judge

Mark doesn't tell his Aramaic readers that though. You jumped the gun a bit here. Here is the Aramaic version. Mark 5. As you see there is no explanation.

Here is Mark 15 in Aramaic. As you will see it contains two different dialects of Aramaic.


The jews in Judea spoke a dialect commonly called Chaldaic. This was because the jews had been captive in babylon. This is also called Imperial Mesopotamian Aramaic

This was different to the Assyrian dialect, spoken by samaritans and galileans with their Assyrian populants.

The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon entry for "Eil":

)yl#3 N > )l N
)l N
1 ImpArMesop,Palestinian,Syr god


Mark explains Jesus words to those Aramaic speakers not familiar with that dialect of Aramaic

judge

Joe, can you explain just how the reply makes this clear?

spamandham

Good lord. Do you have any clue as to the history of the Peshitta? It certainly is not valid to claim that as somehow representative of an original Aramaic.

This is a complete waste of time.

judge

Yes I have spent quite a bit of time looking into it.
Is there a particular point you wish to raise?

Can you explain why it is not valid to claim it is not an original Aramaic?

Do we just have to believe that because someone tells us so?

spamandham

Sure, ....like why you think a 5th century compilation of an earlier very loose translation from Greek to Syriac (the Diatessaron) has any bearing on this discussion.

Are you arguing for primacy of the Peshitta itself!?

judge

The peshitta cannot be a compliation of the diatessaron, because the diatessaron is a harmony of the gospels only.
The peshitta contains 22 new testament books.
How can a 22 book NT be a compliation of the diatessaron?

The peshitta is the earliest quoted Aramaic/Syriac NT we have. It is quoted by Aphrahat and in the COE liturgy.

spamandham

Substitute "based on" for "of", and address the same question.

...it is generally accepted he was quoting the Diatessaron, not the Peshitta.

show_no_mercy

Why would Paul's letters, written to Gentiles, be written in Aramaic?

judge

Well from Acts (in several places), for what it is worth we see that greek was not Pauls first language. So it seems natural that one would write in the language they were most proficient in.
Secondly, although Paul described himself as an apostle to the gentiles, there were no doubt jews living in the diaspora too, so they would have been familiar with the jewish tongue, to some degree at least.
Josephus seems to tells us in the preface to one of his books that the jews did not encourage the learning of foreign tongues also.

These are enough reasons to at least consider that Paul did write in Aramaic. After that we need to look at the internal evidence in the letters themselves, which incidentally still contain Aramaic words.

Added in edit: *There is some debate whether this should read Hebrew or Aramaic.

judge

The diatessaron does not contain Pauls epistles, 1John, 1Peter, James or Hebrews.
So the peshitta versions of these books cannot be based on the diatessaron.

Aphrahat quotes from not just the gospels but from the epistles as well.
How can Aphrahat be quoting from the diatessaron if he is quoting Pauls epistles???
The diatessaron does not contain Paul's epistles.