stephan huller

Look at the Arabic equivalent from the Diatessaron:

the Holy Spirit will come, and the power of the Most High shall rest upon thee, and therefore shall he that is born of thee be pure, and shall be called the Son of God

will have to check the Peshitta but that it different.

stephan huller

Yup, as always:

The angel answered and said to her, The Holy Spirit will come, and the power of the Highest will rest upon you; therefore the one who is to be born of you is holy, and he will be called the Son of God.

stephan huller

I think I found something significant. The difference between the Syriac and the Greek is that the verb גני which means both 'to lie down' or 'go down' and conversely 'to obscure' (as in the Greek). So if Irenaeus witnessed an original Syriac (as Harvey seems to suggest) the sense is that the Holy Spirit 'came' to Mary and then the Most High 'lay down' גני with her - the Greek however took this verb to mean 'obscured' which doesn't really make sense. I know spin doesn't like these Aramaic based arguments, but this has nothing to do with Mark or the primacy of the gospel. It just suggests that Luke's Virgin Birth narrative (which came later) was written in Aramaic.

stephan huller

From Sokoloff

גני vb. to lie down (Sy ܓܢܐ LS 123) Pe. בכותלא דגניי בה concerning a wall where people lie Tan 69b(43) // דגנאי ib. 64d(24)
Itpe. (unclear) והיא מתגנייא SR 28b(25)

Moreshet, Lex 124. The form מיתגנין Bes 62d(55) should be read מיתננין to place them (→ √נתן ).

stephan huller

Look at Jastrow's examples of the use of the verb with 'lie down' on a bed:

http://hebrewbooks.org/pagefeed/hebr..._38236_275.pdf

stephan huller

The Aramaic would read then:

The angel answered and said to her, The Holy Spirit will come, and the power of the Highest will lie down with you; therefore the one who is to be born of you is holy, and he will be called the Son of God.

The Greek was deliberately corrected to avoid the sexual implication. Now to find examples of גני being used to denote man and woman 'in bed' together.

stephan huller

Even the superfluous conversation between a man and his wife is declared to a person in the hour of his death.

But is it so?

Now behold R`Kahana once lay down beneath the bed of Rab (והא רב כהנא הוה גני תותי פורייה דרב) and he heard him converse and jest and perform his needs. [Chagigah 5b]

stephan huller

I think this is good enough to illustrate the sexual sense:

Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 65a-b

אבוה דשמואל...לא שביק להו גניאן גבי הדדי לימא מסייע ליה לרב הונא דאמר ר"ה נשים המסוללות זו בזו פסולות לכהונה לא סבר כי היכי דלא לילפן גופא נוכראה

Abbahu d’Shmuel . . . did not let permit [his daughters] to lie down together. Might this be a support for R. Huna, who says that women who rub with each other are disqualified for the priesthood [i.e., marriage to a priest]? No. He held that they should not become accustomed to [sleeping with] an alien body. [Translation by Rabbi Steven Greenberg]

stephan huller

You see this is why everyone should put up with me. Do you know how many people tried to figure out a way to see the story in Luke this way? The story looks more and more like the Hercules narrative where Hermes and Zeus go together to impregnate Alcmene. Hermes runs 'interference' in that story.

Clivedurdle

And the holy wind produces not a boy or a girl but a son of god.