refer to pentecost.

On your second point, it has also been pointed out (by me too) that the context of this description of Christ's coming in glory exactly mirrors that in Matthew 24 - the bone of contention of this thread.

However many appeals to original texts in foreign languages may be made, it doesn't really help if you completely depart from the simple contextual understanding of language in the first instance. You, I'm pleased to say, have still a firm grasp on how language functions. O_F (bless him) is still thrashing around, desperately trying to clutch at a few "inerrant" straws. It's odd, that. I thought the "inerrancy" phenomenon was fairly recent, and the Catholics and Orthodox were not so hide-bound by it as the fundoes. I was obviously mistaken.

Yuri Kuchinsky

This website,

Church Fathers' Witnesses on the original language of the Gospel according to Matthew
http://www.angelfire.com/id/nasrani/pb/HebMatthew.html

seems to be unique on the Net, in so far as it brings together evidence from various Church fathers in support of the idea that Matthew was written originally in a Semitic tongue.

I have no idea about the sources of this website.

But what I find rather curious is that this angelfire.com website doesn't show up in any of the Google searches I've been doing recently... One might get an impression that it is being for some reason censored by Google.

And yet, this same angelfire.com website is easily found by the Yahoo search engine.

Also, the following website by our friend Ben Smith, which also has some of the similar material, is likewise not found in Google,

http://www.textexcavation.com/hebrewmatthew.html

Folks can draw their own conclusions from all this...

Regards,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Please explain how has this issue been "taken care of"?

Yours,

Yuri.