A Theory of History

[enarxe]

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i was uncertain about bringing this up, i dont know why, i just was. i have stated:

I am not one to give into the ???oldest is most accurate??? claim. Nor am I one to give into the ???majority is better??? claim either.

but i must ask: how is it to be dealt with when, as far as my investigation has taken me, the Greek manuscripts are in fact older than the oldest Aramaic manuscripts we now have? there is a 150-350 year difference in which the greek are the oldest. what could be said in support of Aramaic primacy in light of this information?

Much love and blessings,
Z'ev Yochanan

I really like your posts. It's like a recap of many question that I have been asking myself some time ago. I hope this does not sound condescending, just good to read others who are going through similar thought process.

Just my two cents (or 2p) again.

With preservation of manuscripts it is like with wine, not necessarily older means better, the place where and the way it was produced in is much more important, quality is what matters. The variants in Greek m(e)ss are most disturbing to an enquiring mind. They differ so much that it is really not so important how old particular mss is but how it is faithful to the original, DSS example teaches us that, who knows, maybe some time, somewhere, someone will recover some mss. That would be nice. But it is completely unimportant if I'm certain that the text I have in front of me has been transmitted with utmost care and I can be sure that it is faithful to the original.

The whole Textual Criticism is a killer to many souls who had started the persuit and then back-sliden, turned into unbelief. I had started looking at Peshitta Primacy in more detail mainly because it offered a reasonable solution to a problem of variants. Such bad treatment of the holy text that we can see in Greek manuscripts is simply unacceptable. With your Jewish roots I think you understand it even better. After looking through arguments, examples, books, opinions it started to make sense to me. After talking or writing to several "Greek-Primacists" it was very clear to me that most of them just repeat other peoples fables or old, unproven suppositions, quotes of quotes of quotes. Most entertaining is listening to some (even academics) who claim to be "specialist" make some judging statements and do not even know basic Aramaic, it is just hillarious. For me, the main remaining arguments to decide "which text was first" are linguistic. IMHO these are much in favour of Peshitta (I still have some projects in mind to add to this, probably good to follow them when I retire).

Primacy is an important issue for me, but for 99% of the others it is of no importance or relevance, and probably will not be, loving your God, yourself or your neighbor (or wife) is first daily struggle, until this is sorted what language was the scripture written in is a non-issue. Yes, the core message of the Gospel is well preserved in Greek and other translations. And if those who call themselves disciples of our teacher have been reading every day humbly and with understanding some translation of a translation of a translation of the Scriptures (not to mention Greek or Aramaic text), it would suffice.

This was very general and more on a personal note (hey, we are in General section!) but I'm sure you will hear more specific answers and arguments from others here.

Peace and blessings,
Jerzy