Version Analysis/Summary

[gbausc]

Peace to all of you,

My brother Chuck gives the impression that my translation is filled with my personal doctrinal beliefs, in both the notes and the translation itself. By far most of my notes are textual in nature, and there are hundreds of them, located under the pertinent verses. I doubt that more than 10% of my notes touch on my personal beliefs, as the purpose of the notes is to demonstrate that the Greek text is not the original, but a translation of the Aramaic text, which I think I have well documented in each of the 27 books of the NT. If one wants the translation without notes, I have made that available.
As far as the Western Peshitta versus the Eastern Peshitta is concerned, Chuck exaggerates the differences between them by saying :

the text retains all the Western (Greek) influenced readings, from the Western Aramaic speaking groups, who were doctrinally aligned with the Greeks and Latins, in their Christology

Come on, Chuck. That is simply an outrageously biased remark which is very misleading. Where the two Peshittas are compared, line for line, there is about a 0.3% significant difference! You are blowing the differences way out of proportion.
I can think of two verses which may represent doctrinal differences in Christology: Acts 20:28 & Hebrews 2:9. Besides these two verses, each of which essentially differs in the Western versus Eastern versions by one word, where are all the doctrinal differences in Christology? And you yourself said that you could accept either reading in Acts 20:28, since you believe The Messiah is God, who died for us. That leaves one word variation in one verse-Hebrews 2:9.
Talk about nit picking.

I just don't get your tirade against the 1905 Peshitta edition. One or two words out of 100,000? Is that it? I feel a song coming on:
"Is that all there is, is that all there is?
If that's all there there is, my friend, then let's keep dancing....,
let's break out the booze and have a ball, if that's all there is."

0.002% possible doctrinal variation. Why doesn't someone just burn all Western Peshitta mss.? That would fix the Monophysite problem, except for all the electronic copies and printed copies of the 1905,1920,1979, etc. editions, and practically all the Greek mss. and practically all the ancient versions that support the Western readings in those two verses, and all the translations of the NT in every language produced in the past two thousand years.

That should be an easy problem to solve, shouldn't it?

Seriously, we should be celebrating the Peshitta/Peshitto as the most coherent and reliable witnesses from two divergent Christian groups that could not tolerate each other for the past 1550 years, and yet are reading essentially independent New Testaments whose common text is essentially identical, word for word.

The Assyrian Christians are reading the essentially same Bible the Monophysites are reading, but for two words. The Monophysites are reading the same Bible the Assyrian Church is reading, but for two words. Do those two words damn one or the other Peshitta? Can those two words damn one church or another?
Even the Eastern church has the Western five books in their Eastern NT (1886 edition & 1986 edition) , with notes to the effect that the Peshitta mss. do not contain those books, but other ancient mss. do have them.

I rejoice in the Eastern Peshitta and in the Eastern Assyrian Church and Christians and give God thanks for them. I also rejoice in the Western Peshitta and in the Western Church and the Syrian Orthodox Christians, the Maronites and Chaldean Catholics, and give God thanks for them.

Rejoice!

Dave