A Theory of History

[Yochanan5730]

Shlama Yochanan,

I want to address a couple of things:

(a) In an above post you mention Greek as being the language of commerce in "the empire." An important thing to keep in mind is that there was not a "empire" at the time, there were "empires". Immediately to the east of the Roman outpost called "Iudaea", lay the vast Persian empire where Aramaic was the language of commerce and the educated elite. Also, I may add, the home to the largest numbers of Jews outside of the Holy Land.

(b) The age of manuscripts: in order to defend Aramaic primacy from this type of inquiry one only need to look at the history of the TaNaKh itself. Before the discovery of the DSS, what were the oldest Hebrew manuscripts? Aleppo? Leningrad? Both of which were predated by Greek manuscripts of the LXX by at least 6-700 years. By Aramaic, and even Arabic, translations by centuries.

How about the book of Tobit? For the last couple of centuries, western scholarship was convinced that the Greek versions were the original. Until the Aramaic original was found at Qumran.

The fact of the matter, Akhi, is that manuscript age means almost nothing. Aramaic scribes, like Hebrew scribes, destroyed a manuscript once it became old and illegible. This was of course to protect the text against false readings, or the risk of the word of God being trampled underfoot or laying on the ground. This is the main reason why most old manuscripts are lost forever, as soon as they began to fall apart a scribe was commissioned to copy it immediately and destroy the original by burning it (our tradition), or burying it (your tradition).

In any event, Greek and Latin fragments abound because they simply did not have the same sort of traditions surrounding the transmission and purposeful destruction of their manuscripts.

There is a reason why you almost never find a fragment of an Aramaic NT - they are almost always complete codices that are still readable and intact.

My question to you is this: if by some miracle a complete manuscript of the Aramaic NT was found in the desert somewhere that was definitively dated to 100AD.....how would that strengthen or weaken our position?

What Jerzy said is wise: the proof is in the text itself, and not in the age of the manuscripts. We have complete manuscripts as old as their complete manuscripts, they have fragments that are older. But again, the absence of fragments in Aramaic shouldn't surprise anyone. Just as the lack of fragments in Hebrew doesn't surprise anyone.

+Shamasha Paul

okay <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!-- s -->

and thanks for more history lessons <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!-- s --> i love history...

much love in Yeshua,
Z'ev Yochanan