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To: heb_roots_chr@hebroots.org
From: jstrimm@home.com
Subject: Hebraic-Aramaic NT Roots 8

Shalom All,

Thank you for all of your kind comments that you have been sending in email. For those that have asked, yes you may forward this series of instalments to other lists but please credit them properly and do not alter them.

This is the eighth instalment in this series to demonstrate that the New Testament was originally written, like the Tanak, in Hebrew and Aramaic. As we have said the Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts, not the Greek, serve as the basis for the Hebraic-Roots Version ( http://www.nazarene.net/hrv

In this instalment we will deal with the issue of Tanak quotes in the NT. What do they tell us?

It has often been claimed by the Helenists, that the several quotes in the Greek New Testament which agree with the LXX prove the Greek origin of the New Testament. This argument is faulty however, for two important reasons.

First of all, the premise of this argument presumes the conclusion to be true. It is only in the Greek New Testament that such neat agreements with the LXX occur. Hebrew Matthew (Shem Tob and DuTillet) tends to agree with the Masoretic Text, While the Aramaic versions of New Testament books (Old Syriac Gospels, Peshitta New Testament and Crawford Revelation) tend to agree in many places with the Peshitta Old Testament.

In fact the 4th century "Church Father" Jerome esentially admitted that the Greek translaers had inserted the LXX readings into the Greek NT. As we had noted in Instalment four Jerome wrote:

"Matthew, who is also Levi, and from a tax collector came to be an emissary first of all evangelists composed a Gospel of Messiah in Judea in the Hebrew language and letters, for the benefit of those of the circumcision who had believed, who translated it into Greek is not sufficiently ascertained. Furthermore, the Hebrew itself is preserved to this day in the library at Caesarea, which the martyr Pamphilus so diligently collected. I also was allowed by the Nazarenes who use this volume in the Syrian city of Borea to copy it. In which is to be remarked that, wherever the evangelist... makes use of the testimonies of the Old Scripture, he does not follow the authority of the seventy translators [the Greek Septuagint], but that of the Hebrew."

Here Jerome effectively admits that the Tanak quotes in the original Hebrew of Matthew did NOT agree with the LXX but that the Greek translator had ALTERED the Tanak quotes as they appear in the Greek to agree with the LXX. The Helenists have been caught red handed! As this instalment continues you will se that there is evidence of this, not just in the book of Matthew but in every portion of the New Testament, even in the Pauline letters.

The second fault with this argument is that recent discoveries in the Dead Sea Scrolls have produced first century Hebrew mss. of Old Testament books which in places agree with the LXX against the current Hebrew Text (the Masoretic text) and at times agree with the Peshitta Old Testament against the Masoretic text or the LXX. Thus many, but not all agreements of the New Testament with the LXX may be due to these first century Old Testament texts which contained such agreements.

An examination of four sample Old Testament quotes as they appear in the Aramaic New Testament will demonstrate two important facts. First, the Aramaic text of the Old Syriac and Peshitta New Testament could not have been translated from the Greek New Testament. Second, the Aramaic New Testament, as we have it today has been altered in some places so as to agree with the Greek.

Heb. 10:5-7 = Ps. 40:7-9 (6-8)

With sacrifices and offerings You are not pleased
But You have clothed me with a body
And burnt offerings which are for sins You have not asked for.
Then I said, Behold I come,
In the beginning of the book it is written concerning me
I will do your will, Eloah.
(from Aramaic)

Here the phrase "But You have clothed me with a body" best agrees with the LXX which has "You have prepared a body for me," a radical departure from the Masoretic Text which has "Ears You have cut/dug for me." but agreeing with the Zohar which alludes to the passage saying "Your eyes behold me ere I was clothed in a body and all things are written in your book". However the phrase "In the beginning of the book..." is a unique reading from the Peshitta Old Testament. The Hebrew has "In the roll of the book..." while the LXX has "In the volume of the book..." agreeing with the Greek of Hebrews.

Thus, this quote in the Peshitta version of Hebrews is a hybrid text sometimes agreeing with the LXX against the Masoretic Text and Peshitta Old Testament, and sometimes agreeing with the Peshitta Old Testament against both the LXX and the Masoretic Text. In fact this hybrid nature looks just like what such a quote might be expected to look like, in light of the hybrid texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This quote could not contain agreements with both the LXX and the Peshitta Old Testament if it were translated from the Greek New Testament. If this passage were translated from the Greek it would either have agreed with the LXX only as does the Greek, or inserted the standard Peshitta reading as a substitute. This quote therefore, is not a translation from Greek nor a substitute inserted from the Peshitta Old Testament but is a reading which originated apart from the Greek text.

1Peter 1:24-25 = Isaiah 40:6-8

Because of this all flesh is grass
And all its beauty like a flower of the field
The grass dries up and the flower withers
and the Word of our Eloah abides forever
(from Aramaic)

Here the line "And all its beauty like a flower of the field" agrees with the Peshitta Old Testament and Masoretic Text against the LXX and Greek New Testament which has "and all the glory of man like the flower of grass." In fact this quote agrees with the Peshitta Old Testament exactly except for the omission of Isaiah 40:7 which agrees with the LXX. Like the previous example, it could not have been translated from the Greek text.

Acts 8:32-33 = Isaiah 53:7-8

Like a lamb he was led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep before its shearer is silent,
Even thus he did not open his mouth.
In his humiliation he was led from prison and from judgement,
And who will declare his generation?
because his life has been taken from the earth/land
(from the Aramaic)

In the first two lines the words "lamb" and "sheep" are reversed in the LXX and Greek Acts but not here, where they agree with the Masoretic Text and the Peshitta Old Testament. "from prison" agrees with the Masoretic Text and the Peshitta Old Testament against the LXX, but "In his humiliation" agrees with the LXX against both. The final line contains a special problem. In this line the Peshitta Acts agrees with the LXX and Greek Acts, but this passage could not have merely come from a variant Hebrew text. In this passage the Masoretic Text and the Peshitta Old Testament agree against the LXX with "He was cut off out of the land of the living." An examination of the two versions makes it clear that the LXX translator misunderstood the Hebrew grammar here and took the word "life/living" to be a direct object rather than a modifier. Thus this phrase could only have come from the LXX. It is apparent however, because of the agreements with the Masoretic Text and Peshitta Old Testament against the LXX in the preceding lines, that this quote could not have been translated from the Greek. Thus, we may conclude that the Peshitta New Testament has been revised in places to agree with the Greek text, as our last example will further demonstrate.

Mt. 4:4 = Deut. 8:3

Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word which comes from the mouth of YHWH.

The word "God" here in the Greek of Mt. 4:4 and even the Peshitta ARamaic of Mt. 4:4 agrees with the LXX against both the Masoretic Text and the Peshitta Old Testament. It might first appear that this passage was merely translated from the Greek of Matthew. However, a look at the Old Syriac version, which is recognized by most scholars as the ancestor of the Peshitta has MARYA (which the Aramaic consistantly uses for YHWH) in agreement with the Masoretic Text and the Peshitta Old Testament against the LXX. Also the manuscripts of Hebrew Matthew also have YHWH. Thus, it is clear that the Peshitta was revised here to agree with the LXX and the more primitive text of the Old Syriac retains the original, unrevised reading.

Zech. 12:10 = Jn. 19:37

...they shall look upon me whom they have pierced... (Zech. 12:10)
...they shall look upon him whom they have pierced... (Jn. 19:37)

The origin for this variance between the New Testament and the Old appears to originate in the Aramaic versions.

This is easier to show with Hebraic-Aramaic fonts but I will attempt to demonstrate it without them.

The original Hebrew of this passage (in Zech. 12:10) employs a Hebrew word that cannot be translated into any language includuding ARamaic. The Hebrew word is ET (alef-tav). This word is a special preposition which points to the next word as the direct object recieving the action of the verb. If we show the invisable word ET in the text it would look like this:

...they shall look upon me {ET} whom they have pierced...

Now the Aramaic translater of the Aramaic Peshitta Tanak version of Zech 12:10 striving for a word for word translation, translated the untranslateable ET with an aramaic word menaing "at-him" (attempting to convey the idea of a pointer to the direct object). The result is that the Aramaic Peshitta Tanak has:

...they shall look upon me at-him whom they have pierced...

Now when the quote apears in Yochanan it apears to have passed through another change. The Aramaic of Jn. 19:17 agrees with the Aramaic of Zech 12:10 except for the word meaning "upon-me" which is omitted. Aparently a later scribe found the phrace "upon-me at-him" to be redundant and dropped the phrase "upon-me" from the quote. Thus both the Aramaic and the Greek of Jn. 19:37 have "at him" and not "upon me" in their quotations of Zech. 12:10.

This change from "upon me" to "at him" can CLEARLY be demonstrated to have occurred in the Aramaic traditiona nd then to have been TRANSLATED into Greek.

From the above examples it is clear that Old Testament quotes as they appear in the Aramaic New Testament demonstrate that the Peshitta New Testament could not have been simply translated from Greek as the Helenists claim.

James Trimm
New Messianic NT Version from Hebrew and Aramaic rather than Greek
http://www.nazarene.net/hrv 

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To: heb_roots_chr@hebroots.org
From: jstrimm@home.com
Subject: [sanj-update] Hebraic-Aramaic NT Roots 9

All,

This is the ninth instalment in my series on the Hebraic-Aramaic Roots of the NT. (The Hebraic-Roots Version NT http://www.nazarene.net/hrv is translated from the Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts rather than the Greek.)

Whenever I present the idea of a Hebraic-Aramaic origin for the NT I am often confronted with two objections/questions:

1. There are no Hebrew and Aramaic NT manuscripts. 

2. The oldest NT manuscripts are in Greek

Objection one is simply made out of ignorance and is easily answered.

Objection two is not totally correct and presupposes false information.

Prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls the oldest Hebrew manuscripts of any Tanak books only dated to the middle ages. Moreover prior to that time the oldest manuscripts of the Tanak were Greek LXX manuscripts from the 4th century CE! Yet NO ONE would have argued, based upon those facts that the Tanak had originally been written in Greek and that the Hebrew manuscripts from the Middle Ages were only Hebrew translations of the Greek! So even IF the oldest manuscripts were Greek it would in NO WAY indicate that the Greek was original and the Hebrew and/or Aramaiac was a translation.

However the fact is that while our oldest Hebrew manuscripts of  Matthew date to the Middle ages (as was the case with all Tanak books until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls) our oldest complete Aramaic NT manuscript dates to the fourth century just as our oldest complete Greek manuscript does.

Greek supporters will point to the existence of 5,309 extant Greek manuscripts as evidence of a Greek origin. However there are over 10,000 Latin Vulage manuscripts an no one argues for a Latin origin. Moreover the 5,309 Greek manuscripts start to evaporate when we look closely. of the 5,309 mss. 2,143 are not Greek NT manuscripts at all but lectionaries which quote from the NT. 2,764 are in the late Minuscule script meaning that they all date from the nineth century CE or later (well into the middle ages). Almost 100 of them atre not manuscripts at all but small Papyri fragments. Only 267 of the Greek NT manuscripts predate the 9th century CE. (This compares to about 350 Aramaic manuscripts of comparable age). The term "ancient" is usually reserved for the 4th Century CE or before. Using this definition there are only six complete ancient Greek manuscripts of the New Testament.

Greek supporters will point to the famous John Ryland's fragment (p52) and argue that the oldest fragment of any portion of the New Testament is in Greek. We have already shown why that is in itself of limited importance. However it should be noted that the Greek teaxt that appears on p52 is a Western Text and agrees with Codex Bezae. This is important because MANY scholars (Such as Matthew Black) have maintained that Codex Bezae is a Greek translation made from the Old Syriac Aramaic Version. Thus the John Rylan's fragment actually testifies to the age of the Aramaic more than it does to the Greek.

There are also many other factors which must be considered. For example when the Alexandrian Greek "Church Father" Origin quotes from Hebrews 2:9 in the early third Century, his quotation agrees with the reading of that verse as it appears in the Aramaic of the Peshitta and NOT with any known Greek manuscript reading.

Ultimately it is internal evidence which will reveal the original as we saw in the last instalment and as we shall see in future instalments. (Remember in the last instalmen we established from the
Tanak quotes which appear in the NT that the Hebrew and Aramaic versions could NOT have simply been translations of the Greek New Testament).

THE SEMITIC NEW TESTAMENT SOURCES:

Hebrew Sources

DuTillet Matthew

The DuTillet version of Matthew is taken from a Hebrew manuscript of Matthew which was confiscated from Jews in Rome in 1553. On August 12th, 1553, at the petition of Pietro, Cardinal Caraffa, the Inquisitor General , Pope Julius III signed a decree banning the Talmud in Rome. The decree was executed on September 9th (Rosh HaShanna) and anything that looked like the Talmud, that is, anything written in Hebrew characters was confiscated as the Jewish homes and synagogues were ravished. Jean DuTillet, Bishop of Brieu, France was visiting Rome at the time. DuTillet was astounded to take notice of a Hebrew manuscript of Matthew among the other Hebrew manuscripts. DuTillet acquired the manuscript and returned to France, depositing it in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. It remains there to this day as Hebrew ms. No. 132.

While most scholars have ignored the DuTillet Hebrew version of Matthew, two scholars, Hugh Schonfield and George Howard, have stated their opinion that this Hebrew text underlies our current Greek text. Schonfield writes:

...certain linguistic proofs... seem to show that the Hebrew text [DuTillet] underlies the Greek, and that certain renderings in the Greek may be due to a misread Hebrew original.
(An Old Hebrew Text of St. Matthew's Gospel; 1927, p.17)

Munster Matthew

The Munster Hebrew Text of Matthew was published in 1537 by Sebastian Munster. Munster claimed to have received his Hebrew text from the Jews. Munster also noted that he received the text "in defective condition, and with many lacunae (holes)" which he himself filled in.  Unfortunately Munster did not take steps to preserve his manuscript source which is now lost, and he did not make note of those places where he filled in missing text.

Shem Tob Matthew

The Shem Tob Hebrew version of Matthew was transcribed by Shem Tob Ben Yitzach Ben Shaprut into his apologetic work Even Bohan sometime around 1380 C.E.. While the autograph of Shem Tob's Even Bohan has been lost, several manuscripts dating between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries still exist, complete with the transcribed text of Hebrew Matthew. George Howard writes of Shem Tob's Hebrew Matthew:

...an old substratum to the Hebrew in Shem Tob is a prior composition, not a translation. The old substratum, however, has been exposed to a series of revisions so that the present text of Shem-Tob represents the original only in an impure form. (The Gospel of Matthew according to a Primitive Hebrew Text; 1987;p.223)

It might appear from the linguistic and sociological background to early Christianity and the nature of some theological tendencies in Shem-Tob's Matthew that the Hebrew text served as a model for the Greek. The present writer is, in fact, inclined to that position. (ibid p. 225)

Shem-Tob's Matthew... does not preserve the original in a pure form. It reflects contamination by Jewish scribes during the Middle Ages. Considerable parts of the original, however, appear to remain... (Hebrew Gospel of Matthew; 1995; p. 178

Aramaic Sources

The Old Syriac Gospels

Another relatively unknown fact to much of Christendom is the existence of two ancient Aramaic manuscripts of the Four Gospels dating back to the Fourth century. The first was discovered by Dr. William Cureton in 1842. It was found in a monastery at the Naton Lakes Valley in Egypt. This manuscript is known as Codex Syrus Curetonianus or, the Cureton and is catalogued as British Museum Add. No. 14451. The second was discovered by Mrs. Agnes Smith Lewis in 1892. It was found at St. Catherine's Monastery at the foot of traditional Mount Sinai in Egypt. This manuscript is known as Codex Syrus Sinaiticus or the Syriac Siniatic and is catalogued as Ms. Sinai Syriac No. 30. After making his profound discovery Dr. Cureton studied the Old Syriac text of the manuscript in detail. Cureton concluded that at least the version of Matthew found in the Old Syriac has its basis in the original Semitic text and was not merely a translation from the Greek or Latin. Cureton published his findings to the world saying:

...this Gospel of St. Matthew appears at least to be built upon the original Aramaic text which was the work of the Apostle himself. (Remains of a Very Ancient Recension of the Four Gospels in Syriac; 1858; p. vi)

The Peshitta New Testament

The Peshitta Bible is an Aramaic version of the Scriptures which is used throughout the Near East. The birth of the Peshitta looms beyond the horizon of antiquity.  Although one tradition has the Tanak portion of the Peshitta being translated at the time of Solomon at the request of Hiram, and another ascribes the translation to a priest named Assa sent by the king of Assyria to Samaria . More likely is that the Peshitta Tanak was prepared at the edict of King Izates II of Abiabene who with his entire family converted to Judaism. Josephus records that at his request, King Izates' five son's went to Jerusalem to study the Jewish language and customs . It was probably at this time that the Peshitta Tanak was born.

The New Testament portion of the Peshitta was added to the Peshitta Tanak in the earliest Christian centuries. It is universally used by Jacobite Syrians; Nestorian Assyrians and Roman Catholic Chaldeans. The Peshitta must predate the Christological debates of the fourth and fifth centuries, since none of these groups would have adopted their rival's version. Thus, this version certainly originated in the pre-Nicean Church of the East. It includes all of the books except 2Peter; 2John; 3John; Jude and Revelation.  These books were not canonized by the Church of the East. The Peshitta is not merely a translation from the Greek text, but rather a revision of the Old Syriac, as Arthur Voobus writes:

... the Peshitta is not a translation, but a revision of an Old Syriac version.
(Studies in the History of the Gospel Text in Syriac; 1951; p. 46 see also pp. 54-55).

There are about 350 Peshitta manuscripts which predate the nineth century, the oldest of which date to the fourth century (the same age as the Oldest complete Greek NT manuscripts)

The Crawford Manuscript of Revelation

The Crawford Aramaic version of Revelation is a very rare, little known version. How the manuscript made its way to Europe is unknown. What is known is that the manuscript was purchased by the Earl of Crawford around 1860. In the Earl of Crawford's possession the ms. became catalogued Earl of Crawford's Haigh Hall, Wigan, no. 11. It has since come into the possession of the well known John Rylands Library of Manchester, England. The manuscript contains a complete Peshitta text supplemented by the extra-Peshitta epistles and this unique version of Revelation . Concerning the variants of this version John Gwyn Writes:

Two or three... are plausible readings; and might well be judged worthy of adoption if there were any ground for supposing the Apocalypse to have been originally written, or to be based on a document written, in an Aramaic idiom. (The Apocalypse of St. John in a Syriac Version Hitherto Unknown;  1897; p. lxxix)

And to this we may add to show that there is ground for "supposing the Apocalypse to have been originally written, or to be based on a document written, in an Aramaic idiom.":

...the Book of Revelation was written in a Semitic language, and that the Greek translation... is a remarkably close rendering of the original."
- C. C. Torrey; Documents of the Primitive Church 1941; p. 160

We come to the conclusion, therefore that the Apocalypse as a whole is a translation from Hebrew or Aramaic...
- RBY Scott; The Original Language of the Apocalypse 1928; p. 6

When we turn to the New Testament we find that there are reasons for suspecting a Hebrew or Aramaic original for the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, John and for the apocalypse.
- Hugh J. Schonfield; An Old Hebrew Text of St. Matthew's Gospel; 1927; p. vii

James Trimm

New Messianic NT Translation from the Hebrew and Aramaic rather than the Greek

http://www.nazarene.net/hrv 

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