Shlama Akhi Rob,
Rob Wrote:Quote:With as much technology nowadays, and all the discoveries and learned men, GOD has still not moved from the greek scriptures. Is it just a bias? Is it scholarly concenses? Or is it something more that The Holy Spirit has a purpose in?
What does the statement mean that "GOD has still not moved from the greek scriptures?" I don't understand - is the Holy Spirit confined to white~european churches?
Rob Wrote:People often argue that God can use any language, and he certainly can, but gross mistranslations do not properly convey his will, hence it is still necessary to check and crosscheck the scriptures in their original language. It's hard for me as a Calvinist to believe that the scriptures were altogether unknown by the vast majority of the church. I don't understand the theology of a "Remnant Text."
The vast majority of the church?
My dear brother, up until the coming of Tamerlane in the 14th century, more Christians (from Cyprus to Japan) used the Aramaic Peshitta than any other version...combined. And those are the words of a white man, John Stewart, in his books "The missionary activity of the Church of the East: the story of a Church on Fire."
If you look at the entire 2,000 year history of the Church, you will realize that for 1,300+ of those years, the *vast majority* of the Church *did* use the Aramaic New Testament.
My dear brother, it's only been in the last 700 years that Western Greek Christianity has grown to outnumber Eastern Aramaic Christianity. These are historical facts.
Rob Wrote:Quote:For some reason, there is a space of time missing here with the peshitta though. There seems to be nothing earlier than around 4th century.
Of course there is nothing before the 4th century. Everyone who has studied history knows what happened in the 4th century in the Roman empire, and how it affected the Christians in the Eastern (Persian) empire. His name was Constantine - and ever since he established Christianity as the state religion - the Eastern Christians have been persecuted.
If you really want to become educated on the topic, read about the Great Persecution which lasted for 70 years under Shah Shapur of Persia. You will have an idea why things were wiped out the way they were.
A second factor you must consider is that Aramaic-speaking Christians had a scribal tradition similiar to that of the Jews. When a manuscript got old and battered - the Jews buried it in a proper ceremony like a human body. The Eastern Christians did the same thing, except they burned it.
Rob Wrote:Everyone that was associated with 1st century history and documeted it for us, mentions nothing about it. People here have explained it as the text was hidden from the west at that time, yet there is nothing of the peshitta text dated prior to around the 3rd or 4th century in the areas that it was supposedly prominent.
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That's patently false. First of all, we have established very clear evidence that the earliest Patristic writers from the Persian empire (whose official language was Aramaic) all quoted directly from the Peshitta...and that includes Mar Aphrahat.
We have also proven that the earliest Arabic copy of the Diatesseron demonstrates that the Diatesseron of Tatian, composed during the 2nd century in Assyria (Tatian called himself an Assyrian) contains 100% the same readings as the Peshitta, against the Western Greek texts.
Rob Wrote:This is true, and the Gospels themselves were very clearly written after the destruction of the Temple. Both Matthew and Luke are dependent on similar sources and Matthew very clearly embellishes the temple's destruction. None of the Gospels were in major circulation until the middle of the 2nd century; effectively after the split between the church and synagogue. Hence a Greek text would best serve the community of Hellenistic Jews and Greco-Roman Gentiles. Pauline (whom we know knew Greek) epistles were in circulation beforehand, since they were written beforehand.
There are several errors in that statement.
Geography has nothing to do with the language in which an epistle is written. Epistles sent out by the Patriarch of the Church of the East today, to the church in India who are ethnically Indians and who do not understand Aramaic, are written in Aramaic.
Secondly, all those churches in Asia Minor were started in the synagogues and the Jews were the elders of those churches. Surely you don't mean to imply that Jews didn't understand Aramaic simply because they lived in Ephesus?
Does the fact that I live in Chicago (much farther west than Ephesus) mean that I don't understand Aramaic anymore? And remember - I was born and raised here in the United States.
I'm sorry - but that reasoning is very weak. The text, the comparison of the two texts, is far more accurate an indication of which one is the original and which one is the translation - for the translation sticks out like a sore thumb.
Rob Wrote:Since the vast majority of his letters were directed at thoroughly hellenized cultures, it would only be logical to compose the Gospel literature in the language of the rest of the canon: Greek.
See my explanation above. The current Patriarch, Mar Dinkha, writes all of his epistles to the Church in America, Canada, Australia, Britain, France, Italy and yes even Greece....in Aramaic. All of the church communication is in Aramaic, no matter what country the congregation resides in. The people have always spoken Aramaic.
Rob Wrote:Quote:I actually think LAmsa did a really good job in talking about the difference on perserving documents between east and west.
Since the East maintained a sole tradition it is only logical to assume it has less variants. The fact that it has this could just as well mean it has kept a single Greek tradition.
And what single Greek tradition is that?
Rob Wrote:There are other factors which contribute to this, such as the use of the word "Rabbi" being almost an exclusively 2nd Century title, and the fact that a semitic Greek style could just as well mean that the scribes' first language was Aramaic. But I will leave that to another day.
Akhi, I'd like your opinion on something.
Would you agree that all translators make mistakes and that all translations have some mistakes in them?
If so, and if you believe the Aramaic NT to be a translation of the Greek NT, then you therefore must be able to demonstrate an error, any error, in translation from Greek to Aramaic.
Can you point me to one instance, just one, where the Peshitta contains any error which you can convincingly demonstrate came from a translators' misreading of a Greek word, a misspelling of a Greek word, etc?
Is the Peshitta the only translation around which is 100% correct and does not contain one single solitary error which can be attributed to the translation of it from Greek?
Can you find a Greek equivalent of Acts 2:24? Please point me to it.