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Greek-isms???????
#16
This might be a bit off topic, but here goes anyway! Regarding Aramaic words for "computer" and "internet", I have actually come across words for these. However, I don't know how widely used/accepted they are.

Computer is khashuwa which I believe is from the root kheth-shin-beth, which has the meaning to a) count, number, ... b) to enumerate, recount.

Internet is prass nawla, which must have been made up out of the roots peh-resh-semkath to spread out, extend and nun-waw-lamad which has the meaning of web.

Shlama,
Lars
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#17
Lars Lindgren Wrote:This might be a bit off topic, but here goes anyway! Regarding Aramaic words for "computer" and "internet", I have actually come across words for these. However, I don't know how widely used/accepted they are.

Computer is khashuwa which I believe is from the root kheth-shin-beth, which has the meaning to a) count, number, ... b) to enumerate, recount.

Internet is prass nawla, which must have been made up out of the roots peh-resh-semkath to spread out, extend and nun-waw-lamad which has the meaning of web.

Shlama,
Lars

Shlama lakh Akhan Lars,

How are you? I miss seeing you guys on Sundays! I pray all is well in Sweden.

Your point is well taken. For decades we've had a word in Neo-Aramaic for "television", prass khizwa (from khza,
to behold) .... unfortunately, in most households you'll still hear the English loan-word "telefizion." Ditto for Radio, which should be "prass qala", etc.

The problem primarily stems from the lack of a central language authority, schools and of course the status of a national language.

It's much easier for someone to transliterate a foreign word into Aramaic than to actually try and think of cognate roots that can be constructed from the native tongue to convey the same idea.

Sometimes, like in my Mother's case - "Garson" is just how she preferred to say "waiter" instead of the more appropriate Aramaic "Shaqya" ("cup-bearer")

Once a loan-word takes hold in a language, it's very difficult to remove.

Nevertheless, the mere presence of loan words in a text is a very weak evidence for determining the original language of that text. That goes for Aramaic loan-words in the Greek manuscripts as well. Far more convincing are examples that are derived from Syntax or Idiom.

+Shamasha Paul
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#18
Paul Younan Wrote:Akhan Yochanan,

Languages are funny sometimes. I remember having a discussion one day with my Lebanese-born mother in Neo-Aramaic over the phone. She told me she had gone to see the "dokhtor" that morning for her back pain. Being a smart-a**, I asked her why she insisted on using a loan-word from English when there's a perfectly good word for physician in Aramaic, "Asya". I could see "computer" or "internet", since these words are relatively new to the world and simply don't have an Aramaic word to describe them. But "physician?" Medicine has been practiced in Mesopotamia for how long, Mom?

Her reply was "The Iraqis say Asya, we Lebanese say Dokhtor....live with it."

I guess English and French were second languages in Lebanon while she was growing up. Explains her use of "Garson" for the waiter....even at middle-eastern restaurants. Yes, there's an Aramaic word for "waiter" as well. But "Garson" sounded better to her in the middle of an otherwise proper Aramaic sentence. Go figure.

I said all that to say this: there are lots of loan-words in Semitic languages from a variety of other languages, Greek is no exception. And vice-versa, Greek is like a sponge when it comes to outside influences, especially Semitic. English is another sponge. All languages enrich themselves in this manner, unless they are isolated in the Amazon rain forest or something like that.

How loan-words come into existence in the first place can be a wonderful study of history and basic human psyche that is beyond the scope of my learning, but not my experience.

Aramaic, especially Neo-Aramaic, contains little presents from every other culture we've ever come into contact with. Aramaic is alive, and constantly evolving. The only language that doesn't change over time is a dead language.

To my mother, "Garson" and "Dokhtor" were as Aramaic as "Abba" and "Maranatha" and you'd better not tell her otherwise lest she label you an Iraqi.

+Shamasha Paul

PS - 2 John, with its "Antee-Christos" isn't part of the Peshitta. It was translated from the Greek....which may have had an Aramaic original, who knows.

Shalom Paul <!-- sSmile --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="Smile" title="Smile" /><!-- sSmile -->

thank you very much for the links and the info. i especially got a great smile from your story about your mom <!-- sSmile --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="Smile" title="Smile" /><!-- sSmile --> i think that's cool that you are part Lebanese, i have a special place in my heart for the lebanese people. i used to date a beautiful lebanese girl, but her own family chased her away lol you see, her family loved me to death, and they would always ask when we were getting married lol i think she was overly influenced by the "western lifestyle" of being single and having fun.

though my scholarship is kind of lacking in this area, and it's a bit off topic here, doesn't God have a special place in His heart for Lebanon also? i seem to recall beautiful things in scripture about L'vanon, i will have to make it a personal study i guess <!-- sSmile --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="Smile" title="Smile" /><!-- sSmile -->

(added in editing)
okay, about the additional letter/books: 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and Revelation...

these are the ones i was thinking of that were translated back into Aramaic from the Greek in the PeshittO, correct? <!-- sSmile --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="Smile" title="Smile" /><!-- sSmile -->
also, i looked at that link <!-- s:onfire: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/onfire.gif" alt=":onfire:" title="On Fire" /><!-- s:onfire: --> <!-- s:biggrin: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/biggrin.gif" alt=":biggrin:" title="Big Grin" /><!-- s:biggrin: --> <!-- s:onfire: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/onfire.gif" alt=":onfire:" title="On Fire" /><!-- s:onfire: --> i'm ecstatic! ty ty ty very much! <!-- sSmile --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="Smile" title="Smile" /><!-- sSmile --> i wish you could have seen the smile i felt on my face when i opened it up...


anyhoo, thanks again, and much love and blessing in Yeshua...
Z'ev Yochanan
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#19
Shlama & Shalom,

If 2 Peter was translated from Greek, why does it show as many examples of Aramaic primacy as 1 Peter? 2 Peter has the following example in verse 1:1 of Aramaic primacy; others will follow this one:

(The Messiah) axysm(of Yeshua) ewsyd(& an apostle) axylsw(servant) adbe(Petros) owrjp(Shimeon) Nwems1:1
(in honor *) arqyab(equally *) tyws(who for the faith) atwnmyhld(to those) Nylyal
(of our Lord *) Nrmd(by the righteousness) atwqydzb(were worthy *) wywtsa(with us) Nme
(The Messiah) axysm(Yeshua) ewsy(& our Savior) Nqwrpw

1.Shimeon Petraus, a Servant and an Apostle of Yeshua The Messiah to those who, equal in honor** with us, were worthy* for the faith by the righteousness of Our Lord* and Our Savior Yeshua The Messiah.

* * All Greek mss. have isotimov ??? (isotimos) ???equally precious??? in place of these two Aramaic words (in Dead Sea Scroll Pesher Habbakuk font)-)rqy)b & tyw$ "Equally, together + in honor"; isotimov - "isotimos" is a compound word iso ??? ???equal??? + timov ??????precious???. Interestingly , the Aramaic words )rqy)b & tyw$ can rarely mean ??? in worth??? & ???equally???. The word tyw$ is adverbial, describing the Gentile believers' state of being,not an adjective describing faith.

Even The AD 616 Harklean revision agrees with the Critical Aramaic text edition and the Pococke edition reading of (in honor) arqyab(equally *) tyws, indicating here as in many other places that the Harklean disagrees with the Greek and agrees with The Peshitta and Crawford ms. against the Greek, and is probably not a fresh translation of Greek, but a revision of The Peshitta, using the Greek to revise it in places.

* All the Greek mss. have lacousin lacousin ??????they obtained by lot??? ; The Aramaic wywt$) ??????were worthy??? is very similar to another verb wyt$) which means ???they imbibed, they received???. I posit that the word wywt$) ??????were worthy??? was read as wyt$) -???they imbibed, they received??? and translated lacousin ??????they obtained by lot???.The Greek for ???they were worthy??? or ???they were esteemed worthy??? is axioi jsan axioi hsan or axiwqjsontai -"axiwythaysontai" or kataxiwqjsontai -kataxiwthayhsontai . Which of these looks like lacousin ??????they obtained by lot??? ? So is it unlikely the Aramaic reading wywt$) ??????were worthy???came from Greek reading , lacousin ??????they obtained by lot???. It looks far more likely that the Greek came from the Aramaic text.

(By the way: Does God cast lots ?)

Here are the two readings in Aramaic:
wywt$) ??????They were worthy??? (Gwynn???s Edition)
wyt$) ??????They received??? (Hypothetical base for Greek reading)

The ending of the verse has:
* Greek has tou qeou jmwn -???of our God???, as does The Harklean.
Here are both readings in Greek, for comparison:

* Greek has qeou jmwn -???of our God???,
* Greek has kuriou jmwn -???of our Lord???,

Here are both in Aramaic:

}rmd -???of our Lord???
}hl)-???of our God???
A lot to chew on, I know. But if the Aramaic came from Greek, why are there not such demonstrable examples of Aramaic readings being explainable as a misreading of a Greek word, by mistaking a Greek letter or two? I have yet to find an example such as the above where two Greek readings are more similar than the same readings in Aramaic; usually they are not even close, whereas they look quite similar in Aramaic.


Special thanks to Paul for making all the fonts used above available on Peshitta.org. He even has 2 Dead Sea Scroll fonts and The Online Bible Hebrew font, all of which I used in my interlinear and plain English translations to illustrate how a Greek translated and sometimes misread an Aramaic word in the first century. The Dead Sea Scroll scripts were not apparently used after the first century or early 2nd century, and even then, only in Israel, as far as we know.

How many fonts are available now on this site, Paul?

Blessings,

Dave
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#20
Shlama Akhan Dave,

I guess the question isn't really if 2Peter was translated from the Greek as much as it is if Peshitto 2Peter was translated from the Greek. From all tradition and internal evidence, it seems to have been. Perhaps the original 2Peter was written in Aramaic. I wish we could find it.

Think for a moment about the history of the book of Tobit. Written in Aramaic, the original of Tobit was lost for centuries. The Greek translation, existing in three different recensions, was our primary source until 1955, when fragments of the book in Aramaic (4 manuscripts) and in Hebrew (1 manuscript) were recovered from Cave IV at Qumran.

The book never made it into Jewish Canon, partly because the only copy existing at the time to the Rabbis was the Greek translation.

Perhaps 2Peter, 2John, 3John, Jude and Revelation were originally penned in Aramaic. No one has claimed they have the unbroken line of manuscripts for those works. They might show up in the desert one day, but I would bet that they read differently, albeit closely, to the "Western 5" found in the Peshitto.

Perhaps the CoE may have made the same mistake in rejecting 2Peter, as the Rabbis made in rejecting Tobit, because they thought it was a Greek work when in fact it was an Aramaic work. Only time will tell.

+Shamasha Paul
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#21
Shlama AKhi Paul,

The 2 Peter I used in my interlinear translation and Plain English is not the Harklean used in The 1982 Assyrian NT I purchased recently; neither is it the Harklean version used in the Western 5 for The famous "Red Book" edition of The Aramaic Bible Society's Peshitta of 1986 and following. It is found in The 1979 Syriac Bible and is based on the Crawford ms. and other mss. This edition of these epistles is John Gwynn's collation of 20 Jacobite manuscripts dated from the 9th to the 18th centuries; some are 10th, 11th and 12th century; several are 14th to 16th century. Several unique editions of The Peshitto and versions are also compared, including a 9th century Arabic translation of the same text (in the opinion of other authorities).
Gwynn shows plainly that this is not The Harklean. It is idiomatic Aramaic and rivals the style and quality of The Peshitta, whereas The Harklean is non idiomatic and slavishly literal to the Greek text it follows. Gwynn believed (falsely, in my opinion) that this text is The Philoxenian version of AD 507. His Greek primacy belief blinded him to the concept of this being the original text of those books. Yet he states several times in this and his other book that these epistles and Revelation could easily be explained and received as part of The Peshitta text by Aramaic scholars without batting an eye, if they had been presented in a Peshitta NT volume (apart from knowing Peshitta history, of course).

Remnants of The Later Syriac Versions of The Bible is the book in which this edition was published, originally in 1909. The other is his publication of The Crawford of Revelation: The Apocalypse of Saint John.

These books and Aramaic texts deserve reading and serious study. It seems most scholars are unaware of their contents and uniqueness.

Blessings,

Qashisha Dave
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#22
Paul Younan Wrote:Shlama lakh Akhan Lars,

How are you? I miss seeing you guys on Sundays! I pray all is well in Sweden.

Your point is well taken. For decades we've had a word in Neo-Aramaic for "television", prass khizwa (from khza,
to behold) .... unfortunately, in most households you'll still hear the English loan-word "telefizion." Ditto for Radio, which should be "prass qala", etc.

The problem primarily stems from the lack of a central language authority, schools and of course the status of a national language.

It's much easier for someone to transliterate a foreign word into Aramaic than to actually try and think of cognate roots that can be constructed from the native tongue to convey the same idea.

Sometimes, like in my Mother's case - "Garson" is just how she preferred to say "waiter" instead of the more appropriate Aramaic "Shaqya" ("cup-bearer")

Once a loan-word takes hold in a language, it's very difficult to remove.

Nevertheless, the mere presence of loan words in a text is a very weak evidence for determining the original language of that text. That goes for Aramaic loan-words in the Greek manuscripts as well. Far more convincing are examples that are derived from Syntax or Idiom.

+Shamasha Paul

Shlama lokh Shamasha Paul,

Basima spai iwen. Op akhnan mokhniewekh menokhon. Akhnokhon hamasha iweton al balan. Qam awilen khda brata shlita surta. Qasha Klutz itle shiklo.

Please excuse any errors as I'm still struggling to learn :-)

Whenever I discover a Neo-Aramaic word for something that I know my wife or her family uses a loan-word for, I try my best to remind them to try and use the Aramaic word instead. And usually they are very happy to learn that there actually is an Aramaic word they can use instead of the loan-word. But some things are hard to change, like saying press khizwa instead of TV.

Also, it can be pretty amusing sometimes when assyrians here in Sweden pick up Swedish words and by accident use them while talking to their relatives in for example America och Australia.

Shlama,
Lars
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#23
Shlama Alokh Akhan Lars,

That was perfect - congratulations on the birth of your daughter! I will have to ask Qasha Klutz for the picture!

Take care and hope to see you soon....

Shamasha
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