12-20-2011, 01:08 AM
Since Aramaic primacy is our main purpose, it makes no sense and serves no purpose to repeatedly attack. George Lamsa, the pioneer of Aramaic primacy. Well before the age of computers or efficient world-wide communication, he single-handedly translated the whole Peshitta including all of the Old Testament, into English, and wrote extensive commentaries explaining major issues associated with translating from an ancient Aramaic culture to modern English. He accomplished his New Testament in the 1930's and the whole Bible in 1956. These were published by A.J Holman Company, a respected Bible publisher. His translation was probably among the first modern language versions of the Bible.
I met George Lamsa in 1970 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and spent a very pleasant evening conversing with him. We talked about his scholarly journey and his mission to show that the New Testament was originally written in Aramaic, not Greek.
George Lamsa was a native Assyrian born in 1890 in Marbisho in northern Iran, His native language was Aramaic and his family was Christian. He did not need a lexicon to ?translate? the Peshitta, since it was the Bible of his youth and culture. It was written in his native language. Also, he was a brilliant and precocious scholar. Lamsa?s translation of his native language is far more likely to be correct than those by people who do not have a native knowledge of Aramaic or Lamsa?s understanding of the ancient cultures of Aramaic-speaking peoples including the followers of Jesus.
Context is important in Aramaic and Lamsa instinctively understood the context of sentences written in his native language. Lamsa has gone to some length to clearly explain this in his published commentaries, all of which I have on my bookshelf.
Lamsa studied in Anglican and Episcopal schools and grew to love the King James Version style and purposely adopted modernized versions of its wordings when they were consistent with his reading of the Peshitta. At that time this style also served the purpose of comfortable reading for Christians who grew up with the King James Version (KJV). Much of the criticism of his work in this forum is associated with his attempt to adhere closely to the KJV, but this was a purposeful tool in the middle of the 20th Century.
In 1947 he published a small book entitled ?New Testament Origin?. The first sentence in the first Chapter reads,? Not a word of either the Old of the New Testament was originally written in Greek or any other European language.? Those were fighting words to all those people who learned Greek so they could better understand the Bible. That is just as true today.
Instead of arguing about various esoteric issues on this forum, we need to muster greater effort to promote Aramaic primacy in all that we do! We need to develop logical and written tools that are effective in this effort.
Otto
I met George Lamsa in 1970 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and spent a very pleasant evening conversing with him. We talked about his scholarly journey and his mission to show that the New Testament was originally written in Aramaic, not Greek.
George Lamsa was a native Assyrian born in 1890 in Marbisho in northern Iran, His native language was Aramaic and his family was Christian. He did not need a lexicon to ?translate? the Peshitta, since it was the Bible of his youth and culture. It was written in his native language. Also, he was a brilliant and precocious scholar. Lamsa?s translation of his native language is far more likely to be correct than those by people who do not have a native knowledge of Aramaic or Lamsa?s understanding of the ancient cultures of Aramaic-speaking peoples including the followers of Jesus.
Context is important in Aramaic and Lamsa instinctively understood the context of sentences written in his native language. Lamsa has gone to some length to clearly explain this in his published commentaries, all of which I have on my bookshelf.
Lamsa studied in Anglican and Episcopal schools and grew to love the King James Version style and purposely adopted modernized versions of its wordings when they were consistent with his reading of the Peshitta. At that time this style also served the purpose of comfortable reading for Christians who grew up with the King James Version (KJV). Much of the criticism of his work in this forum is associated with his attempt to adhere closely to the KJV, but this was a purposeful tool in the middle of the 20th Century.
In 1947 he published a small book entitled ?New Testament Origin?. The first sentence in the first Chapter reads,? Not a word of either the Old of the New Testament was originally written in Greek or any other European language.? Those were fighting words to all those people who learned Greek so they could better understand the Bible. That is just as true today.
Instead of arguing about various esoteric issues on this forum, we need to muster greater effort to promote Aramaic primacy in all that we do! We need to develop logical and written tools that are effective in this effort.
Otto