(01-13-2015, 02:15 AM)Thomas Wrote: And one such proof, which I examined last night and today is the issue of "hanging earrings on dogs" in Mat 7:6, which you just mentioned--both as a semi-split word and as a wordplay. My interest is primarily on the semi-split word aspect--namely, that there are either dictionaries or other ancient sources (Targums) that attest to a double-meaning of qudsha. ... I feel secure about Matthew 8:7 as a legitimate primacy proof (and the wordplay a nice enhancement).
Not anymore. This one (Mat 8:7) is now shot dead, along with the others that I began to post here, 5 years ago. For those who are interested, this "primacy" claim is no good either.
Some Aramaic translators prefer to translate לא תתלון קודשׁא לכלבא (la tetluwn qudsha l'kalbey) as "You should not hang earrings on dogs"--claiming that the word קודשׁא (qudsha) can mean either "holy things" or "earrings." While this may seem attractive for forming a synonymous parallelism between "earrings" and "pearls" in Mat_7:6, this claim doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
Though there may be a common root--קדשׁ (qds)--between "earrings" (see Gen_24:22 in the Peshitta Tanakh and Targum Onkelos) and "holy things" (passim), the former is spelled קדשׁא (qedasha), while the latter is spelled קודשׁא (qudsha) in Mat_7:6. The difference is the letter ו (vav) in the word קודשׁא (qudsha).
How significant is this difference between קדשׁא (qedasha) and קודשׁא (qudsha)? The same exact spelling that we find in Mat_7:6 --viz., קודשׁא (qudsha)--appears nearly 200 times in the Tanakh (both Peshitta Tanakh and Targum Onkelos), and nearly 100 times in the Peshitta "NT". Out of the combined 300 occurrences in these three versions, קודשׁא (qudsha) is never once translated as "ring / earring" in any other place.
Therefore, those who claim that קודשׁא (qudsha) in Mat_7:6 could also mean "earrings" instead of just "holy / set-apart" don't have even 1 occurrence out of 300 to back their claim, when the full spelling of the word is taken into account. In my opinion then, this is yet another example of "Peshitta primacy" gone bad.
(02-01-2015, 09:22 PM)Thirdwoe Wrote: Refuted? or just seen a different way? <!-- s--><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="
This kind of thing can go back an forth forever, with it never being able to convince either side of the issue.
I have never received a good answer to this question ... Q: Which Greek NT text (a single manuscript, or a textual family's text) can be shown to be the original Greek NT text, and which the Aramaic NT could be said to be a translation of it? Shlama, Chuck
For the record, even if there isn't an extant Greek text *now* that shows itself to be the predecessor to the Peshitta, that doesn't mean that one never existed. And considering that we don't have *any* biblical manuscripts (Aramaic or Greek) before about 200 CE (with a decent amount of text that we can read), there's no telling what happened in the first generations. There's no telling what the original Aramaic OR the original Greek looked like.
Personally, I'm interested in the 78 CE "Assemani gospels" because they are the earliest attested to text of the good news accounts in terms of specific dating. But I have a strong suspicion that if we could get to read it, it would be significantly different from the Peshitta we now have from the 5th century.
So to repeat: it *may* be that no Greek text available today can show itself as the predecessor of the Peshitta. Fine. The same exact thing works the other way around: the Peshitta can't claim to be the predecessor of any particular Greek text, since it differs from them all in so many ways. Given that
1) we have no actual "Peshitta" manuscripts prior to the 5th century (and some quotes from Aphrahat / Ephrem in the 4th century), no one can legitimately claim to know what did or didn't exist prior to that time. Obviously, people make claims all day long, and traditions abound, but without real evidence, tradition is just tradition.
2) I've shown (both above and below this post) that multiple Peshitta "primacy" claims are debunked, I don't see evidence that the Peshitta is the predecessor of any of the Greek texts we now have.