Doctor X

Yuri:

Well I am probably the wrong person to ask that question.

The Greek Mt certainly preserves--and sometimes "corrects"--the Greek Mk . . . I forget if you have a problem with the Synoptic Problem . . . if you do than none of this will persuade you of course! My point is that one would have to explain how an Aramaic Mt incorporated a Greek Mk and was then translated into Greek without problems! The "Mk" in Mt would be very different. This would hold even if Mk was Aramaic--then you have both Mt and Mk translated into Greek without differences. I find that hard to buy.

A linguist with far better understanding of Greek would have to speak to the "Greekism" of Mt.

As for the Old Syriac of Mt . . . well, I do not know much about it. I have some references other than Aland but they may be from the same school. Of the top of my head it is a late text--Peshitta--and it is not the only witness.

It may be a bit like proving the Vulgate was a translation of the Greek or the LXX a translation of the Hebrew. A linguist who clearly has never gotten laid so he has expertise in those language which just makes one a "babe magnet" can comment on how Latin came from Greek because it preserve readings from "blah blah" and not the better readings from "this and that" and the idium are ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Has this been done for the Old Syriac? I can try to check it out.

--J.D.

Amos

If so you could at least thank me for the opportunity to tell us that.

I have no time now but will respond later.

Thanks.

judge

Hi again Yuri...hope yu don't mind if I am a little provocative again.

What exactly is your evidence for this?

If there is little doubt about it then you must be able to show why?

judge

Hi Dr X ..hope you don't mind if I am a little provocative here as well.

It amy not be a new idea to "textual criticism" but is is a new idea.

One without any evidence to support it...unless you are holding out on us?

Doctor X

Judge:

I would have to simply refer you to the history of scholarship. Perchance a hundred odd years seems "new" to some.

If you feel you can prove otherwise--that the texts were not written in Greek--then you should add your voice to the scholarship by submitting it to the peer-reviewed literature.

Mk uses Greek idioms, for example.
Lk and Mt use a Greek Mk as their source. They also correct the Greek of Mk in places and alter some of his idioms.

However, I more than welcome a peer-reviewed article that indicates otherwise.

--J.D.

excreationist

judge:
I found some fairly convincing stuff about gowra here - though Aramaic peshitta sites like this one translate Matthew 1:16 as "husband".
BTW, here it looks like there are 42 (3x14) people in the genealogy... it says "and fourteen from the exile to the Christ" - and there are if Jesus is included.
If Joseph is the father of Mary, it should have used the same "...fathered..." or "...begat..." word like the preceding verses do. If God made that happen then we probably wouldn't have had this (possible) mistranslation in the first place.

judge

Hi again Dr X.


1. Yes...One hundred odd years is very new. The quotes I provided are very old.

2. Doubtless peer reviewed literature will come one day. Problem is because everyone already knows it was written in greek why bother examining the original?

Is there any peer reviewed literature examining the peshitta and its relationship to the greek texts?

The emperor has no clothes.

3. Still despite my requests you cannot provide any thing precise or specific.
If you have specific examples lets have a look. Lets for example examine these "greek idioms"

4. Relationships between the greek of Mark, Luke and matthew are irrelevant if these books were all translated from Aramaic.

All the best

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hi, JD,

Of course I have a problem with the Synoptic Problem! And especially, I have a problem with the Markan priority. In fact, there are 1000 good arguments against Markan priority; they are called "the Anti-Markan Agreements between Mt and Lk". See,

http://www.trends.ca/~yuku/bbl/synprob.htm

Quote:

A linguist with far better understanding of Greek would have to speak to the "Greekism" of Mt. As for the Old Syriac of Mt . . . well, I do not know much about it.

Well, I can tell you that *nobody* knows much about it! This is the Great Aramaic Cover-up!

Quote:

I have some references other than Aland but they may be from the same school. Of the top of my head it is a late text--Peshitta--and it is not the only witness. It may be a bit like proving the Vulgate was a translation of the Greek or the LXX a translation of the Hebrew. A linguist who clearly has never gotten laid so he has expertise in those language which just makes one a "babe magnet" can comment on how Latin came from Greek because it preserve readings from "blah blah" and not the better readings from "this and that" and the idium are ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Has this been done for the Old Syriac?

Not to my knowledge, and I've been asking about it for some time already.

Quote:

I can try to check it out.

Cheers,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky

So you forgot already, judge?

[quoting my old post]

That the Peshitta came after the Old Syriac is quite clear by analogy with the Old Latin gospels, which are of course very similar to the Old Syriac gospels textually. After all, we know from good historical sources that Jerome was assigned to "standardise" the Latin gospels. Before Jerome, Latin textual tradition was rather unstable. So he's normally credited with standardising it.

The Development of the Canon of the New Testament - Vulgate
http://www.ntcanon.org/Vulgate.shtml

"In 382 Pope Damasus commissioned Jerome, the leading biblical scholar of his day, to produce an acceptable Latin translation of the Bible from the several divergent translations then in use. His revised Latin translation of the Gospels was delivered to the Pope in 384."

Thus, I'm arguing that the Old Syriac gospels stand to the Peshitta in the same type of a relationship as the Old Latin gospels stand to the Latin Vulgate.

[end quote]

In other words, the process that unfolded in the Latin textual tradition is very clear. First there were the Old Latin gospels, and then came the standardisation (i.e. the Vulgate).

So perhaps what you're telling us now is that in the Syriac textual tradition everything happened exactly in reverse -- a sort of a mirror reflection, perchance? Is this Alice Beyond the Looking Glass already, or what?

Here's that old thread,

Greek or Aramaic? (March 2003)
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...036#post886036

Yours,

Yuri.

Doctor X

Yuri:

Markan Priority:

Must confress I find discarding Markan priority creates more problems than it solves. However, I am sure you have spent considerable time with the subject and do not need me to quote it to you! About a year or two ago one of the "anti-Markan" leaders published a book about it--it received somewhat polite review and was then taken appart. He was, if memory serves me correctly, pro-Mathean. This, in and of itself, presents a major problem.

Aramaic versus Greek:

Or it may be that no one has considered the possibility that Mt was Aramaic first based on the textual witnesses we have. Or it could be a "been there, done that" after analysing the witnesses. Nothing, of course, stops anyone from working on it--look at the respective witnesses and see if one can make a better argument that they went Aramaic to Greek rather than the Greek to Aramaic. One cannot fault people with finite time for pursuing other avenues of research for all that is possible is not probable.

What I have "at home" mainly deals with seeing if the Aramaic preserves an earlier reading than the Greek . . . unfortunately it is in essays on Pauline letters. This is akin to using--correctly--the LXX to correct the MT in certain circumstances.

Judge:

And as recent as thirty years ago people believed one could "prove the Bible" by walking around Palestine with a shovel. You presented the theological assumptions rather than actual scholarship. The scholarship is rather old . . . given how rapidly the field develops.

The first is sort of an argument from a vacuum, akin to a "doubtless evidence will one day demonstrate Star Fleet Command's involvement in the Kennedy Assassination." On the contrary to the second, people do use the Syriac in textual criticism and people do study the text. People are also willing to explore all sorts of ideas. As above, the Markan Priority is the established theory. It does not prevent Yuri and others from challenging it for various reasons--some have religious reasons since having the texts with the birth narrative "secondary" calls in this who virgin birth into question! Gather Mk just sort of "forgot" about it . . . must have spilled wine on that section of the Mt scroll. . . .

Q and its ever growing layers--"we designate Q147 to refer to two yak herders who exposed themselves in front of the Temple. . . ."--is also "established" with enough literature to sink the Ark, yet you have posters here who call it a "fairy tale" and recent texts that say the same . . . not without some basis.

So, yes, scholars will explore all sorts of avenues. Sometimes the evidence just forces them into a direction.

Yes, a rather considerable amount. Back "at the library," whilst my sources did not directly address Yuri's question with regards to Mt, it had a rather considerable bibliography. Now, I, myself, spend little time in the field, but if I had to explore it I would research some of the journals on textual criticism and even, in this day of the internet, correspond with some of the current scholars.

Most do not bite. . . .

Thus,

does not really fit.

Methinks you should not presume to know the motivations of others.

Nevertheless, in a word, γαρ

Actually, no. On thing certain about translation is that it is interpretation and the manner in which one person translates the order of words in one language will vary from another. Greek--English is a good example since the word order in Greek is "different" from the mind of an English speaker.

That Mt and Lk quote Mk--and agree in word order--sinks your hypothesis. If Mk Aramaic--which would make his passages where he translates for his audience rather unnecessary . . . why would his Greek translator bother? . . , then Mt and Lk independently took the passages. Then the independent translators of Mt and Lk, respectively, translated these passages into Greek in such a way they all agreed?

Now, that Emperor is rather chilly.

--J.D.