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what is "Mara"? - Printable Version

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what is "Mara"? - johnl285 - 12-19-2004

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://216.109.117.135/search/cache?p=Marya+peshitta&ei=UTF-8&fl=0&u=www.aramaic.org/PLIGHT.html&w=marya+peshitta&d=CF172F1AFF&icp=1&.intl=us">http://216.109.117.135/search/cache?p=M ... 1&.intl=us</a><!-- m -->
in this article, from an anonymous scholar towards the bottom, he or she says that in aramaic "Marya" refers the Lord God and "Mara" refers only to Jesus Christ. could there have been a textual mistake where they mistakenly referred to Jesus Christ as "Marya" instead of "Mara"?

in another webpage, <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://jehovah.freewebpage.org/">http://jehovah.freewebpage.org/</a><!-- m -->
"In the "Syriac/English Dictionary" by Payne Smith it states on p 298 it says the following: " Mara???" "??????.Mara??? and Marya??? the latter form is used only of the LORD God and in the Peshitta Version of the O.T. represents the Tetragram-maton."" in the syriac, "Marya" wasn't used for Jesus Christ according to the page, so could it be possible the peshitta has the error?


Mara and Marya - gbausc - 12-19-2004

Shlama John,

Paul would be the best person to answer this, but in lieu of his temporary
detainment, I will offer a response.

The first site you listed has this :
Quote:"Our first need is to understand the history of the Torah and what it has been through. It is sometimes hard to comprehend but the fact is that both Torah and Peshitta (the Holy Bible of the Church of the East) scrolls have been destroyed many times over. There are no originals of either and we can only pray that our dedication to research will again lead us to the ultimate truth. Nothing remains the same. We must learn that it is not wise to stick with current belief systems while knowing so much of the truth has been lost.

That is so much claptrap. It is one claim "that scrolls have been destroyed many times over ; it is another to say "so much of the truth has been lost". That is a statement without proof and no evidence is offered.

As far as "Marya" and "Mara", the guy is all wet. "Mara" is found 33 times in The Peshitta NT. I see only three of these that are connected to Jesus.
"Mara" means "master". It usually refers to a human master. "Marya" occurs 239 times in the NT; 32 of those are connected directly to Jesus.
This same word occurs in The OT Peshitta over 6000 times. It never refers to any but The Supreme Being. This word is unmistakeable in Aramaic ,as such. The Peshitta writer(s) would be self condemned if he /they were to ascribe this Name to Yeshua in error 32 times !

Smith's Compendious Dictionary (your second link) has much more weighty authority than the first. It is much more likely that
Quote:"In-house Scholar"
first quoted is in error than that The Peshitta is as sloppy as he suggests. Anyone who studies The Peshitta knows that , of all versions of the NT in Greek, Latin or any other language, The Peshitta is the least deserving of the epithets "sloppy" or "careless".

I know there is another post from Paul on this in which he quotes another Aramaic dictionary that has "Jesus" listed next to the entry for "Marya" as a definition !

Blessings,


Dave


Qu - Dan Gan - 12-20-2004

Shlama johnl285,

I used to support Aramaic.org which purported to be propagating Aramaic and the works of George M. Lamsa. But I have stopped believing in the works of that organisation once I discovered that a Muslim is a member of its committee (Don't get me wrong. It is not that I am against Muslims to be a member of an organisation, but concerning religious matters there will always be a conflict of interest if you have a Muslim on board - I hope you get what I mean).

I think the so-called "in house scholar" referred to by Bob Allen (the so-called President of Aramaic Bible Society) is that Muslim whose name I could not recall. That could be the real reason why his "name shall remain anonymous."

I am glad that the web site is not operating for quite sometimes now. After reading some articles from the site in the past, I suspected that the site was promoting some Islamic agendas.

There is no doubt that the author of the article that you posted is a Muslim.

Here are the proofs that the author of that article is a Muslim (or Islamist) and is not an Aramaic scholar but an Islamic scholar:

1.
Quote:There is one Lord, one God, Alaha or Allah (your choice) who sent over 124,000 prophets to this world. Every nation was sent a prophet. Unfortunately, some of these prophets were raised by people to be gods, for example, Jesus, or Buddah, and these beloved prophets never made any such claim of themselves.

Anyone familiar with Islam will know that Muslims believe that 'Allah' sent 124,000 prophets. The first of which was Adam. The last of which was Muhammad (sic).


2.
Quote:The last one to re-write the Torah was Ezra whom the Jews consider to be the son of God.

This is another example of Muslim beliefs. Here is Quran Sura 9:30:

The Jews call 'Uzair a son of God, and the Christians call Christ the son of God. ... (Yusuf Ali's version)

And the Jews say: Ezra is the son of Allah, and the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah. (Pickthall's version).

Muslim interprets Uzair in Quran to mean Ezra. How are they misguided! The Jews never worship Ezra.

3.
Quote:... YHW" with the additional "H." Both in Hebrew and Arabic, this word means the same.

This is a blatant lie by a so-called in house scholar! Hebrew and Arabic are both Semitic languages. But why can't Islamic scholars know the meaning of the names of Hebrew prophets mentioned in Quran?

I have asked many Arabic speaking Muslims on the meaning of the names of the prophets that the authors of the Quran copied from the Bible and none of them could tell me their meaning. I have browsed through some Islamic books at the bookshops trying to find the meaning of these "Arabic" names of the prophets and none of them could give me answers. They just tell you that they are "prophet's name." A search on Islamic web sites on Islamic names will tell you the same thing.

They can tell you the meaning of the names of Aamir, Irfan, Yasir, etc but they cannot tell you the meaning of the names of the Prophets that the authors of the Quran copied from the Bible, e.g. Ibrahim, Ishak, Isa, Ilyas, Zakariya, etc.

Of course they can't! These names are Hebrew names. Not Arabic!

The meaning of the name of Prophet Eliyah (My God is YHWH) in Hebrew is the evidence that the true Prophets of the true God believe in YHWH as the true God not "Allah" as preached by Muhammad.

Zakariya from Hebrew "Zekharyah" - remembered by YHWH.
Isa from Yeshua - YHWH's salvation / YHWH saves.

This is what I would say to that "in house scholar" of The Aramaic Bible Society, Inc:

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time. <!-- sTongue --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/poketoungeb.gif" alt="Tongue" title="Poke Tounge" /><!-- sTongue -->

Abraham Lincoln, (16th president of US (1809 - 1865))


- peshitta_enthusiast - 12-25-2004

Jehovah's Witnesses amaze me. On one hand they admit that 0yrm refers to YHWH and they admit that Matthew had an Aramaic original, yet you show them that Aramaic Matthew calls Yeshua 0yrm and they don't believe it. <!-- sSad --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/sad.gif" alt="Sad" title="Sad" /><!-- sSad -->


- gbausc - 12-25-2004

Shlama akhi Chris,

It is amazing; then, so is the truth.
They probably wouldn't believe that Zecharaiah
has Jehovah saying that Jehovah sent Him in chapters 2:10-12,4:8-9,6:12-15;
In 11:12,13 , Jehovah's price is weighed as thirty pieces of silver.
In chapter 12, Jehovah is the speaker throughout the chapter; He says "They will look on Me, The One they have pierced..."

Merry Christmas !

Dave


- peshitta_enthusiast - 12-26-2004

""In chapter 12, Jehovah is the speaker throughout the chapter; He says "They will look on Me, The One they have pierced..."
""

Yes I love that verse, it is in my book. Whether HOT or POT it is always clear that it is YHWH who says "they pierced ME".


- Dave - 12-26-2004

Quote:and they admit that Matthew had an Aramaic original


Ahh that is wrong Chris.

The latest "Kingdom Interlinear" uses the same sources that James Trimm utilized, the 4 different sources of Hebrew Matthew. They make no mention of the aramaic source of Matthew as original, nor did they rely on it for their most recent translation. Of course they allowed their translation to uphold doctrinal issues instead of word-for-word exactness, so they allowed this to be a corrupt version by their choice.

Here is a site on some of the particulars:

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.tetragrammaton.org/nwtandhvs.htm">http://www.tetragrammaton.org/nwtandhvs.htm</a><!-- m -->


- Dave - 12-26-2004

Quote:The professional scholars have known for more than a hundred years that the language of the Prophets was Aramaic, not Hebrew

LOL, ok that was a good one from that Aramaic.org site.