I
inkaneer
Guest
Yes, this is exactly the point of the OP–that Fr. Serra is making a claim that he probably cannot support.
But, who has proved his claim wrong? Seems to me that if someone says something does not exist the way to prove it wrong is to produce that which is alleged to be nonexistant. Now has anyone done that? And leave the Aramaic out of it. Matthew may have written his gospel in Aramaic. We do not know he did. All we know is that he wrote it in “the language of the Jews” which could have been Hebrew or Aramaic. So until we can prove it was Aramaic by producing the original Aramaic copy then all we have is the Greek copy to go by and the Greek word used is adelphos. There is plenty of evidence that all the gospel writers as well as St. Paul used the Greek word “adelphos” as a generic word to describe relationships that were not sibling brothers. In fact the word was used to describe people who had no family relationships at all. Now if all these scripture writers were guided by the Holy Spirit to use the Greek word adelphos in a generic context who are we to insist otherwise?