Acts 8:27 - a "Treasure" for Aramaic Primacy

[judge]

Thanks for your replies here Paul. I have been presented with some more objections...from an anonymous poster who thought originally that gaza was Persian..

Looking at the particular verse in Acts, gaza is the Greek form of the word used for "treasure" in the context of eastern potentates. The Aramaic form, however, is GNZ as seen in Ezra 5:17. It is also the form found in later Aramaic work, such as the Yerushalmi Targum Deuteronomy, 31:16, as GNYZ -- this is a Judean form. There is a continuity of form from the time Ezra's Aramaic was written to the time of the targum. The form GZ) can actually be found late after the contact between Greek and Aramaic traditions, for example in Bavli Shabbat 63a, but there is no early support for such a form.

At the time of the writing of Acts, gaza had been in Greek for at least 200 years, as witnessed by Polybius. So, when we see the form in the Syriac without the /n/, we can only assume that it was by way of Greek influence, ie the translators, confused by the Greek, used the Greek form in Syriac, rather than the Semitic alternative. The only simple way to account for the non-Semitic form of the name in Peshitta Acts is through the Greek. Just one of the many Greek forms found in the Peshitta.

While there is good evidence that even the loanword indirectly from Indo-Iranian, gaza, has influenced the Syriac of the Peshitta, you are left with a conjecture as to why autou is the possessive rather than auths.

And again from Dr Gibson.

All that can be said is that in its witness to the Greek text of Acts 8:27 D has a reading -- ???????????? instead of ???????????? at the end of ????? ????? ???????? ?????????? ??????? ??????????-- that has been claimed by Peshitta primacists as reflecting the ambiguity of the gender of a pronoun word that appears in the Peshitta's rendering of Acts 8:27. But this claim is based on a question begging assumption about what gender of this ???????????? is.

So once again, I ask you what is the gender of this ?????????????

. And never trust anyone who uses Strongs as his source or thinks that it is an actual Lexicon, let alone an authoritative one. Moreover, your source seems to think that the Greek ????????, ????, ??? (????????????) Gaza that is used by Diod. S. 19, 59, 2; Strabo 16, 2, 21; Arrian, Anab. 2, 26 and elsewhere in the story of Alexander; inscr.; Gen 10:19 al.; Ep. Arist.; Joseph.; Sib. Or. 3, 345 for one of the 5 chief cities of the Philistines is the same Greek word as that which is derived from Persian ganu??

The word ????????, ????, ??? is from the Persian ganu?? treasure and is found as a loanword in Greek since Theophrastus, Pl. 8, 11, 5; and in Polybius.; Diodorus Siculius.; Plutarch ; Appian, Mithrid. 23 ??93; Dit., Or. (Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae, ed. WDittenberger, 2 vols. 1903-5) 54, 21f;


????????????????????????????, ????, ???? (v.l. ????????????????????????, preferred by Bl-D. ??13) lit. treasure room, treasury, is found in Diod. S. 9, 12, 2; Strabo 7, 6, 1; Dit., Or. 225 (Didyma, iii b.c.), among other places in secular Greek writings.

Did these Greek authors these words from Aramaic?