Were the Gospels translated from Aramic to Koine Greek?

[Gorgias]

And do not presume to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our father,” for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.

John the Baptist’s warning to the Pharisees and Sadducees in Matt 3:9 is a pun in Hebrew: abanim, stones, followed by banim, children.

However … the identical warning, word for word, turns up again in Luke 3:8.

This would argue for the actual conversation having taken place in Hebrew, but not indicating the original language of the written Gospel, right?

Most NT quotes of the OT, including those in Matthew, are from the Septuagint

Similarly, this only speaks to the language of the quoted text, not the language in which the quotation occurs, right?

I mean, if I talk about the Church’s role in salvation, I might write to you, “Catholics believe that extra ecclesiam nulla salus”. And, if you translate that to Spanish, you’d get, “Los católicos creen que fuera de la Iglesia no hay salvación”. Now… the fact that the phrase in Spanish translates directly into the Latin doesn’t imply that what I wrote was originally written in Latin, does it?

 

[BartholomewB]

This would argue for the actual conversation having taken place in Hebrew, but not indicating the original language of the written Gospel, right?

My point exactly! And, reinforcing that argument, in Luke’s Gospel John the Baptist says exactly the same thing, word for word, in Greek. But no one has ever suggested that Luke wrote his Gospel in Aramaic or Hebrew!

 

[Gorgias]

My point exactly! And, reinforcing that argument, in Luke’s Gospel John the Baptist says exactly the same thing, word for word, in Greek. But no one has ever suggested that Luke wrote his Gospel in Aramaic or Hebrew!

Is the argument for an original Aramaic Gospel based only on evidence found in direct quotations, then…?

 

[BartholomewB]

Is the argument for an original Aramaic Gospel based only on evidence found in direct quotations, then…?

I’m not sure about that. The main argument is that several of the Church Fathers say that Matthew wrote his Gospel in “Hebrew” and it was translated into Greek later, either by Matthew himself or by someone else.
However, there are at least three objections that can be raised:

(1) With the sole exception of Jerome, no other writer in the Patristic period claims to have actually seen, handled, or read the “Hebrew Matthew”. As far as we can tell, they’re just repeating in good faith what would nowadays be called hearsay evidence.
(2) Papias is sometimes listed among those writers, but he describes Matthew’s book as no more than “a collection of the Lord’s sayings in Hebrew.”
(3) Jerome seems to have changed his mind, years later, about the authenticity of the book that he once described as “Matthew’s Gospel in Hebrew.”

 

[Agathon]

(1) With the sole exception of Jerome, no other writer in the Patristic period claims to have actually seen, handled, or read the “Hebrew Matthew”. As far as we can tell, they’re just repeating in good faith what would nowadays be called hearsay evidence.

It isn’t erroneous to believe the Romans or Hebrew authorities would do anything to confiscate that version.

 

[Gorgias]

However, there are at least three objections that can be raised:

(1) With the sole exception of Jerome, no other writer in the Patristic period claims to have actually seen, handled, or read the “Hebrew Matthew”. As far as we can tell, they’re just repeating in good faith what would nowadays be called hearsay evidence.

A couple of thoughts, here…

• why are rules of judicial evidentiary procedure being invoked here? More to the point, why are courtroom restrictions the standard being espoused? After all, no one’s been wronged or cheated. Why is a legal standard the proper standard for this evaluation?
• But, even if I were to agree that it is the proper standard, there are a couple problems:
  • first, we have to consider why hearsay is inadmissible; it’s because we want to avoid allowing witnesses to make false claims that are in their own self interest. Is that even an issue here, with respect to the ECFs? What benefit could they possibly reap, with respect to the original language of Matthew’s Gospel?
  • second, there are exceptions to the hearsay rule. One of these is for “learned treatises”. I don’t think it’s unfair to look at the writings of the ECFs and call them “learned treatises.”
• Finally, if we agree that their claims are being made “in good faith”, then we’re saying they’re not really rising to the level of what is dangerous as ‘hearsay’, are we?

(2) Papias is sometimes listed among those writers, but he describes Matthew’s book as no more than “a collection of the Lord’s sayings in Hebrew.”

A few notes here, as well:

• The problem is that this is how he describes Mark’s Gospel as well, no? As a “logia kuriaka”? Are we saying that the first two Gospels were merely “collections of sayings”, or is it reasonable to adduce that this is how Papias referred to a Gospel?
• In any case, his description of Matthew isn’t even as such, but merely as “τὰ λόγια”. We have to infer that he means a mere “collection of sayings”, when he speaks of Matthew!
• Moreover, when Papias speaks of what Mark recorded – the λόγια κυριακά – he describes them as "the things that were either said or done by the Christ’ 1, which would allow us to likewise claim that the “Aramaic Gospel of Matthew” was a true Gospel, and not just a collection of Jesus sayings!
• In any case, if Papias considered the direct words of Jesus the most important part of a Gospel (along the lines of the later Red Letter Gospels), then he could regard a text of sayings and narrative as a λόγια κυριακά, and your claim of “no more than sayings” would be seemingly irrelevant.

(3) Jerome seems to have changed his mind, years later, about the authenticity of the book that he once described as “Matthew’s Gospel in Hebrew.”

I don’t recall reading about this. Do you have a citation?
Thanks!

1 Bauckham, in his ‘Papias and the Gospels’, points to parallels to this phraseology in Mansfield (see Things Revealed: Studies in Early Jewish and Christian Literature).

 

[BartholomewB]

Gorgias, on your points (1) and (2), your arguments make very good sense. I have no objections at all, except to point out that when I said “They’re repeating in good faith what would nowadays be called hearsay evidence,” I was just writing conversationally. It wasn’t my intention to pass judgment on them in legalistic terms.

As for point (3) Jerome changing his mind, please see @rcwitness’s post No. 28 on this thread with the link he gives there.

 

[rcwitness]

Whats interesting, is that the Hebrew Gospel isnt mentioned as a false Gospel by the councils, nor is it mentioned as Scripture.

What does that mean? Why would it be ignored so much, if someone as venerated as St Jerome recognized it?

 

[Gorgias]

It sounds like Jerome had doubts to its authenticity later in life. I think this has to do with the content being different enough from the Canonical Greek Matthew.

As for point (3) Jerome changing his mind, please see @rcwitness’s post No. 28 on this thread with the link he gives there.

Hmm… I’m not so sure that ya’ll and the author of that webpage are making a solid case. Let’s take a look:

He says that Jerome said different things later than he did earlier about the Matthean Hebrew text. Does that hold up to scrutiny?

First version is in Hebrew:

• Early: “Matthew … composed a gospel of Christ at first published in Judea in Hebrew”
• Later: “the Gospel which the Nazarenes and Ebionites use… [from] the Hebrew… is called by most people the original of Matthew”

Extant copies of Hebrew Matthew:

• Early: “the Hebrew itself has been preserved until the present day in the library at Caesarea.”
• Early: “I have also had the opportunity of having the volume described to me by the Nazarenes of Beroea, who use it.”
• Later: “In the Gospel according to the Hebrews which is indeed in the Chaldaean and Syriac speech but is written in Hebrew letters, which the Nazarenes use to this day, called… ‘according to Matthew’, which also is to be seen in the library of Caesarea”

Jerome’s copy of Hebrew Matthew:

• Early: the webpage author claims “Jerome made a copy of this Hebrew Matthew”, but doesn’t provide a quote to this effect.
  Later: “In the Gospel which the Nazarenes and Ebionites use (which I have lately translated into Greek from the Hebrew and which is called by many people the original of Matthew)”

So, it doesn’t really seem that the webpage author has demonstrated that “Jerome changed his mind.” What, then, leads to his conclusion that Jerome’s opinion of the Hebrew version changed? He makes the claim when he writes, “Jerome used only the Greek manuscripts of the Gospels for his Latin Vulgate… he states in his preface that he used only the Greek manuscripts. … He never used [the original Hebrew Matthew that he possessed] in his translation of the Gospel of Matthew for the Latin Vulgate. This demonstrates that he did not really believe … what part of the text of the Gospel of the Hebrews was authentic… and what part had been changed and corrupted.” (Emphasis mine.)

He justifies his conclusion with a quote from the preface: “we must confess that as we have [the NT] in our language [Latin] it is marked by discrepancies… they have been revised by a comparison of the Greek manuscripts.”

That’s it. Nothing that denigrates the Hebrew. Nothing that disclaims its originality (in fact, he says in the preface “Matthew… published his work in Judaea in Hebrew characters”!

So, Jerome’s project was simply to correct “distortions” in the Latin from its Greek roots! Even if he was uncertain that the Gospel of the Hebrews was an uncorrupted version of Hebrew Matthew (which the author asserts but does not substantiate), Jerome still asserted that Matthew was first written in Hebrew!

 

[Prodigal_Son]

John was written in Aramaic

This strikes me as exceedingly unlikely. The first chapter of John is so steeped in philosophical Greek that one can scarcely imagine it being a translation.

 

[rcwitness]

Hmmm… maybe, i’ll have to take another look.

I thought that there was a substantial difference with the content, between it (Hebrew Gospel) and the Canonical Matthew, no?

 

[Gorgias]

I thought that there was a substantial difference with the content, between it (Hebrew Gospel) and the Canonical Matthew, no?

Jerome lists the differences.

If he felt that there were ‘corruptions’ that occurred from a ‘proto-canonical’ Hebrew Matthew and the ‘Gospel of the Nazarenes’, I haven’t seen where he made that claim explicitly. However, to claim that, since he didn’t use the Hebrew Matthew in his possession, it implies he did not approve of it… well, that doesn’t ring true to me.

On the other hand, if he’s looking to correct errors that were made in the translation of Matthew from the Greek to the various Latin versions… now that speaks to a reason to start with the (canonical) Greek manuscripts!

 

[Spyridon]

The only gospel which was possibly translated from Aramaic to Greek was the Gospel of Matthew.

John and Luke were both certainly originally composed in Greek.

There is a possibility that the Gospel of Mark was originally composed in Latin, but it’s just speculation.

The earliest fragments of the Gospels we have come from the early-mid 2nd century A.D. and were from the area around Alexandria, Egypt.

However, it is 100% certain that all 4 Gospels were composed and in the final form which we have today by the year A.D. 100. In the 17 and 18 hundreds critical scholars tried saying the Gospels were composed in the 2nd or even 3rd centuries - 20th and 21st century scholarship has proven them wrong though, showing that the Gospels were certainly finished in the form we have today by the end of the 1st century.

Even if all 4 gospels were composed between 90-100 (they are not, only John may be, but it’s possible all 4 gospels were composed between the years 40-70), that’s a mere 60-70 years after the events themselves took place. This would be akin to somebody today composing a piece about World War II - think of how many eyewitnesses and 2nd generation WWII children are still alive today - if someone published something claiming wild things about the war, people would correct them immediately.

 

[BartholomewB]

On the other hand, if he’s looking to correct errors that were made in the translation of Matthew from the Greek to the various Latin versions… now that speaks to a reason to start with the (canonical) Greek manuscripts!

@Gorgias, just to make sure I’m following your argument correctly.―Is this what you’re saying? If Jerome had felt confident that the “Hebrew” document in his possession was truly Matthew’s gospel in its original form, and that the Greek text was a translation from the “Hebrew”, then he would have made whatever corrections were needed in the Latin translation to bring it into conformity with the “Hebrew” text rather than with the Greek text. Is that it?

 

[Gorgias]

Is this what you’re saying? If Jerome had felt confident that the “Hebrew” document in his possession was truly Matthew’s gospel in its original form, and that the Greek text was a translation from the “Hebrew”, then he would have made whatever corrections were needed in the Latin translation to bring it into conformity with the “Hebrew” text rather than with the Greek text. Is that it?

That’s what the author of @rcwitness’s citation is claiming. He makes the assertion baldly, though, without any sort of proof from Jerome’s writings. It’s a possibility, of course, but far from anything that resembles a solid argument.

I could just as easily say that Jerome perceived the project he was given as “fix the Latin versions based on the Greek versions from which they were originally translated.” If that were the case, then he’d have no warrant to utilize earlier versions that weren’t in use throughout the Church (one of the criteria for inclusion in the canon, right?).

So, the claim that’s being made is “later in life, Jerome doubted the authenticity of the ‘Matthean Hebrew Gospel’ in his possession.” I’m not certain that this is a reasonable conclusion. “Later in life, Jerome decided to use only Greek sources”? Yep. That’s fair. Not the other, though, I’d think… at least based on the data we’re looking at here…!

 

[BartholomewB]

The trouble is that in any case we’re dealing with hypothetical questions. “If Jerome had thought x, then he would have done y …” No hypothetical question can ever have a verifiable answer. Still, I find it an intriguing idea, even though I remain unconvinced. That there had been, at some time, an Aramaic document in circulation that was thought by some to be Matthew’s gospel in its original form, seems reasonable enough as far as it goes. But it’s quite a jump to assert that the Greek text we have now is a faithful translation of that Aramaic original. In an earlier post on this thread (No. 10 or 11), I quoted a couple of sentences from one mid-twentieth century Bible:

The original has been lost in the course of time. The Greek text, however, is in substantial conformity with the original.

Editors and publishers who lend their names to that sort of illogic are only bringing their own cause into disrepute. That’s the kind of thing that strengthens me in my belief that our known Greek Matthew is in all probability the true original.

 

[Gorgias]

The trouble is that in any case we’re dealing with hypothetical questions. “If Jerome had thought x, then he would have done y …” No hypothetical question can ever have a verifiable answer.

No, they’re real questions. However, there seems to be a lack of evidence in the written record that seems sufficient to reach the conclusion in the cited web page. All it tells us, to a certainty, is that (1) Jerome had a copy of the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew in his possession and (2) he did a translation from Greek to Latin.

Gotta love the illative sense! For some folks, that’s sufficient to ‘prove’ that Jerome hated the Hebrew Gospel (even though he didn’t say so). Others (me included) would say that this conclusion seems like a stretch.

Maybe there’s more evidence out there, that we’re not taking into account, that would lead us to another conclusion?

But it’s quite a jump to assert that the Greek text we have now is a faithful translation of that Aramaic original.

That’s a good point. There has to be some reason why a scholar would think that one manuscript proceeded from another. However, no one (to my knowledge) asserts that the Aramaic is a translation from the Greek. Is there a gap in the provenance? Yep. Does that imply that there is not a connection between the two? Nope…

 

[BartholomewB]

All it tells us, to a certainty, is that (1) Jerome had a copy of the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew in his possession and (2) he did a translation from Greek to Latin.

I have to say I’m still not fully convinced of that. Your point (2) yes, but not your point (1). I would rewrite point (1) as follows: Jerome had in his possession an Aramaic (“Hebrew”) document which was believed by some to be Matthew’s gospel in its original form.

 

[Gorgias]

I would rewrite point (1) as follows: Jerome had in his possession an Aramaic (“Hebrew”) document which was believed by some to be Matthew’s gospel in its original form.

Fair enough. However, Jerome never counters this assertion, does he? (Oh, he doesn’t formally say “this is the original Gospel of Matthew”, but he also doesn’t say “this is corrupted” or “this is a forgery”.)

I might suggest that we construe his silence on the issue as an indication that he doesn’t have proof one way or the other…

 

[BartholomewB]

I might suggest that we construe his silence on the issue as an indication that he doesn’t have proof one way or the other…

Now that’s something we can agree on! But I would add: If Jerome doesn’t have proof one way or the other, then we don’t either.