Thanks Tony.
I take the opinion that St. Matthew first wrote his Gospel in Aramaic to the Jewish audience for the purpose of declaring that Jesus of Nazareth is the promised Messiah, who has come to fulfill the Law and the Prophets.
I am also not opposed to the opinion that St. Matthew may have written in multiple languages in addition to the Aramaic, most notably, Greek. We are told in Acts, chapter 2, that when the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles, they began to speak in different languages, and that all kinds of different people were there receiving the Gospel in their own native languages. So, if the Gospel was being proclaimed orally in different languages by the power of the Holy Spirit, then I can also see it being written in different languages by the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit.
In Scripture scholarship, the majority opinion is known as the Greek primacy, which holds that Greek was the original written language of the New Testament, and that all other translations are based on it. There is a minority opinion known as Aramaic primacy, which holds that Aramaic is the original language and that all others are based on it. There is also a subset of Aramaic primacy known as Peshitta primacy, which holds that the Peshitta text is the original text and that everyone else’s text is based on it. And finally, there is the multiple languages opinion, which holds that many different languages are simultaneously prime, produced by the same Apostle.
Unfortunately, no one has the original autographs of the New Testament, the original scrolls penned by the Apostles, either because they got lost or got destroyed by the enemies of the Church. Therefore, scholarship will never be able to know with 100% certainty which language was indeed the very first language written. And that’s ok, because since we are not Sola Scriptura Christians, then this question of primacy or originality becomes less of an issue, considering that we have Holy Tradition and the Holy Church to guide us.
So, all I can say is that as an Assyro-Chaldean Catholic, an Aramaic Catholic, who regards the Aramaic language as our official and common language that connects us directly back to the time, culture, and common daily life of the 1st century Apostolic Church, that the Peshitta Aramaic text is the New Testament that we look to for the teachings of the Gospel, and by the Tradition and Communion of the Catholic Church, we are guided to a proper understanding of the Gospel.
So, if Greek is indeed the original of the New Testament, and the Aramaic Peshitta New Testament is translated from the Greek, then the formation or translation of the Peshitta must have been done early on by the Aramaic Fathers of the Church, probably at Edessa, and probably within the 2nd to 5th centuries.
God bless,
Rony