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Acts 8:27 - a "Treasure" for Aramaic Primacy
#1
Shlama Akhay,

In the Greek of Acts 8:27, we read with astonishment: <!-- s:biggrin: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/biggrin.gif" alt=":biggrin:" title="Big Grin" /><!-- s:biggrin: -->

[Image: acts827-greek.jpg]

One may wonder why the Aramaic word for "treasure", "gaza", is simply transliterated into Greek. Especially considering that Greek has a word for "treasure", of course. That word is ????????????????, "thesauros."

Here is the entry in Strong's for "gaza":

[Image: gaza.jpg]

As you can see, it is of "foreign" origin (read: Aramaic) Additionally, it only occurs ONCE in the Greek version of the New Testament. Right here in this verse.

So there you have it, the Greek scribe simply chose to transliterate the word rather than translate it into the native Greek, ????????????????.

Now, what makes this example really interesting is if we consult the original Aramaic for the verse:

[Image: acts827-aramaic.jpg]

We'll notice that the word "gaza" ends with the suffix of the third person possessive (-h), which in Aramaic could mean "her treasure", or "his treasure", depending on vocalization. In the ancient script, however, the vowel markings were not present. So a translator must attempt to determine the proper translation with the help of the surrounding text.

In this case, no such help is found. In unpointed Aramaic it is indeterminate, except in the case of the plural of masculine nouns.

So what we have here is far more interesting than simply an Aramaic loan-word in the Greek text that should have been translated into "thesauros." And why, do you ask?

Simply because there are Greek manuscripts which translate, not in the feminine, but in the masculine. The Bezan text is one:

[Image: acts827-bezan.jpg]

How could this be unless the Greek was translated originally from the Aramaic? This is regular text, not a speech being given by Keepa or Meshikha. This is narrative being written directly by Luke, himself.

The proof here is two-fold:

(a) the presence of the Aramaic "Gaza", rather than the Greek ???????????????? ("thesauros.")
(b) the rather common blunder of mistaking the 3rd-person possessive gender in unpointed (vowel-less) Aramaic.

+Shamasha Paul
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#2
Maybe Luke, whose native language was Aramaic, was writing in Greek but could not think of the Greek word for "treasure" so he just put in the Aramaic word.

Just a thought...

Otto
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#3
Shlama Akhni Otto,

I have an idea about what Luke might have doing but I need a weird process to explain it. If I may, let me use an example from my personal past. I'll let you all in on a secret: I didn't talk until I was about 4 years old. My wife says I have been making up for lost time ever since...

Seriously, I was, as they used to say, "developmentally challenged" in my formative years, but like so many other things, this was actually a blessing in disguise. By the time I got to Hebrew school at age 5, my "behind" language skills had kicked in and peaked. Normally this would have happened a few years earlier, or at least that's what I read some time ago.

My point is this: In a sense Hebrew and English both became primary languages to me. My mind absorbed them both at the same time, and I mixed words from both growing up before I knew better. So in my mind it was fine to say "keppie ache" rather than "headache", and ironically my Hebrew came out mixed with English as well which set my studies back! Now, add to this one more fact: I am growing up in Long Island New York where of course we have one of the strongest Jewish communities outside of Israel, so in that place my "mixing" was the most understandable to others and even the most expected place for such a thing to happen.

I think therefore the same thing happened with Luke. One of the most fascinating things about him is his level of skill in both Greek and Aramaic. Scripture tells us Luke worked as a physician in Troas, but very reliable eastern and western traditions say he was born and raised in what Eusebius called "Antiochus boomeus en", or "Antioch of greater renown".

That meant Antioch in Syria, as opposed to Pisdian Antioch in Turkey. Now what do we know about Syrian Antioch? It had a large Jewish population that was part of the founding delegation that established it in the first place, and Aramaic was widely spoken there (Syriac-Syria) as a result. But, it was also a center piece of GREEK learning too, and a provincial power hub of the Roman Empire. So whether we are talking Aramaic or Greek, it is no exaggeration to say that Syrian Antioch was one of the most literate and cosmopolitan places on earth, and this is where Luke grew up.

So I think that Luke would have simply mixed terms from both languages as I did, and it would have been totally normal to him. He probably would have reasoned that as long as the final product was of high quality (which it was in both languages although whether Luke translated his own works into Greek is a matter of interpretation for another time) that loan words were inevitable and that some regionalisms were to be expected.

Luke also tends to write what he hears and doesn't always explain it, like with KRISTIANAY in Acts. Luke wrote down what he heard others in--WHERE--oh yeah, ANTIOCH call the disciples and just left it at that. While that may not sound like a big thing in Greek, it has always raised eyebrows on the Aramaic side. Again, I think it's because that mixing was totally part of Luke's upbringing and it became a hallmark of his writing style later.

Just my two cents.

Shlama w'burkate
Andrew Gabriel Roth
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#4
Shlama Akhi Otto,

A possibility, however consider that the Greek version of the Gospel of Luke uses the real Greek word for "treasure", ???????????????? (thesauros), four times...in 6:45, 12:33, 12:34 and 18:22.

[Image: luke645.jpg]

So it appears that Luke (or, his Greek translator) was well aware of the native Greek word for "treasure."

Additionally, look at the Greek of the Gospel of Luke, chapter 21 verse 1:

[Image: luke211.jpg]

The word for treasury, "gazophulakion" is a compound word for the original Aramaic, "Beth-Gaza" as found in the Peshitta. It's a very literal translation, and one that includes the original Aramaic "Gaza." So we have the Greek word ???????????????????????? (gaza-phulakion) 'treasure-guarder', 'treasure house'.

Here is the original Aramaic from the Interlinear:

[Image: bethgaza.jpg]

I believe the inconsistencies in the translation, the use of loan-words in singular and compound formations (despite having a Greek word for treasure and treasury), is another rock-solid piece of evidence that both the Gospel of Luke and Acts in Greek are translations of an Aramaic original.

Want to know more? How about the fact that this word, ???????????????????????? (gaza-phulakion) 'treasure house', consistently translates the original Aramaic "Beth-Gaza" in the Gospels of both Mark and John? Mark 12:41, 12:43 and John 8:20 (the Peshitta's John 8:9 because of the inclusion the the pericope adulterae in the Greek).

All of these instances consistently translate the Aramaic "Beth-Gaza."

Aramaic original? The evidence leaves no doubt.

+Shamasha
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#5
Thanks, Andrew and Paul, for your interesting and enlightening comments.

Sincerely,

Otto
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#6
Paul Younan Wrote:(a) the presence of the Aramaic "Gaza", rather than the Greek ???????????????? ("thesauros.")
(b) the rather common blunder of mistaking the 3rd-person possessive gender in unpointed (vowel-less) Aramaic.

+Shamasha Paul

Hi Paul, are you saying that it should be feminine on the basis that this was known by the COE community and this knowledge was later put into the text by way of the point being added?
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#7
Hi Judge,

Actually the example works either way. The fact that different Greek textual traditions have feminine and masculine point to the underlying Aramaic form, which when unpointed (without vowel markings) looks identical.

I gather from the context that the treasure was that of the Candace. But some Greek manuscripts say "his", and that's always a key to me since in Greek the masculine and feminine forms are quite distinct. It's a common mistake before vowel points were introduced in Aramaic.

+Shamasha
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#8
Paul Younan Wrote:As you can see, it is of "foreign" origin (read: Aramaic) Additionally, it only occurs ONCE in the Greek version of the New Testament. Right here in this verse.

Hi Paul, I have come across an objection here (seems weak but might as well deal with it), that gaza is not an Aramaic word but a Persian word.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3D%2321394">http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/pt ... 3D%2321394</a><!-- m -->

Is it in fact Aramaic? And any idea of it's trajectory, if so and instances of use as an Aramaic word in ancient times?

Thanks.
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#9
Shlama Akhan Judge,

Actually if we want to get ultra-technical the Persian word for "treasure" is ganj, from the Sanskrit ga??ja, it is closely related to both the Hebrew "geniza" and the old Aramaic "ganaza". The old Babylonian (Akkadian) was "Ganzu", so this is most likely an old Akkadian word that made its way into Aramaic, Hebrew and Persian. Ultimately, the origin of the word is Semitic. As you know, Persian was heavily influenced by Akkadian, and even borrowed the cuneiform writing system of Mesopotamia.

In later Aramaic, the Nun was dropped and "gnza" became "gza."

The Greek "Gaza" comes from the Aramaic "Gaza", and not the Persian "Ganj".

In any case, it's not the presence of a loan-word (regardless of its ultimate origin) that is the damning piece of evidence here. There are plenty of Aramaic (and Persian) loan-words in the Greek text that we don't make a big deal about.

The far more interesting aspect is the variance in the Greek texts with regards to the 3rd-person possessive gender. One Greek textual tradition has "her treasure", the other has "his treasure", which could have only occurred if the two texts were independent translations of an unpointed (vowel-less) Aramaic text. Because in unpointed Aramaic, the words are spelled identically.

The reading in the Peshitta supports this hypothesis.

+Shamasha
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#10
Thanks for all that Paul. <!-- sSmile --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="Smile" title="Smile" /><!-- sSmile -->
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#11
One scholar <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://journalofbiblicalstudies.org/vitae/Jeffrey_Gibson.htm">http://journalofbiblicalstudies.org/vit ... Gibson.htm</a><!-- m --> put the following question to me about Codex D

Quote:Perhaps you can show me on the basis of the assumption of Peshitta primacy and your knowledge of Syriac why it is that at Acts 8:26 D has ???????????????? ?????????????????? ????????? ???????????????????? as opposed to ????????????????? ??????? ?????????????? ????????? ????????????????????. Is this variant to be explained, let alone solely explained, by reference to what the Peshitta reads at this point.

As I know no greek I am not sure what point he is making.
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#12
judge Wrote:One scholar <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://journalofbiblicalstudies.org/vitae/Jeffrey_Gibson.htm">http://journalofbiblicalstudies.org/vit ... Gibson.htm</a><!-- m --> put the following question to me about Codex D

Quote:Perhaps you can show me on the basis of the assumption of Peshitta primacy and your knowledge of Syriac why it is that at Acts 8:26 D has ???????????????? ?????????????????? ????????? ???????????????????? as opposed to ????????????????? ??????? ?????????????? ????????? ????????????????????. Is this variant to be explained, let alone solely explained, by reference to what the Peshitta reads at this point.

As I know no greek I am not sure what point he is making.

Shlama Akhi Judge,

The point he is trying to make, which is rather weak in my opinion, is a classic example of a variant within the Greek textual tradition that arises out of a later copyist who takes the liberty of changing the original text.

The Greek word for "south" can also mean "midday (noon)", and the latter is reflected in the Bezan text reading (???Get up and go about noon.???). Rather than having anything to do with the Peshitta, this is an inter-Greek corruption by a later copyist.

I don't get his point? We know there are Greek variants that have nothing to do with the Aramaic text. In fact most of the variants in the various Greek textual traditions have explanations that are not related to the original Aramaic at all, but rather to later copyist error, or their revisions of texts. The example that comes to mind is from Codex Vaticanus where we read the sidenote: "Fool and knave, can't you leave the old reading alone and not alter it!"

He seems to be suggesting that since there are variants that can be explained with reference to the Greek, it stands to reason that we should not look to Aramaic for the explanation of other variants. However, his excuse here does not work for verse 27, our original argument, because the Greek words there look nothing alike.

A far more damning piece of evidence for him to disprove Aramaic primacy, would be to find two Peshitta manuscripts - one with the "South" reading and one with the "Midday" reading. Kind of like what we find in the Greek texts all the time (i.e., our "Polysemy" examples.) That find in two Aramaic manuscripts for Acts 8:26 would be the type of evidence on par with what we find here.

Wish him luck on my behalf. <!-- sWink --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/wink1.gif" alt="Wink" title="Wink" /><!-- sWink -->

+Shamasha
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#13
Thanks for your replies here Paul. I have been presented with some more objections...from an anonymous poster who thought originally that gaza was Persian..

Quote:Looking at the particular verse in Acts, gaza is the Greek form of the word used for "treasure" in the context of eastern potentates. The Aramaic form, however, is GNZ as seen in Ezra 5:17. It is also the form found in later Aramaic work, such as the Yerushalmi Targum Deuteronomy, 31:16, as GNYZ -- this is a Judean form. There is a continuity of form from the time Ezra's Aramaic was written to the time of the targum. The form GZ) can actually be found late after the contact between Greek and Aramaic traditions, for example in Bavli Shabbat 63a, but there is no early support for such a form.

At the time of the writing of Acts, gaza had been in Greek for at least 200 years, as witnessed by Polybius. So, when we see the form in the Syriac without the /n/, we can only assume that it was by way of Greek influence, ie the translators, confused by the Greek, used the Greek form in Syriac, rather than the Semitic alternative. The only simple way to account for the non-Semitic form of the name in Peshitta Acts is through the Greek. Just one of the many Greek forms found in the Peshitta.

While there is good evidence that even the loanword indirectly from Indo-Iranian, gaza, has influenced the Syriac of the Peshitta, you are left with a conjecture as to why autou is the possessive rather than auths.

And again from Dr Gibson.

Quote:All that can be said is that in its witness to the Greek text of Acts 8:27 D has a reading -- ???????????? instead of ???????????? at the end of ????? ????? ???????? ?????????? ??????? ??????????-- that has been claimed by Peshitta primacists as reflecting the ambiguity of the gender of a pronoun word that appears in the Peshitta's rendering of Acts 8:27. But this claim is based on a question begging assumption about what gender of this ???????????? is.

So once again, I ask you what is the gender of this ?????????????


Quote:. And never trust anyone who uses Strongs as his source or thinks that it is an actual Lexicon, let alone an authoritative one. Moreover, your source seems to think that the Greek ????????, ????, ??? (????????????) Gaza that is used by Diod. S. 19, 59, 2; Strabo 16, 2, 21; Arrian, Anab. 2, 26 and elsewhere in the story of Alexander; inscr.; Gen 10:19 al.; Ep. Arist.; Joseph.; Sib. Or. 3, 345 for one of the 5 chief cities of the Philistines is the same Greek word as that which is derived from Persian ganu??

Quote:The word ????????, ????, ??? is from the Persian ganu?? treasure and is found as a loanword in Greek since Theophrastus, Pl. 8, 11, 5; and in Polybius.; Diodorus Siculius.; Plutarch ; Appian, Mithrid. 23 ??93; Dit., Or. (Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae, ed. WDittenberger, 2 vols. 1903-5) 54, 21f;


????????????????????????????, ????, ???? (v.l. ????????????????????????, preferred by Bl-D. ??13) lit. treasure room, treasury, is found in Diod. S. 9, 12, 2; Strabo 7, 6, 1; Dit., Or. 225 (Didyma, iii b.c.), among other places in secular Greek writings.

Did these Greek authors these words from Aramaic?
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#14
Shlama Akhi Judge,

It seems they are stuck on non-issues. Again, the crux of the argument wasn't whether the Greek "gaza" was derived from the Iranian "ganj" or the Aramaic "ganaza" or the Hebrew "geniza", these words all have a common origin in the Akkadian "ganzu" and the Sanskrit "ganjha." (no, not the same word as you-know-what!)

And no one is disputing that the word "gazophulakion" was used elsewhere in secular writing for "treasury" - again, if our argument was that it was a completely foreign word we would have presented the case differently. There is no gloss in the Greek of Acts 8:27 to explain the word "gaza", or ""gazophulakion" for that matter, so we can assume without the need to consult outside sources that the words were understood by Greek readers and therefore had established themselves as loan-words in Greek a considerable time before Acts was written.

It really doesn't matter if the Greek word "gaza" came from the Akkadian "Ganzu", Persian "Ganj", Hebrew "Geniza", Aramaic "Ganza" or Sanskrit "Ganja" - it really doesn't matter and there's no way to be sure. But the sure thing is it wasn't originally a Greek word - it's of foreign origin.

All of these are distracting from the main point of the argument:

The confusion of the gender due to the unpointed text of the original Aramaic.

Now, Dr. Gibson seems to be once again asking:

Quote:So once again, I ask you what is the gender of this ?????????????

It's a singular genitive. 3rd person (sometimes 1st or 2nd in Attic). It can be either masculine, or neutral. Never feminine. The answer is that the gender in the Bezan text is masculine, not neutral and certainly not feminine. Here is the Greek from the Bezan manuscript:

??????? ???????????????? ?????????????????.
??????? ?????????? ?????????? ????????????? ?????????????????? ????????????????
???????????????? ???????????????????? ??????????? ?????????????????,
????? ????? ???????? ?????????? ??????? ?????????? ????????????

Dr. Gibson is playing games with the fact that ???????????? can be masculine or neutral. It's obvious that the placement of ???????????? leaves no doubt that the translation is "treasure of him" (literally, "its treasure", but the reference is definitely to the "eunuch" (another mistranslation), and not Candace.)

[Image: owtos.jpg]

Here are some links:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morp...or=pro%5Cs
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%B1%CF%...E%BF%CF%8D

+Shamasha
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#15
Paul Younan Wrote:Shlama Akhi Judge,

All of these are distracting from the main point of the argument:

The confusion of the gender due to the unpointed text of the original Aramaic.

+Shamasha

Yes, I would have to agree, from my unlearned perpective anyway <!-- sSmile --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="Smile" title="Smile" /><!-- sSmile -->

Why does this variant occur right in the precise place that the unpointed Aramaic had two meanings? What are the chances of that?
On top of this what are the odds that it happens again and again throughout the NT? Astronomical.
Anyway they certainly put up a struggle <!-- sSmile --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="Smile" title="Smile" /><!-- sSmile -->

It is understandable though I think. If I had spent my academic career arguing from a perpspective of greek primacy I would certainly be hoping I had bet on the right horse all those years.
The other fellow has for several years been trying to put his first peer reviewed paper together which is heavily dependent on greek primacy.

I think it most likely that when younger students of the scriptures, who have no emotional committment either way, begin to study the peshitta it will snowball.

We are probably on the verge of a renaissance* of interest in the Aramaic language.

*'Scuse the french. <!-- s:biggrin: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/biggrin.gif" alt=":biggrin:" title="Big Grin" /><!-- s:biggrin: -->
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