A spectacular find by Akhan Rob !

Quote:Shlama Akhay!
I'm very excited to share with you something special - a very unique feature of Hebrew poetry in our precious Peshitta - hey, I like the way that sounds!

The first example was discovered in Song of Songs by my teacher's teacher's teacher, the late great Cyrus Gordon. He termed this extremely creative poetic device 'janus parallelism', where a passage exploits both meanings of a word with two meanings simultaneously. Here it is in his own words:

Quote:"One kind of parallelism is quite ingenious, for it hinges on the use of a single word with two entirely different meanings: one meaning paralleling what precedes, and the other meaning, what follows."
- Cyrus Gordon, 1978

Since he first published his findings, many more have been discovered in the Hebrew Bible.

Well, I've discovered one in Matti 13! Hold on to your chair...

Matti 13:31-32

[font=Estrangelo (V1.1)]fdrxd Fdrpl 0ym4d Fwklm 0ymd [/font]

[font=Estrangelo (V1.1)]htyrqb h9rz 0rbg Bsnd[/font]

The Kingdom of Heaven is likened to a grain of mustard seed,
which a man took and sowed in his field.

[font=Estrangelo (V1.1)]0nw9rz Jwhlk Nm Yh 0yrw9z Yhw[/font]

(nice pun, eh? <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/happy.gif" alt="" title="Happy" /><!-- s --> Now watch this...)

[font=Estrangelo (V1.1)]0nwqry Jwhlk Nm Yh 0br tbrd Nyd 0m[/font]

when it has grown, it is greater than all the herbs.

[font=Estrangelo (V1.1)]hykwsb Nqt 0ym4d Fxrp F0td Ky0 0nly0 hywhw[/font]

and becomes a tree, so that the birds of heaven will come and nest in its branches

O.K. - check this out: Here, the word for 'birds' can also mean 'flowers' or 'blossoms'! The two-faced janus aspect is that taken in parallel with what precedes - seeds, herbs, and trees - it can be understood as 'blossoms'. Taken with what follows - 'nesting in branches' - it can be understood as birds!


Here's how it pivots:

seeds, herbs, trees, <- blossoms/birds -> , heaven, nesting, branches

See how it works? Pretty cool, eh?


This is a very authentic feature, with precedents in TaNaKh, impossible to be conveyed in Greek.

I hope this is as exciting for you as it is for me!

Rob

Quote:Shlama Akhay!
Here is the janus parallelism identified by Cyrus Gordon in 'The Song of Songs' 2:12 -

??r'b w'rn ??yncnh
vygh rymzh tv
rwth lwqw
wncr'b vmHn

"The blossoms are seen in the land
- the time of pruning has arrived -
and the voice of the turtledove
is heard in our land."

-OR-


"The blossoms are seen in the land
- the time of singing has arrived -
and the voice of the turtledove
is heard in our land."

The Hebrew word rmz can mean 'to prune' or 'to sing'. Thus, paralleled with what precedes, it takes the meaning 'to prune'. Paralleled with the 'voice' and 'heard' which follow, it takes the meaning 'to sing'.

Fun, huh <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/happy.gif" alt="" title="Happy" /><!-- s --> ?
Rob

Shlama Akhay,

In the Greek NT tradition, many different kinds of mistakes happened because our Greek buddy Zorba did not have the careful textual tradition that his brethren the Semites did.

One of these types of mistakes is technically called by the (appropriately) Greek name homioteleution ("like-ending"). It means that there is a phrase in between two words that is left out inadvertently when a copyist's eye jumped from the first "like word" to the next "like word." It is actually a very common error in Greek manuscripts.

Now, study carefully the Byzantine Greek reading of Mark 6:33 shown below:



There are two textual traditions here which differ in the Greek ("Byzantine" vs. "Western"). The Byzantine reading is shown above. The "Western" reading omits the phrase that is highlighted in blue.

The reason is because a copyist's eye jumped from the first "kai" ("and") to the second, leaving out "and preceeded them."

Armed with this juicy tidbit of information, study the comparison of the Peshitta with Old Scratch below:



As you can plainly see, Old Scratch also (eh-hem) is missing the phrase:
[font=Estrangelo (V1.1)]Nmtl Yhwmdq w=hr[/font]

..."and they ran before them", which the Peshitta contains.

This demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that Old Scratch is a revision of the Peshitta to bring it into more agreement with the "Western" Greek manuscripts.

Shlama Akhay,

In Aramaic, the root [font=Estrangelo (V1.1)]Yks [/font]("saky") means:

sky V
011 Palestinian to expect
012 Palestinian to look
021 Syr to expect
022 JBA to look out for s.o.
023 Palestinian to wait
051 Syr to be expected
052 JLAInsc,JLATg,JBA to hope for, to expect

In the Aramaic of Romans 8:24, we read:

"For if we see it, do we hope for it?"

Zorba could have translated it either way ("hope" or "wait"), and he did!

The Greek roots in question are:

• elpiv ("Elpis", "hope")
  decomai ("Dechomai", "wait")

Shlama Akhay,

Many times we have spoken of the Semitic understanding of the heart, that it is the idiomatic organ of understanding and knowledge.

In Ephesians 1:18, Paul uses this Semiticism:

[font=Estrangelo (V1.1)]Jwktwbld 0ny9[/font] (Ayna d'Lebwatkon - "the eye of your hearts")

Some manuscripts of Zorba (the Byzantine manuscripts) retain this Semiticism, whearas others (Alexandrian and Western) had a hard time of it and changed the "eye of your hearts may be enlightened" to "your understanding may be enlightened."

This clearly demonstrates that Zorba sometimes understood that Paul was using an Aramaic idiom, and chose to liberally translate the meaning into a more acceptable solution in Greek thought.

Akhay,

Let's pretend that the only witness we have to the direct Aramaic words of Meshikha are the handful of phrases that Zorba was gracious enough to save for us in the Greek NT? (Forget about the Peshitta for now.)

We are thankful to Zorba, as Aramaic primacists, because he saved for us a direct Aramaic saying of Meshikha in Mark 5:41. It reads as follows:

Quote:"And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha qumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise."

Quote:There is something I noticed, going over the numbers concerning the preservation of the "Kkadh idiom." Going over the verses Akki James provided I found out how the Old Syriac looks against itself along with the Peshitta:

Sinaitic Unique (~4): 2:23; 15:22; 18:2; 21:2;
Cureton Unique (~3): 9:9; (26:7)? (27:57)?
Peshitta Unique (~1): 12:11

Peshitta & Sinaitic Agreement (~4): 8:2; 8:5; 18:24; 21:19;
Peshitta & Cureton Agreement (~4): 9:18; 13:46; 21:24; (26:69)?
Sinaitic & Cureton Agreement (~1): 17:14;

Complete Agreement (~6): 8:19; 12:10; 12:22; 19:16; 21:28; 21:33

Total Instances: ~23

Peshitta & Sinaitic Agreement: ~43%
Peshitta & Cureton Agreement: ~43%
Sinaitic & Cureton Agreement: ~30%
Peshitta, Sinaitic, & Cureton Agreement: ~26%


Taking a close look at the evidence, there are many places where syr(s) and syr© disagree with eachother. With this in mind, we find one place where the Peshitta disagrees with both Old Syriac manuscripts (Mt. 12:11), and one place that we can verify that both Old Syriac manuscripts disagree with the Peshitta (17:14). Even Steven <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/happy.gif" alt="" title="Happy" /><!-- s --> We also see that the Peshitta Agrees more closely to each individual Old Syriac Manuscript than the Old Syriac Manuscripts do to eachother (43% vs 30%).

With this in mind, I believe that this is ample evidence to conclude that the inclusion or exclusion of "kkadh"/"chad" as "certain" is arbitrary & not a valid means of determining which biblical text is "more authentic" than another; the statistics simply do not warrant it. Additionally, I wholeheartedly reject the further study of it's frequency in this context as any form of evidence for the Gospel of Matthew.

Shlomo!

Mark 7:24....
Peshitta: "A certain house"
Old Scratch: "A house"




Mark 12:1

Peshitta "A certain man"
Old Scratch: "A man"



John 3:1

Peshitta "A certain man"
Old Scratch: "A man"



John 3:25
Peshitta: "A certain Jew"
Old Scratch: "A Jew"



Yukhanan 11:1

Peshitta: "A certain sick man"
Old Scratch: "A sick man"

Akhay,

Ask "doc" why Mark 3:1 in the Peshitta preserves his "Khad Semiticism" when the Sinaitic does not:




The Peshitta reads "a certain man", while the Sinaitic reads "a man". <!-- s:lol: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/laugh.gif" alt=":lol:" title="Laugh" /><!-- s:lol: -->

Akhay,

Can Trimm explain why both the Sinaitic and Cureton manuscripts of Old Scratch are missing his supposed "Khad Semticism" in Mattai 12:11, while the Peshitta has it?

Akhay,

Can Trimm explain why Peshitta Mattai 8:5 preserved his supposed "Khad Semiticism", while the Sinaitic manuscript of Old Scratch does not?