Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
The Origin of the Western Five
#1
January 9, 2008

Here is my understanding of the Western Five, and the changes made in the Peshitto by alteration of the original Peshitta text and the addition of five extra books

According to Eastern tradition, the 22 books of the Aramaic Peshitta were obtained from the Apostles. Later, these and other Aramaic documents were translated into Greek by Greek Christians. The 22 books of the Aramaic Peshitta have been carefully copied, checked, and protected through the centuries by eastern Christians as far away as India. It is unlikely that any Western influence or careless omissions have affected the Peshitta text.

Since all of the New Testament documents were originally written on fragile vegetable materials such as papyrus, their life span was relatively short and they had to be repeatedly copied as the old versions were damaged or destroyed. This continued for hundreds of years until writing on hides began in the Fifth Century.

The Greek Christians had to translate the Aramaic documents into their language. Over time the Greek scribes obviously made numerous changes that were thought to be improvements in the translation from the Aramaic original and added notes that were later inadvertently incorporated into the text and adopted by other scribes. One of those notes that may not have appeared in early Greek versions is the so called "Pericope de Adultera", the woman caught in adultery found in verses 1-11 in Chapter 8 of John in the currently accepted versions of the Greek New Testament.

In 70 AD the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and copies of the Tanakh and the Caesar issued a decree that all Jewish writings were to be destroyed. That, of course, included the documents of the Jewish sect who were followers of Jesus. This may have led to the widespread use of Estrangela since it did not look like the Hebrew Ashuri

At some point over the centuries the information that there even was an Aramaic version was lost since the Greeks were exceedingly proud of their language and saw no reason to keep documents written in a foreign language. By the Middle Ages European Christians apparently did not know about the Peshitta. The only ???original??? New Testament documents that they had were in Greek. Aramaic versions were later rejected as not original scripture.

Sometime after the deaths of the Apostles, perhaps in the Second Century the western Aramaic speaking Christians with close contact and under the influence of Greek Christians made some accommodation in the Aramaic text to reconcile some theological problems associated the differences including adding an Aramaic version of the "Pericope de Adultera" in the Western Peshitto version of John's Gospel

Obviously, the history of the original text was not understood by the Greek Christians or the Western Aramaic-speaking Christians. Under the Greek influence some even translated a Greek New Testament into Aramaic, producing the so-called Old Syriac text (called ???Old Scratch??? by Paul Younan), an obvious translation that is unrelated to the Peshitta.

Meanwhile, the Eastern Aramaic-speaking Christians carefully protected the true Peshitta and the knowledge of true source of that text.

Therefore, the Western Five and the "Pericope de Adultera" are all of uncertain origin and uncertain authorship. Other variants in the Western Peshitto of the basic 22 books are probably alterations made to accommodate the Greek and Western Churches.

Since over many hundreds of years thousands of fragile copies of Greek New Testament documents were made, some versions may have been lost by not being copied before they fell apart, and other versions received various modifications. The resulting hodge-podge of translations, revised translations, altered versions, added books, and damaged translations, provide the basis of the Greek documents that are used today to form the Greek New Testaments. I write this in plural because there are two primary texts, the so-called Majority Text (basis of the KJV and NKJV) and the Minority Text (basis of the NIV, RSV, etc.). Forty percent of the verses in these two Greek documents are significantly different in that they have at least two important words that differ in a meaningful way. In addition, many other verses have important minor differences that significantly affect the meaning (e.g., Luke 2:14 is only different by one letter, a sigma, but that meaningfully changes the message of the angels).

These ideas have come from my personal reading and from posts on Peshitta.org over the last several years. I welcome constructive criticism and comments.

Otto
Reply
#2
Don't bring this mess up to Dawid, to him this is something to be proud of.

Should a Mohammedan even contemplate raising a wing against the textual transmission of the Greek texts, let him be reminded that even the Aramaic version apparently has a missing Hebrew original to (at least) parts of it.

What a bunch of fools we followers of this religion are, last 2,000 years blindly following some books we aren't even sure of the correct reading of!

Has any other religion the number of divergent holy texts that we saps do?
Reply
#3
The Good News is that God has preserved to Godpel message in all of these diverse texts! The Devil is in the details.

Otto
Reply
#4
Sorry for my poor typing skills, I meant to write:

The Good News is that God has preserved the Gospel message in all of these diverse texts! The Devil is in the details.

Blessings,

Otto
Reply
#5
Shlama all,

I don't think we can deduce the words of God intellectually, Otto. We need a higher source than human intellect by which to discern them. For you to
wave your hand and dismiss five books as spurious that have been held to be God's word by millions of believers for 19 centuries, many of whom were illustrious and wise followers of The Messiah, is the height of arrogance on your part.

1Co 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

You strike me as a very "natural man". "Dvanphesh" in Aramaic means "soulish", "natural" or "brutish".
How a man in whom dwells The Spirit of God could write what you wrote about 2 Peter, 2nd & 3rd John, Jude and Revelation, not to mention John 7:53- 8:11
is beyond me.

Dave Bauscher
Reply
#6
Shlama Friends,

Dave, have you ever MET Otto?

I mean face-to-face? In real life, in flesh and blood?

I've been writing here on the Net since 1999 or 2000.

And one thing that I've seen for sure is the internet is very ONE dimensional.

Your a "Pastor" right?

How can you say these things to Otto?

"Brutish" "natural man".

I mean you've NEVER even met Otto I.R.L. (in real life), as they say here on the internet.

HAVE YOU?

We've got a sign on our living room wall, a saying by the Dali Lama:

"Do you want to be happy? Practice Compassion."

"Do you want OTHERS to be happy? Practice Compassion."

In The Way International Aramaic/English New Testament almost everywhere that Yeshua says "Mercy" in the Greek to English N.T., it is translated as "Compassion".

Do YOU want Compassion practiced towards YOU?

Go and do likewise, towards others.

'A Saying of Chairman Albion' <!-- s:bigups: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/bigups.gif" alt=":bigups:" title="Big Ups" /><!-- s:bigups: -->




gbausc Wrote:Shlama all,

I don't think we can deduce the words of God intellectually, Otto. We need a higher source than human intellect by which to discern them. For you to
wave your hand and dismiss five books as spurious that have been held to be God's word by millions of believers for 19 centuries, many of whom were illustrious and wise followers of The Messiah, is the height of arrogance on your part.

1Co 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

You strike me as a very "natural man". "Dvanphesh" in Aramaic means "soulish", "natural" or "brutish".
How a man in whom dwells The Spirit of God could write what you wrote about 2 Peter, 2nd & 3rd John, Jude and Revelation, not to mention John 7:53- 8:11
is beyond me.

Dave Bauscher
Reply
#7
Shlama Albion,
Compassion is not the only word in the Bible. Have you never read Matthew 23? Read the whole thing. You will find little of what you call compassion.
What kind of Pastor never speaks his mind for fear of hurting someone's feelings? What kind of Christian, for that matter? What kind of person?

"Speak the truth in love.", wrote Shlikha Paul, but for God's sake, speak the truth. Don't assume I don't know Otto. We have been corresponding for several years, on and off. Do not assume I have no compassion.

What kind of believer are you, Albion? Have you never read, "Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine."? 2Ti 4:2

It may be "out of season" & apparently it is out of fashion; all the more reason for it to be done. Besides, I care more for the word of God than for all the feelings of all the people in the world. I also care for the souls of men, more than for their feelings. The word is my sharp scalpel.

If one who calls himself a believer challenges or attacks God's word, I challenge him and question his spiritual state. So if anyone here wants to challenge God, I say, let him bring it on. I am sick of sickly and carnal so-called Christianity which preaches more unbelief than faith, and the thoughts and teachings of men rather than the word of God. I'm sure it makes our Lord sick as well.

Let Otto answer my charges.

Dave
Reply
#8
I loved it when Victor Alexander used 'Milta', or 'Miltha', as "Manifestation" (or "Word") in Yohannon's Gospel.

I've heard Southerner's call The Bible "The Word of God" for a longggg timeee.

Every time that I heard that, I winced.

The REAL Manifestation of Alaha, IS YESHUA.

The New Covenant is "the words of Alaha" written down by the Blessed Apostles themselves.

Ditto for the Tanakh, written by men who loved Alaha more than themselves.

That's the ONLY "Word of God" that I know of. His Son.

Shlama, Albion
Reply
#9
January 12, 2008

Dear Dave,

What I wrote about the Western 5 was:???...the Western Five and the ???Pericope de Adultera??? are all of uncertain origin and uncertain authorship.??? That does not mean that they are definitely without divine inspiration, but only that we cannot be sure because their history is less certain than that of the twenty-two books of the Peshitta.

I believe that is the prevailing viewpoint at Peshitta.org and the position of Paul Younan, this web site???s creator.

I also believe that your position is tainted by your unyielding convictions about the Bible Code nonsense, which is really nothing more than electronic Scrabble. I already pointed out to you that the results of your ???95 divine names??? study are not miraculous; in fact, mathematically they are rather ordinary. Your long codes are the result of hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, of trial combinations of letters that are now possible with high speed computers. As George Gamow pointed out many years ago, shuffling the characters enough will yield ???messages??? by pure chance. The chance of finding something that you did not expect and for which you did not search is always 100%.

Your position on the Aramaic text of the New Testament is too rigid for rational discussion. I think that you are convinced that you have been chosen by God for a ???divine contact??? given by ???Bible Codes??? that you have uncovered in the Western Peshitto text that he received along with yourr purchase of the Codefinder computer program. In fact, you seems to believe that the Western Peshitto has the ONE AND ONLY PERFECT TEXT and it has exactly 461,094 letters. This is the divine and perfect text that has the Bible codes that you have been chosen by God to ???discover???. Even a small change of the text would create a text that is no longer PERFECT. I think you are certain that the Peshitto text that you received with your Bible Code program is PERFECT.

It seems that there is really no room for us to have a constructive discussion.

Sincerely,

Otto

P.S. Dave, I know that you are a brilliant linguist. I also believe that you are an excellent parent of your children and a fine Pastor of your church, highly motivated and energetic, and an all-around nice person. Someday, I would like to meet you personally and shake your hand. Surely, we can have disagreements on technical issues and still be brothers in the Lord. Yeshua Meshikha was the only perfect man. The rest of us will have to wait for his return to discern everything more clearly.
Reply
#10
Grace to you Brother Otto,

Thank you for your response and your kind words. The issue we are discussing has nothing to do with Bible codes. It has to do with The Holy Spirit and the scripture I quoted in 1 Cor. 2:14
Quote:But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Do you think The Holy Spirit would leave it to human intellect to discern what is scripture and what is the work of man? I do not think so.

You keep referencing what "those on this web site" believe, which is completely irrelevant. I want to know what God says about the matter, and so should you.

You are obfuscating what you said when you say you merely question the origin and history of the Western 5 books. You wrote earlier:
Quote:The resulting hodge-podge of translations, revised translations, altered versions, added books, and damaged translations, provide the basis of the Greek documents that are used today to form the Greek New Testaments.
You are affirming that whole books were added to the canon by men which do not belong there, are you not? It certainly sounds that way to me. As such, you are condemning those added books as uninspired and spurious.

I have the greatest respect for Paul Younan and also for his belief in The 22 book Peshitta, which I also share. He allows that some or all of the Western 5 may be authentic writings of the Apostles, as I understand what he has written in the past. You sound dangerously close to taking the next step and rejecting those
books out of hand as
Quote: The resulting hodge-podge of translations, revised translations, altered versions, added books, and damaged translations, provide the basis of the Greek documents that are used today to form the Greek New Testaments.

And you have never even read these books in Aramaic (and I am not talking about the Harklean version) but The Crawford ms. and critical edition of John Gwynn. Everyone on this forum should obtain his books : The Apocalypse of St John and Remnants of the Later Syriac Versions of The Bible.
I don't know if even Paul has read Gwynn's edition and books. Gwynn was not a Peshitta primacist, but he certainly pointed out the differences between the Aramaic mss. he collated and The Harklean version. He concluded that the mss. he used for the Western five were very Peshitta like in their idiomatic Aramaic style and word usage, in glaring contrast to The Harklean's slavish adherence to Greek word order and even transliteration, as in an interlinear translation of Greek. He believed the text of those 20 manuscripts would have been indistinguishable from The Peshitta, if included in a volume with it.

Here is what he wrote:
Quote:"It would be difficult for a reader unacquainted with the Greek of The Apocalypse to discover that he had before him a translation, and not an original document."
He is referring to The Crawford ms. of Revelation.
He also wrote: "
Quote:The Syriac of the four epistles (2,3 John, 2 Peter, Jude) is idiomatic, and its method combines faithfulness with freedom.... I suspect that if the first editor of the Syriac NT in 1555 had had in his hands this or a similar ms., these Epistles would have been unhestitatingly included by him, and accepted by Biblical scholars without question, as an integral part of The Peshitto."
Greek transliteration and adaptation is "
Quote:less frequent than even in The Peshitto NT."
Comparing these mss. to The Harklean, Gwynn includes this quote from an older source
Quote::"We justly claim for this version, as regards its general tone and manner , that it approaches the excellence of The Peshitto; and in point of force, directness, and dignity, that it gives worthy expression to the sublime imagery of the Apocalyptist. It has strength and freedom such as few translations attain; such in fact that it would not be difficult to make out a plausible case for accepting it as the Aramaic original, or a close reproduction of an Aramaic original of the book. In it , far more than in the cramped and artificial diction of its reviser, the Aramaic idiom asserts its power to supply for the burden of the divine visions an utterance more adequate than could be found for them in the Greek which is their actual vehicle. (Remember, this is from a Greek primacist position.) From it, as a comparison of the 2 versions shows, the latter one has borrowed the touches of simple majesty which ever and again raise it out of its usual level of painstaking and correctness: in it, I may almost venture to say, more perfectly than in the written Greek, we may read 'the things which shall be hereafter', well nigh in the form in which St. John first apprehended the divine word that came to him, and inwardly shaped into speech the revelation of 'The Lord God, which is and was and is to come, The Almighty.""
Gwynn was a Greek primacist, as was the source he quoted, yet they both set forth the Western 5 in a text they claim looks like an original, reads like The Peshitta and is better than the Harklean & Greek in diction, simplicity and power. How can these things be, if it and The Peshitta were translated from Greek to start with?
It is all very simple. It is the original Aramaic writing of the Apostles, John, Peter and Jude.

I will forego your statements about the codes, except to ask: If anyone with a computer can reproduce the kind of codes I have found, why is it that nobody has done so thus far? I cannot find such ELS's in any text but the Hebrew Bible and The Peshitto NT. You make it sound like I tried millions of configurations of the NT until I got one that worked, and that is simply false. There are other texts included in the program, including scrambled Hebrew texts, War and Peace in Hebrew, Eastern Peshitta, 5 Greek texts, Josephus' "Wars" in Greek, English Bibles, 21 books & scrambled texts in all. Someone should have come up with something significant by now, but I have seen nothing like what I have found in The Peshitto.

I will save the fine points of code searching and whether I believe the text I searched is the letter perfect text, for another time.

Do you believe 1 Cor. 2:14, Otto? Do you believe in The Holy Spirit, and do you listen to Him? That is the most important matter at hand.

Burkta b'Rukha d'Qoodsha (Blessings in The Spirit of Holiness),

Dave
Reply
#11
gbausc Wrote:I have the greatest respect for Paul Younan and also for his belief in The 22 book Peshitta, which I also share. He allows that some or all of the Western 5 may be authentic writings of the Apostles, as I understand what he has written in the past.

Akhay,

The CoE takes no official position on any of the "western five." They simply never made it into the canon of our scripture.

Believe me, we are strongly encouraged to read these books for our personal edification. Many sermons are based on things within these books. Even our modern printed versions of the Peshitta in Swadaya script contain these five books, from the 1891 Mosul text.

The only thing is, they are not part of the "Khudra", which is the liturgical cycle of readings throughout the year.

They could have been written by the Apostles, they could have been written in Aramaic. We simply don't know as we didn't have any copies of them until very late, and those copies came to us from the western provinces with clear oral and written tradition of having been translated from Greek.

Now before that, maybe there were Aramaic originals. I can tell you that if they had reached us in the first century of the Church's founding, they would have had no problem in accepting them - but they came much later, so they played it safe.

We call these "Pious Books", which is a step below scripture in our tradition, but above Patristics, Liturgical works and Hymnals. We are strongly encouraged to work them into our personal faith and walk with God.

Hope that clears our position a little bit.
Reply
#12
Shlama Akhi Paul,

Thank you for that clarification. I was aware of your position, though others may not have been.


Dave
Reply
#13
gbausc Wrote:Thank you for that clarification. I was aware of your position, though others may not have been.

Not my position, that of hundreds of millions of believers spanning almost 2 thousand years. I was born into this. I could have easily been born Catholic and wonder why you don't believe Maccabees is scripture, or I could have been born Ethiopian and wonder why you don't accept Didascalia, Clement or the book of Enoch as inspired.

I guess people forget that unlike Judaism or Islam, there's never been a definitive, universally-declared and agreed upon set of books in the Christian canon of scripture.
Reply
#14
Paul Younan Wrote:Not my position, that of hundreds of millions of believers spanning almost 2 thousand years. I was born into this. I could have easily been born Catholic and wonder why you don't believe Maccabees is scripture, or I could have been born Ethiopian and wonder why you don't accept Didascalia, Clement or the book of Enoch as inspired.

I guess people forget that unlike Judaism or Islam, there's never been a definitive, universally-declared and agreed upon set of books in the Christian canon of scripture.

Cannonicity and divine inspiration is not the same thing. Cannonicity is an official (note political) process where a council of men (as opposed to the Holy Spirit) decide what is God's word and what is not. Divine inspiration on the other hand is solely a matter of faith. It doesn't matter how many mss, or how much historical evidence is presented to you, in the end you need faith to believe that it's the original word of God.

In regards to the Western 5, I pass no judgment on the COE for not connonizing these books, in fact I admire them for being cautious and not being quick to set things in stone - that is wisdom! There's no harm in waiting until you feel you have infallible approval from the Almighty when it comes to change. With regard to the W5 the COE feel that they haven't as of yet, so there's no need to citicize them for "playing it safe".

Which books I accept to be inspired and therefore "cannonized" is my choice based on my faith in their authenticity. Personally speaking, I accept the W5 as inspired yet I believe that Esther should take it's rightful place in the Talmud. Even though Esther is accepted in every OT cannon, I don't believe it's inspired, and I don't believe it belongs in the Bible. My reasons:

1. Not once is God ever mentioned in that book, and we all know that the Septuagint version has addtional verses, which were added later by Alexandrian Jews.
2. Prayer is not mentioned either, though fasting is. Some argue that prayer and fasting usually go together, so Esther must've prayed to God when she fasted. But it's just as easy to argue that Esther simply saw fasting as a good luck charm.
3. Esther is not quoted to or alluded to in the NT (including the W5) as far as I can tell.
4. I cannot find any reference in the NT to the Jews in 1st centurary Israel celebrating Purim, while John 10 does record them celebrating Hanukkah - "the feast of dedication" (of Maccabees fame).
5. Every cannonical OT book was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls except for Esther, this suggests (but doesn't neccessarily prove) that Esther wasn't always considered connical by Jews (at least not Palestininan Jews).
6. The feast of Purim is not one of the Torah feasts instigated by The Master, of course neither is Hanukka, but at least God is honoured during Hanukka. Purim on the other hand is about celebrating the victory fo man and (often) getting wasted, not what I would call a godly celebration.
Reply
#15
Christina Wrote:I accept the W5 as inspired yet I believe that Esther should take it's rightful place in the Talmud. Even though Esther is accepted in every OT cannon, I don't believe it's inspired, and I don't believe it belongs in the Bible.

What? No more Purim parties and those tasty hamantashen? Just kidding. You make some good points, but we also know that in some versions of Peshitta we have:

Wisdom
Epistle of Jeremiah
Epistle of Baruch
Baruch
Bel
The Dragon
Susanna
Judith
Ben Sirach
Apocalypse of Baruch
4 Ezra
1 Maccabees
2 Maccabees
3 Maccabees
4 Maccabees
Wars of the Jews by Josephus

All of these books are considered as "apocryphal" by Protestants, with the exception of the last one which I believe they would say it's simply a historical account.

While the topic of the development of "canon" is quite fascinating, to say the least, we do have to take into consideration the body and culture that accepts these particular books and those that do not. Each one has its own tradition and standards of how a book is considered "worthy" enough to be put into the particular canon.
Reply


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)