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Whither Christian Missions? - Printable Version

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Whither Christian Missions? - Paul Younan - 10-14-2003

From the new article in Beth-Gaza entitiled "Whither Christian Missions?":

Quote:Aramaic was the Lingua franca during the Assyrian and Babylonian rule and the literary and colloquial language of Mesopotamia, Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor from the 7th century B.C. to the 9th century A.D. It was the mother tongue of the New Testament writers who were divinely inspired to write the original text, and it is the vernacular of the Assyrians and the Chaldeans of today. Peshitta-the original Aramaic version of the Holy Writ-then, is the earliest and most authoritative document; and, quite naturally, it was written in the language in which Jesus, His disciples, and the early Christians spoke. The revised version was written in a pedantic semi-Greek jargon full of startling variations from the original text due to the inability of the Greek translators to express in their own tongue Aramaic colloquialisms, metaphors, and shades in meaning. Any dogmatic assertion, therefore, that the Bible, in divers modern languages, is "translated from the original Greek" must lack the intrinsic, extrinsic elements of accuracy.

DAVID BARSUM PERLEY, J.S.D.