Exploring evidence of Peshitta primacy

[Aramaic_Albion]

I would put forth to you that the truth about the Primacy of the Peshitta is in the fact that The Assyrian Church of the East says that it is so;

For example, Mar Eshai Shimun, Catholicos Patriarch of the Church of the East was quoted to say, “With reference to…the originality of the Peshitta text, as the Patriarch and Head of the Holy Apostolic and Catholic Church of the East, we wish to state, that the Church of the East received the scriptures from the hands of the blessed Apostles themselves in the Aramaic original, the language spoken by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and that the Peshitta is the text of the Church of the East which has come down from the Biblical times without any change or revision.”

The Gospel was brought to THE ASSYRIANS FIRST. We have historical proof of this.

Why would it NOT have been translated into THEIR (the Assyrians) language first?

The first ‘Catholicos’ or ‘Patriarchs’ (Leaders) of the Assyrian Church of the East were ALL JEWISH for around the first 300 years or so of the C.O.E.'s history.

The very early ‘Nazarenes’, or those of ‘The Way’, migrated into the Assyrian Church of the East, and they spoke ARAMAIC.

The Assyrian Church of the East have been ‘caretakers’ of the Peshitta N.T., text since their inception.

All of this is fairly easy to understand once one understands the very early history of the Assyrian Church of the East.

It’s intimately bound up with the Syriac Peshitta (or ‘P’shitta’, which I like better).

I hope that this helps.

Shlama (Syriac/Aramaic for ‘Peace’), Albion

 

[Michael_G]

Originally Posted by metal1633 forums.catholic-questions.org/images/buttons_cad/viewpost.gif
The Vulgate NT was translated from both Aramaic and Greek. Jerome himself said he received a copy of Aramaic Matthew from a Sect of Nazarenes.

Source please? Actually, sources for all of your claims would be nice, as it seems to contradict the information I’ve seen before.

I have not seen the source but I will cite it for metal In 393 Jerome composed the first Christian *Who’s Who *

 

[Aramaic_Albion]

The first Catholicos or Patriarchs of the Assyrian Church of the East were JEWISH for about 190 YEARS. NOT 300 years, as I said before.

Shlama, Albion

 

[ltravis]

the Biblical times without any change or revision."

The Gospel was brought to THE ASSYRIANS FIRST. We have historical proof of this.

Hi Albion. I appreciate your contributions to the topic. Your assertion here about the Gospel opens a question for me. You make a good case that the original gospels were part of the Peshitta. However, what about the other parts of the NT? Were the letters part of the Peshitta originally too? I just wanted to clear that up. Voco has done a nice job analyzing how he feels the various parts of the NT evolved, so I would like your (and anyone else’s) opinion as well.

Thanks!
LT

 

[Aramaic_Albion]

Shlama LT,

If you review what the Catholicos-Patriarch Mar Eshai Shimun (now deceased) said again:

For example, Mar Eshai Shimun, Catholicos Patriarch of the Church of the East was quoted to say, “With reference to…the originality of the Peshitta text, as the Patriarch and Head of the Holy Apostolic and Catholic Church of the East, we wish to state, that the Church of the East received*** the scriptures*** from the hands of the blessed Apostles themselves in the Aramaic original, the language spoken by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and that the Peshitta is the text of the Church of the East which has come down from the Biblical times without any change or revision.”

So, The Assyrian Church of the East “received THE SCRIPTURES from the hands of the blessed Apostles themselves”.

Mar Eshai Shimun mean’t the 22 Book Canon of the Eastern Syriac P’shitta (which would NOT include II Peter, II John, III John, Jude, and the Revelation of John).

Till this day the Canon in the P’shitta of the Assyrian C.O.E. is still the same.

Over the years there has been a translation done in the Swadaya Syriac script that the COE shares with the Monophysite Chruch that contains the other 5 disputed Books. This was done as a gesture of peace towards the Monophysites, but the CANON of the Eastern COE P’shitta only has 22 Books.

I might also point out that the story of the woman caught in adultery is NOT in the P’shitta N.T. and Acts 20:28 and Hebrews 2:9 reads differently than does the Greek, and there are several variant readings in Yohannon’s (John’s) Gospel, that the Greek does NOT have as well.

I’ve studied the P’shitta N.T. on and off since 1989, and it’s history is rather complex.

But the simple version is above .

I hope that this helps. If not, I’ll answer any other questions that you might have, if I can.

Shlama in Eshoo (Peace in Jesus), Albion

Hi Albion. I appreciate your contributions to the topic. Your assertion here about the Gospel opens a question for me. You make a good case that the original gospels were part of the Peshitta. However, what about the other parts of the NT? Were the letters part of the Peshitta originally too? I just wanted to clear that up. Voco has done a nice job analyzing how he feels the various parts of the NT evolved, so I would like your (and anyone else’s) opinion as well.

Thanks!
LT

 

[ronyodish]

Hi everyone,

Good discussion thread, thanks LT.

Here is a point/question to stimulate your thoughts:

In the Peshitta, chapter 1 of the book of Acts of the Apostles (known as Prakses daShleehe), we have an interesting rendition of St. Peter in verses 13 and 15. In verse 13, Putros is used, whereas in verse 15, the usual Shim’on Kepa is used.

What conclusion would you draw from this?

God bless,

Rony

 

[Voco_proTatiano]

Hi everyone,

Good discussion thread, thanks LT.

Here is a point/question to stimulate your thoughts:

In the Peshitta, chapter 1 of the book of Acts of the Apostles (known as Prakses daShleehe), we have an interesting rendition of St. Peter in verses 13 and 15. In verse 13, Putros is used, whereas in verse 15, the usual Shim’on Kepa is used.

What conclusion would you draw from this?

God bless,

Rony

This sounds like ‘Street Latin’ creeping into the account.
Petrus
petra, and
petrosa
are all ‘Street Latin’ terms, from a pidgin of Greek substantives declined in Latin grammar.

It thus seems that at least parts of the Peshitta have Latin vorlagers.
ps
Mark seems to have been written in ‘Street Latin’ hence the common belief that it was written in Greek.

 

[PC_Master]

For example, Mar Eshai Shimun, Catholicos Patriarch of the Church of the East was quoted to say, “With reference to…the originality of the Peshitta text, as the Patriarch and Head of the Holy Apostolic and Catholic Church of the East, we wish to state, that the Church of the East received*** the scriptures*** from the hands of the blessed Apostles themselves in the Aramaic original, the language spoken by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and that the Peshitta is the text of the Church of the East which has come down from the Biblical times without any change or revision.”

So, The Assyrian Church of the East “received THE SCRIPTURES from the hands of the blessed Apostles themselves”.

Okay, just for some clarity here – no one is in doubt that the leader of the Assyrian Church of the East said that the Peshitta is essentially the original New Testament. The doubt is whether this is actually true or not.

You see, a claim doesn’t make something factual any more than a counter-claim makes it non-factual. And that’s what’s led us to this discussion – the question of whether the claims of Peshitta Primacy are actually substantiable or not.

 

[Isa_Almisry]

The reason that the Latin Vulgate gets it’s validity is through it’s translation of the original Greek.

The Septuagent was used by the Jews ( again Greek ) for over 400 yrs. prior to the arrival of Christ.
It was the best language that all Jews from all over the world would understand, thus the reason for the translation.

Some of the protestant bibles screw up a lot of the NT and OT translation. We know this specifically because Christ himself quotes the Spetuagent on a number of different occasions. Everyone understands that he himself was working with the Spetuagent as far as OT versions goes.

With the NT, the Greek was used in Rome and in the East for the better part of 200-300 years, before the Vulgate came around.

There is little doubt that the peshitta is older than the Vulgate, however I have never heard the claim that it was the “original”.

This assertion is inaccurate as far as anything I have ever read.

Again, the peshitta is ancient, a direct translation from the Greek ( as is the Vulgate ), and a valid canon, with a couple more books than the Vulgate has.

I’d love to hear anyhting different from this point.

The Vulgate was not translated from the LXX but a Hebrew text, Jerome’s mistake (Augustine pointed out we follow the Apostles, not the Pharisees) bore full fruit in the Protestants. The prior Latin text, the Vetus Latina, was on the LXX, even to the point of refecting its text types. To this day the Psalter is not the Vulgate but the Vetus Latina (had been used in Church too much to be displaced).

There is interest in a Aramaic Vorlage, but the Pshitta isn’t it. It’s translated from the Greek, which can be shown in comparison with other Aramaic version. Another clue is that the Pshitta is not Aramaic but its daughter Syriac, which didn’t arise until centuries after.

There are Aramaic things here and there in the NT that show us the Semitic Roots of the Church, but that the Epistles were written to Gentile converts in the Greek world rules out any idea that the Aramaic is orginal, unless one wantst argue that the Apostles drafted their letter in Aramaic.

 

[PC_Master]

There is interest in a Aramaic Vorlage, but the Pshitta isn’t it. It’s translated from the Greek, which can be shown in comparison with other Aramaic version.

Could you perhaps give some indication as to which Aramaic versions you speak of, and what your views are on the originality of each?

Another clue is that the Pshitta is not Aramaic but its daughter Syriac, which didn’t arise until centuries after.

I thought I had already made this point, but apparently I had not. I would like to hear a response to this claim as well.

There are Aramaic things here and there in the NT that show us the Semitic Roots of the Church,

Absolutely! And we should expect to find exactly that, because the apostles and earliest Christians were Aramaic-speaking Hebrews.

…but that the Epistles were written to Gentile converts in the Greek world rules out any idea that the Aramaic is orginal…

The question is – can we really substantiate the claim that all target recipients of the New Testament works were indeed primarily Greek-speakers? There seems to be as much question on this issue as on the issue of Peshitta primacy.

 

[Aramaic_Albion]

The Khabouris Codex dukhrana.com/ is around a thousand years old, but IT’S COPIED from a FIRST CENTURY copy of the Syriac P’shitta.

Someone above said that the P’shitta is translated from the Greek.

The P’shitta is similar to the Byzantine text…maybe about 75% the same (some would say LESS) as the Byzantine NT.

But it (the P’shitta NT) WAS NOT translated from the Greek!

Eastern Syriac is VERY SIMILAR to the Aramaic.

See; “Is the Peshitta dialect the same as Messiah’s” by Andrew Gabriel Roth; aramaicnttruth.org/page.php?page=home

This article sums up this argument nicely.

The P’shitta NT teaches the SAME truth as the Greek NT, but one lose’s all of the poetry and word plays that Eshoo (Jesus) routinely used.

Almost ALL of this is lost in the Greek NT.

The very early Believers were ALL JEWS, the P’shitta NT is an ‘EXTENSION’ of the Hebrew Tanakh.

That they would have all learned a PAGAN alphabet like Greek is simply a myth that has been taught for far too long.

Aramaic is very close to Syriac, Syriac being merely a dialect of Aramaic.

Aramaic is also very close to Hebrew. ‘Aramaic Square Letters’ are in fact, a kind of Hebrew.

The Khabouris Codex is very important. Is it First Century? No, but I believe, as do many others, that it was taken directly from a First Century Syriac P’shitta NT.

I look forward to more of this dialogue.

Shlama to all, Albion

 

[Aramaic_Albion]

I did not address one issue here, that “Syriac arose CENTURIES LATER” (from Eshoo’s/Jesus’ time in the First Century).

This is simply NOT TRUE.

The Christian community of Edessa was vibrant from Apostolic times.

It’s tongue WAS SYRIAC.

That I must actually write this surprises me. But it’s true.

Shlama, Albion

 

[Voco_proTatiano]

Dear Friends,
When you argue over Greek primacy, be careful,
If you examine the Latin Mark, and there exists in Bobbiensis, a witness to a turn-of-the-century traslation, ~AD 200, you find therein words which are not Classical Latin, but Street Latin.
Street Latin is similar to Latina Vulgate, but has never been codified. I have already mentioned words like petra, petrus, and petrosa. These are all words with the Greek root ‘petras’. However, in the codified versions of Latin, Greek loan-words are generally declined in group IV of the third declension. Greek words in Street Latin are given the simplest declension as common Latin words, namely first, and second, as would be commonly used by the uneducated.
If Mark was translated from Greek, these Street Latin terms would have been correctly translated. There are perfectly good, and common Latin words for stone, and stony-ground, and the Latin for 'bed is not ‘grabatus’ but ‘lectus’. ‘Grabatus’ is reserved for a makeshift camp-bed or couch, the common Anglo-Indian street word would be ‘charpoi’, from which comes the slang ‘charp’ for ‘sleep’.
There is very strong tradition that Mark was composed in Rome, and by a moderately educated person, some say, John of Jerusalem, nicknamed Marcus, possibly from ‘marcere’ to droop, or be faint. He might have been the man with dropsy.
The Marcan Gospel was aimed at the streets of Rome, not the elite. Yes many educated Romans spoke Greek, as make pompous Brits effect to talk French, but Street Latin was the language of the streets. It was the language of slaves, who came from all over the Empire, not just Greece. Greek slaves were special, bought by the rich, to educate their children. They generally had quite good lives for slaves. Many indeed were bequeathed freedom by their masters for good service.
Street Latin was a pidgin of substantive from many languages, given the simplest latin declensions, pretty much as we today happily add ‘ise’ to nouns to make verbs.
I still think that you have to look to the AD 200 horizon, and the Latin of Carthage, which Bobbiensis witnesses, to find a vorlager for ALL so called original tongue Gospels, and the codicil of Luke, called ‘Acts’.

 

[Isa_Almisry]

The Khabouris Codex dukhrana.com/ is around a thousand years old, but IT’S COPIED from a FIRST CENTURY copy of the Syriac P’shitta.

Someone above said that the P’shitta is translated from the Greek.

The P’shitta is similar to the Byzantine text…maybe about 75% the same (some would say LESS) as the Byzantine NT.

But it (the P’shitta NT) WAS NOT translated from the Greek!

Eastern Syriac is VERY SIMILAR to the Aramaic.

See; “Is the Peshitta dialect the same as Messiah’s” by Andrew Gabriel Roth; aramaicnttruth.org/page.php?page=home

This article sums up this argument nicely.

The P’shitta NT teaches the SAME truth as the Greek NT, but one lose’s all of the poetry and word plays that Eshoo (Jesus) routinely used.

Almost ALL of this is lost in the Greek NT.

The very early Believers were ALL JEWS, the P’shitta NT is an ‘EXTENSION’ of the Hebrew Tanakh.

That they would have all learned a PAGAN alphabet like Greek is simply a myth that has been taught for far too long.

Aramaic is very close to Syriac, Syriac being merely a dialect of Aramaic.

Aramaic is also very close to Hebrew. ‘Aramaic Square Letters’ are in fact, a kind of Hebrew.

The Khabouris Codex is very important. Is it First Century? No, but I believe, as do many others, that it was taken directly from a First Century Syriac P’shitta NT.

I look forward to more of this dialogue.

Shlama to all, Albion

Aramaic is close to Syriac, but so is Italian and Latin, and they are not the same.

The alphabet you refere to has pagan origins. The square “Hebrew” script is actually the Aramaic. Only the Samaritans still use the Old Hebrew letters.

the pshittah is not 1st century, as neither is Syriac. One clue: in Aramaic the prefix -a still means “the” whereas in Syriac it’s added on any nound without this meaning.

 

[Isa_Almisry]

Since so many parallels were drawn between the OT and Jesus’s teaching (which eventually went into the NT) it just seems needlessly complicated to write everything in Aramaic. Remember these guys were busy and writing everything by hand took a long time. Also, there was that lingua franca hurdle which the Peshitta has to overcome. The lingua franca was not Aramaic.

Actually it was.

Koine was the lingua franca in Palestine to the West, but Aramaic was the lingua franca in Palestine to the East (Iran, India).

The NT indicates Christ himself was speaking Aramaic, and Acts refers to Paul speaking it, although his native tongue was Greek.

The Pshitta, however, is not in Aramaic, but Syriac, a later form of the language.

 

[Isa_Almisry]

Ani ibi - I am just exploring the theory of primacy here. If it is proven false, fine. I just think the proof points are interesting, and am looking for and asking for comments specifically about them. Other commentary is certainly welcome…and allowed

Pax - thanks for your open mind and interest here

In review, the points so far, in simplified form:

1. The peshitta exhibits a specific type of recurrent bible code that is quite rigorous and computer checked. Now, whether or not the codes are divine or fabricated, they are not seen in the Greek using the same criteria.
2. The peshitta has more versions of the same term at the word’s location than the Greek. An Aramaic translater of original Greek would have had to invent more specific Aramaic versions of recurring greek words. This phenomenon is not in evidence going from Aramaic to Greek (it gets more general).

Does anyone have any logic that can refute these?

Now, the third proof - historic data:
The common tongue of the Jews at the time was Aramaic, and Greek was very hard for them to accurately write and for the audience to understand. In the first century, Josephus wrote *Antiquities *in Aramaic and then had it translated into Greek for the Roman citizens, confessing that he couldn’t even pronounce it fluently, much less write it. In fact, as he admitted, the Rabbis forbade the teaching of pagan tongues to young men. The question is whether it was possible for the scripture writers to write in original Greek, and why they would do it given the prohibition and difficulty of the audience understanding it.

I can answer part of this: I think the scripture writers, being inspired, could write in darn well any language God thought they needed to write it in. What about the other points, or the validity of the factual data here? Again, feel free to go to aramaicnt.com for the specific argument I highlighted here.

LT

Josephus works in Greek vary, showing the ability of his translators.

A lot of this stuff on translations is in reaction to the skillful use of the Christians in using the LXX, which the Jews had sees as inspired, and is mentioned in the Talmud as the fulfillment of Japheth living in the tents of Shem (Genesis 10).

The Jews produced even more literate Greek translation until they abandoned them entirely with the triumph of the Church in the 4th century.

 

[Aramaic_Albion]

Shlama,

You guys need to read this book;

It’s by Samuel Hugh Moffett, ‘A History of Christianity in Asia–Beginnings to 1500.’

amazon.com/History-Christianity-Asia-Beginnings-1500/dp/1570751625/ref=sr_1_1/105-1048454-7948427?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1190073382&sr=1-1

The people who lived in the area FIRST Evangelized by the Apostles all spoke Aramaic.

That’s the long and the short of this whole question. The New Testament was FIRST written down in Aramaic, for Aramaic speaking people.

Moffett’s book covers this time period, and speaks extensively about the Syriac speaking Church.

Shlama, Albion

 

[thistle]

Shlama,

You guys need to read this book;

It’s by Samuel Hugh Moffett, ‘A History of Christianity in Asia–Beginnings to 1500.’

amazon.com/History-Christianity-Asia-Beginnings-1500/dp/1570751625/ref=sr_1_1/105-1048454-7948427?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1190073382&sr=1-1

The people who lived in the area FIRST Evangelized by the Apostles all spoke Aramaic.

That’s the long and the short of this whole question. The New Testament was FIRST written down in Aramaic, for Aramaic speaking people.

Moffett’s book covers this time period, and speaks extensively about the Syriac speaking Church.

Shlama, Albion

Are you suggesting Paul wrote to the Romans in Aramaic and to the Greeks (Corinthians) in Aramaic. That just wouldn’t make sense.

 

[Aramaic_Albion]

“Are you suggesting Paul wrote to the Romans in Aramaic and to the Greeks (Corinthians) in Aramaic. That just wouldn’t make sense.”

I am suggesting that the 22 Books of the Syriac P’shitta were written for the Eastern Church (today known as ‘The Holy and Apostolic and Catholic Church of the East’…or just ‘The Assyrian Church of the East’), and written IN THEIR LANGUAGE, and then at a later time, they were translated into other languages, Greek, Armenian, etc., etc.

So, yes, that IS what I’m saying, but it (The P’shitta NT) went EAST first, BEFORE going WEST!

Shlama, Albion

 

[TheOneTrueFred]

I’m curious - do folks that believe Matthew was written in Aramaic as an exception to Greek primacy believe that the Peshitta represents a text close to the original?