Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Romans 5:7 and Reshyana
#1
Shlama all,

Lately, I've been finding more occasion to bring up Aramaic Primacy with my Christian friends. A few days ago in small group, we were debating the meaning of Romans 5:7 because the English translations based on the Greek are confusing.

Quote:Rom. 5:7 (NKJV):
For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die.

This, of course, is one of the premier passages used to demonstrate Aramaic Primacy. The Peshitta has the word reshey'a meaning "wicked/ungodly". This makes much more sense, and is also the same word found in the previous verse which says "At the right time, Christ died for the ungodly."

Now the Aramaic Primacy argument is that Zorba confused this word reshey'a with reshyana, since the only difference between them is that the ein has been replaced with a nun, which look very similar in Estrangelo. The argument goes that reshyana means "righteous/blameless", so that's how the mistranslation came about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic_pri...anslations

However, reshyana does not actually mean "blameless". It means "blame" or "accusation". The phrase similar to it that means "blameless" is dla reshyan. This means that Zorba's eyes would have had not only to change an ein into a nun but also to ignore the alap on the end and add the word dla before it. Then, it means "blameless" and can be mistranslated into the Greek.
http://dukhrana.com/lexicon/Jennings/page.php?p=212
http://dukhrana.com/lexicon/PayneSmith/page.php?p=550

Now this is a much less solid argument than originally presented. Akhan Andrew doesn't even mention reshyana in his AENT. He claims that Zorba confused reshey'a with zadiyqa, but these words don't look at all similar.

Any further thoughts on this?

bar Sinko
Reply
#2
bar Sinko Wrote:Shlama all,



Now the Aramaic Primacy argument is that Zorba confused this word reshey'a with reshyana, since the only difference between them is that the ein has been replaced with a nun, which look very similar in Estrangelo. The argument goes that reshyana means "righteous/blameless", so that's how the mistranslation came about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic_pri...anslations

However, reshyana does not actually mean "blameless". It means "blame" or "accusation". The phrase similar to it that means "blameless" is dla reshyan. This means that Zorba's eyes would have had not only to change an ein into a nun but also to ignore the alap on the end and add the word dla before it. Then, it means "blameless" and can be mistranslated into the Greek.
http://dukhrana.com/lexicon/Jennings/page.php?p=212
http://dukhrana.com/lexicon/PayneSmith/page.php?p=550

Now this is a much less solid argument than originally presented. Akhan Andrew doesn't even mention reshyana in his AENT. He claims that Zorba confused reshey'a with zadiyqa, but these words don't look at all similar.

Any further thoughts on this?

bar Sinko

As I understand it you are correct. I had thought that to change blame into blameless all that was needed was a negative particle on the end of the word, and that this negative particle was very small.
I do stand to be corrected on this though. IIRC Andrew (or perhaps someone else) had some years ago discussed the instance of this particle on this forum.
Reply
#3
Shlama,

i don't remember reading Andrew's post where he arrived at his interpretation, but i think i see how he came to the conclusion that he did:

the Peshitta reads "Rasheeya" - a common word for "wickedness or evil." it DOES closely resemble the term "Reshyana" - which commonly means "blame" or "accuse," but also has the meaning of a "gift" of some sort.

here's how it could have easily worked: the Greek translator *thought* he read "reshyana" while reading "rasheeya" -- BUT he took what he thought he saw to mean the idea of "gift," which would be akin to "alms," which in Aramaic is a word that means, as the root ZDQ, both "alms" and "righteous." so you have a 'roundabout' way of explaining the error. i don't know if that's what Andrew was referring to or not, but at least it would make sense that way for him to bring up zadiyqa.

other than that -- if there is indeed a way that reshyana can mean "blameless" -- i don't know...


Chayim b'Moshiach,
Jeremy
Reply


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)