Summary of Peshitta Primacy Proofs

[gbausc]

Shlama all,

I decided this afternoon to post a
summary I have compiled of most of the proofs of Peshitta primacy.



A summary of Proofs of Peshitta Primacy, let???s see, there are :

1. Hundreds of thousands of Divine Name ELS???s found at skips 2-230,000 throughout The Peshitta NT, with a computed probability of 0.001 per ELS., or a composite probability of (0.001)350, or 10-1050 , which is the same as 1/100000000000000000000000000000000

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No such codes were found in The Greek NT nor in the Hebrew translation of War and Peace.
The codes are the only scientific evidence of the Divine inspiration of The Peshitta NT
that I am aware of. (Please see my Peshitta Primacy web site: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://dave.ultimasurf.com">http://dave.ultimasurf.com</a><!-- m --> for articles on this.)

2. 9,000+ data of Greek-Aramaic word pair comparisons in the NT , all of which computer searches and analyses of word ratios support the conclusion that the Greek NT , in both the Byzantine and the Westcott and Hort critical text, is a translation of The Peshitta???s Aramaic. The 5000 Hebrew ???LXX OT control model data also support this conclusion.
Computer word analyses of the Aramaic and Greek synonyms in The NT versions examine The Western Peshitta & The Greek NT.
The ratio of the number of times the corresponding Aramaic word matches the Greek word divided by the total number of the matching Greek word in The NT is
almost invariably greater than the converse ratio- (corresponding Greek word divided by the total # of the Aramaic word).

3. The historical data support a first century Aramaic NT original, as per Josephus, Antiquities XX,XI,2:

???I have also taken a great deal of pains to obtain the learning of the Greeks, and to
understand the elements of the Greek language, although I have so accustomed myself to speak our own tongue , that I cannot pronounce Greek with sufficient exactness. For our nation does not encourage those that learn the language of many nations. On this account, as there have been many who have done their endeavors, with great patience ,
to obtain the Greek learning, there have hardly been two or three who have succeeded therein , who were immediately rewarded for their pains."(published circa A.D. 93) __
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In A.D. 77, Josephus wrote his Jewish Wars in Aramaic and his amanuensis
translated it into Greek for the Greek- speaking Roman citizens. Even his later
Antiquities, quoted above,shows that Josephus was not fluent enough in Greek to
compose his several volumes in that language. The Jewish rabbis of that time
forbade the teaching of pagan tongues to their young men. They taught that it was
preferable to feed one???s son the flesh of swine than to teach him Greek.
Josephus not only testified to the ignorance of Greek in Israel, as referenced above, he wrote his volumes of history in first century Israel in Aramaic and then had them ???translated into Greek for the Roman citizens???, according to his own words:
??? I have proposed to myself, for the sake of such as live under the government of the Romans, to translate those books into the Greek tongue, which I formerly composed in the language of our country, and sent to the Upper Barbarians; (2) Joseph, the son of Matthias, by birth a Hebrew, a priest also, and one who at first fought against the Romans myself, and was forced to be present at what was done afterwards, [am the author of this work].???
Almost all historians agree that first century Jews of Israel spoke Aramaic as their native tongue, yet Christian Bible scholars continue to insist that first century Jews wrote in Greek, which they did not know how to write, to a people who did not know how to read it. They completely ignore the idea that the gospel would be written in the language of the people who wrote it and the language of the immediate audience that would read it. If I were to publish a book in the USA, I would not write it in Chinese ! I don???t know Chinese and most Americans can???t read it.
When will scholars come to their senses ?

4. Variant readings in Greek texts support Peshitto primacy. Many variants in
Greek can be explained as different translations of the same Aramaic word in The Peshitto version, where double meanings are possible. There is no explaining The Peshitto as a translation of any particular Greek text type.

5. Accuracy and consistency among Peshitto-Peshitta mss. as opposed to inaccuracy and inconsistency among Greek mss. of The NT. The most consistent and closely agreeing Greek texts (Elzevir???s 1633 TR and Stephen???s 1550 TR) tend to contain ten times the variation in letter number as The Peshitto- Peshitta mss.
The Critical Editions and mss. have much greater variation.

A tradition representing the original NT text is certainly to be expected, similar to
the tradition of The Massoretic Tradition of copying mss. and preserving the original
Hebrew text (notes and methods which insure that the utmost care will prevail
in the preservation of the Divine utterances delivered to the prophets).
The Peshitto-Peshitta has such a Massorah. The Greek NT never did.

How is it that a supposed translation of the the NT has a Massorah and the
supposed original Greek text has nothing even resembling such a tradition ? Would the caretakers of The Divine words be as careless as the Greek scribes obviously were, while The Aramaean scribes, transcribing a mere human translation of the NT , counted words and letters, burying old mss.and maintaining such accuracy, that two Peshitta mss. ??? Eastern or Western, maintained by The Church of The East and The Orthodox Syrian Church, respectively, differ , on the average, only once every 3.3 pages , or 101 times in the entire New Testament ?(This is ignoring the pericope de adultera). That is based on a comparison of ten Peshitta mss. in
Pusey and Gwilliams??? critical apparatus of Matthew, five Eastern and five Western.
Some Eastern mss. vary from each other as little as once in 43 pages !
A comparison of three of them in Matthew reveals an average of one variant per seven and two thirds pages ! These are almost always insignificant variations in spelling or even splitting of
compound words into two single words and vice versa.

The agreement between two avg. Peshitta mss. amounts to 99.98% !A pair of average Eastern Peshitta mss. agree 99.99%.
A pair of average Western mss. agree 99.97%.The best we can expect from two Greek mss. (Textus Receptus)
is 99.80% .
The letter # differences are 10 times greater between Elzevir's 1633 TR edition and Stephens 1550 TR edition.
The Greek NT Textus Receptus exists in various editions, whose mss. are the most consistent and carefully copied of all Greek mss. Elzevir's 1633 edition differs from Robert Stephens 1550 edition by about 87 letters in 1 Corinthians !
That , while only 2 thousandths of the book's 33,260 letters, (0.2%) is still ten times the variation found in the Peshitta mss. (compare 2 ten thousandths for Peshitta-Peshitto)-Lukes highest variation of 0.09%)

The Byzantine NT (1991 edition -Pierpoint) has 691,023 letters. Stephens 1550 has 693,395 letters. This is pretty good for Greek texts overall- 99.66 % agreement.This is 0.33 % variation ; Peshitta-Peshitto Lukes vary by 0.09%, 56 letters (the highest variation of Peshitta books) , just 1/3rd of Greek variation.
Overall Peshitta-Peshitto variation, comparing only 22 common books and disregarding John 7:53-8:11 which is found only in Western Peshitto, is 0.023%.
That is an overall variation in The Greek 10 to 14 times as great as The Peshitta(o) versions. (1 Cor. is 10 times as great.)
The modern Critical Editions of The Greek NT have much wider divergences.
Westcott & Hort's Greek NT has 679,885 letters. That differs from Byzantine by 11,038 letters, or 1.60%. 98.40% agreement is still not bad at all, but relative to the Byzantine-Textus Receptus comparison, about five times as great.
This is 70 times the Peshitta variation. 1 Cor - W&H 32717; Byzantine 33182; 1550 TR 33256.
WH 98.60% of Byz. ; TR 100.22% of Byz.

WH varies 1.40% from Byzantine - Majority text in 1 Cor. .
TR varies 0.22% from Byzantine - Majority text in 1 Cor. .

WH variation is 6.36 times as great as TR from Majority text.
I don't have USB NT or Nestles' 26th Edition stats yet. They will be better than W&H comparison numbers, however.
The Eastern Peshitta text mss. have even less variation among some mss. than some of the variation we see in Western editions.Consider 8 variants in one ms. in all of Paul's epistles- (one for every ten pages), in an 8th century manuscript from a 2000 year old version.
The average for two Eastern mss. at 0.01% variation , or 0.0001 , is one twentieth
the variation found between two editions of the Textus Receptus -(1633 Elzevir and 1550 Stephens).Two Greek mss. will vary more than this.
P32 and P33 , , two Eastern Peshitta mss. in Pusey and Gwilliams??? critical apparatus of Matthew, differ only once in the whole of Matthew???s Gospel ! That is 0.000017 variation , or 99.9983% agreement !
That is less than one thousandth the variation between the two closest Greek editions.
We have had the picture reversed for time immemorial. It is obvious that this
phenomenon of accuracy of copying and preservation of mss. strongly supports
Peshitta primacy and a secondary Greek NT.
Facts are such pesty things sometimes, especially for those who have an interest in
promoting an agenda rather than discovering the truth. Why are these facts not even known in seminaries and Bible colleges, much less discussed and written in textbooks on Textual Criticism ?
6. Transliterations of Aramaic words and phrases in The Greek NT; There are also hundreds of transliterated Aramaic words in The Greek NT without translation or comment.If Greek were the original language of The NT writers, this transliteration would not occur in Greek; it would be much more likely to occur in an Aramaic translation of Greek. Transliteration of Greek does not occur in the Peshitta, except for some Greek names of individuals and places which had no Semitic name. ???Petros??? is an exception,being found three times in the NT, since Peter became famous for preaching the gospel to Gentiles in Caesarea. It was fitting to mark that fact with an occasional reference to his Greek name.
The only reason for the many Aramaic words in the Greek NT is the fact that the language of the principal persons and nation in its accounts was Aramaic. Given that fact, there is no good explanation for the original New Testament books to have been written in any other language
than Aramaic.
7. There are also accompanying translations with the transliterations in the Greek New Testament, practical declarations by the Greek copyist and original translator that ???I am translating Aramaic into Greek???. The Greek word, ???ermayneuo???, occurs in those places, which means, ???I translate???. Thus the Greek text bears direct internal testimony to itself as a translation of Aramaic.

The reverse phenomenon does not occur in the Peshitta. There are some Greek loan words occurring in the Aramaic language that also occur in The Peshitta. They are also found in the Peshitta OT, which was translated from Hebrew, not from Greek. These do not provide support for Greek primacy.


I hope you can use this.

Burktha w'Shlama,


Dave B