09-03-2008, 12:10 AM
Shlama Akhi Mike,
I will try and answer best I can. Let me reproduce your text here and go point by point:
I am learning new stuff everyday. Andrew made a statement ( I think it was him; maybe someone else but he ccould very well easily confirm this or tear it up
that the Old Testament (the Tanakh) canon was not finally compiled into a unit until 90A.D. I am just not so sure of this.
AGR:
I did not say any such thing. I think Brother Paul explained the nature of canon from an Eastern Jewish and Christian perspective very well. You may be thinking of an approximate date that I sometimes talk about--80 CE--for the closing of the NT EASTERN CANON. That is NOT a firm date. It merely looks at the fact that the COE only accepted holy books from known apostles and their associates and when almost all of these first generation witnesses (John is an exception and another story) would have died.
On the other hand, what happened in 90 CE was that a Rabbi named Shimon ha Pakuli composed a curse against the Nazarenes, my spritual brethren. From 70 CE when the Romans burned Jerusalem and to the end of the first century, rabbis like Yochanan ben Zakkai and others tried to save their precious Tanakh mss and also preserve their cultural oral heritage. From this point, for about the next 60 years (through the end of the Bar Kochba Revolt), they began a process much like the Christians would do and simply codify officially the books that had long been in use. There is no definite end date on the Jewish side for this process and different communities kept different book lists, but generally speaking the rabbis preserved books that could be shown as having been extensively in Israel and existed originally in the Hebrew language. Other considerations dealt with their known antiquity and historical provenance, some of which are discussed by the historian Josephus in Against Apion 1.8. The rabbis though were not perfect, and in at least one case, Tobit, they guessed wrong on both counts until it was found in Hebrew among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Other discussions relating to Esther and the Song of Songs are well known, so I won't get into that.
After the general Jewish book list was done sometime in the early centuries of the common era (in terms of gradual acceptance in scattered Jewry worldwide, which, as the Peshitta Tanakh and LXX shows with the Apocrypha was not always successful either), the task came to stabilize pronunciation and content of these books. That began in about 500 CE and the Masoretes (from "masorah" meaning "tradition") came up with by about the year 1000 a fixed standardized text that has literally not changed one jot since then. Meanwhile the Christians used the LXX and the Vulgate for their OT, with folks like Jerome crowing about how great his versions were, yada yada.
Next:
I don't know even where to start where the New Testament quotes the OT with the universal premise that the Jews knew for sure what was the "accepted" books of Scripture and considered Aloha-breathed even though they did not have a so called "Bible" in their hands as a unit (like we do today).
AGR:
Yes, the canon in Israel was UNDERSTOOD, but there was no official rabbinic ruling IN WRITING until much later. Jews always do things orally for centuries first.
Next:
Y'shua consantly and consistently would quote Scriptures to the Jews. How could they possibly not know what he was talking about. Shall we begin with Y'shua's words in Luke when He quotes Isa 61:1-3, that famous "The Sp. of Aloha is upon me because He has anointed me. He has sent me to preach good news . . . ."(Luke 4:18, about and me doing little paraphrasing.) How about so many of the other "it is writtens?" It has never occured to me that any of the Old Covenant books that the Jews accepted and knew as Scripture were ever disputed. Never.
AGR:
Again, Y'shua knew his canon but it was not codified in writing. Look at the Dead Sea Scrolls and see that they kept a different canon but the Essenes still essentially agreed with their counterparts in the rest of Israel, and kept every book we know in Tanakh except Esther. This is VERY analgous to the 22 Eastern Peshitta books. EVERYONE agreed on those but SOME had ADDITIONAL books. You seem to have trouble accepting this dear brother but that is history.
Then you have that big, big statement by Y'shus Himself (in the Gospel of John), ". . . and the Scripture can not be broken..." And I don't know exactly where that is right off now. It is in John and should be very easy to spot. But such a statement is rather foolish unless the Jews knew and understood what these "the Scriptures" actually were.
AGR:
See above.
A comment was made by Andrew on the evident Aramaic nature and composition of the 22 book Peshitta (including John and 1 John) and also, the very clear compositional nature of Greek in the Western 5. I would really like to know more about this or if Andrew or someone can shed some more light on this. As far as we know the Apostle John wrote his Gospel along with his other 3 epistles. What makes the Gospel of John and 1 John so compositionally Aramaic and Aramaic by nature and, yet, 2 and 3 John so "un-Aramaic." This may be a big assignment. If this is the case maybe you can give 3 examples or summerize it down some as I can imagine one could write a 10 page paper on this.
AGR:
I would start with the free Revelation article on my website Mike as I get into that in great detail there. I am sorry but I don't have time to that all over again right now. I also detail this information in Mari and in my book "Path to Life", not to be confused with the same name of an essay also on my website. I would also encourage you to read the John Gwynn book that Paul calls "Western 5" in a link recently. That is as good a summary on the matter as you are likely to see.
Well, I will leave this last one as an option for reply; at least for now. But Paul, and Andrew, were you both not behind the work of Mr. Lancaster and his book: "Was the New Testament Really Written in Greek?" I am still plagued just a little by this statement: " . . . I do not expect Andrew or any other Aramaic Peshitta Primacist to make a case for any particular example by appealing to the later Aramaic translation of 2 Peter, {2 John, 3 John, Jude, Revelation}. That would fo course, be absurd."
AGR:
I have responded to this at least two other times. Chris Lancaster is now Raphael Lataster, so call him by that name as I am sure he would appreciate it. I wrote the foreword to his book because I thought, and still do, that it did a good job showing a lot of examples from the Eastern 22 books that we all agree on. At the time, there was very little on the web that pooled a lot the research together, so I was glad to help him out. He put it together on his own initiative and created a web space clearinghouse for Aramaic NT stuff so of course that made me happy and of course I view that as worthwhile.
But that doesn't mean I agree 100% with everything Raphael says and I also mentioned that he is NOT a translator. Yes Bauscher is a translator and has a similar postion to Raphael, but so what? That doesn't mean Raphael has the same tools to make that choice as we do here. I have not read Bauscher's NT either, so I can't really comment on that.
What I will say is that I believe Aramaic originals were done for the Western 5, that these originals were lost, that the oldest surviving mss of the Western 5 are from the Greek, and that these Greek versions were the source of the Aramaic versions we have now. That is the chain of events i agree with. That has always been my position.
Next:
Well, Mr. Lancaster is an Aramaic Primacist. He is indeed making a case on these W-5 books for Aramaic origins (for these 5 letters). Both Paul and Andrew endorse this work by Mr. Lancaster and I do not believe to my knowledge that either Andrew or Paul qualified their support when it came to the issue of the Western 5. So, is there any solid support for the Western 5 books as being written originally in Aramaic?? How about any support at all?? Any undisputable support?? Probable support?? Can a case be made that these W-5 books are of Aramaic origins?? Thank-you.
AGR:
Again, the answer, my answer, is NO. There are tanatalizing clues of possible Aramaic origins in BOTH the Greek and later Aramaic versions of these works, but nothing authoritative. I think the whole "coffin/bed" thing in Revelation is the closest piece of evidence approaching a strong hint as to Semitic origins of that book, but I wouldn't use that and maybe half a dozen other intriguing clues to build a "solid case" as you put it. I coined the term "Western 5" myself because that is precisely what they are--WESTERN. Doesn't mean they are not sacred to me, but that's another question.
Y'shua lives. King of kings
Mike Karoules
Shlama w'burkate
Andrew Gabriel Roth
I will try and answer best I can. Let me reproduce your text here and go point by point:
I am learning new stuff everyday. Andrew made a statement ( I think it was him; maybe someone else but he ccould very well easily confirm this or tear it up
that the Old Testament (the Tanakh) canon was not finally compiled into a unit until 90A.D. I am just not so sure of this.AGR:
I did not say any such thing. I think Brother Paul explained the nature of canon from an Eastern Jewish and Christian perspective very well. You may be thinking of an approximate date that I sometimes talk about--80 CE--for the closing of the NT EASTERN CANON. That is NOT a firm date. It merely looks at the fact that the COE only accepted holy books from known apostles and their associates and when almost all of these first generation witnesses (John is an exception and another story) would have died.
On the other hand, what happened in 90 CE was that a Rabbi named Shimon ha Pakuli composed a curse against the Nazarenes, my spritual brethren. From 70 CE when the Romans burned Jerusalem and to the end of the first century, rabbis like Yochanan ben Zakkai and others tried to save their precious Tanakh mss and also preserve their cultural oral heritage. From this point, for about the next 60 years (through the end of the Bar Kochba Revolt), they began a process much like the Christians would do and simply codify officially the books that had long been in use. There is no definite end date on the Jewish side for this process and different communities kept different book lists, but generally speaking the rabbis preserved books that could be shown as having been extensively in Israel and existed originally in the Hebrew language. Other considerations dealt with their known antiquity and historical provenance, some of which are discussed by the historian Josephus in Against Apion 1.8. The rabbis though were not perfect, and in at least one case, Tobit, they guessed wrong on both counts until it was found in Hebrew among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Other discussions relating to Esther and the Song of Songs are well known, so I won't get into that.
After the general Jewish book list was done sometime in the early centuries of the common era (in terms of gradual acceptance in scattered Jewry worldwide, which, as the Peshitta Tanakh and LXX shows with the Apocrypha was not always successful either), the task came to stabilize pronunciation and content of these books. That began in about 500 CE and the Masoretes (from "masorah" meaning "tradition") came up with by about the year 1000 a fixed standardized text that has literally not changed one jot since then. Meanwhile the Christians used the LXX and the Vulgate for their OT, with folks like Jerome crowing about how great his versions were, yada yada.
Next:
I don't know even where to start where the New Testament quotes the OT with the universal premise that the Jews knew for sure what was the "accepted" books of Scripture and considered Aloha-breathed even though they did not have a so called "Bible" in their hands as a unit (like we do today).
AGR:
Yes, the canon in Israel was UNDERSTOOD, but there was no official rabbinic ruling IN WRITING until much later. Jews always do things orally for centuries first.
Next:
Y'shua consantly and consistently would quote Scriptures to the Jews. How could they possibly not know what he was talking about. Shall we begin with Y'shua's words in Luke when He quotes Isa 61:1-3, that famous "The Sp. of Aloha is upon me because He has anointed me. He has sent me to preach good news . . . ."(Luke 4:18, about and me doing little paraphrasing.) How about so many of the other "it is writtens?" It has never occured to me that any of the Old Covenant books that the Jews accepted and knew as Scripture were ever disputed. Never.
AGR:
Again, Y'shua knew his canon but it was not codified in writing. Look at the Dead Sea Scrolls and see that they kept a different canon but the Essenes still essentially agreed with their counterparts in the rest of Israel, and kept every book we know in Tanakh except Esther. This is VERY analgous to the 22 Eastern Peshitta books. EVERYONE agreed on those but SOME had ADDITIONAL books. You seem to have trouble accepting this dear brother but that is history.
Then you have that big, big statement by Y'shus Himself (in the Gospel of John), ". . . and the Scripture can not be broken..." And I don't know exactly where that is right off now. It is in John and should be very easy to spot. But such a statement is rather foolish unless the Jews knew and understood what these "the Scriptures" actually were.
AGR:
See above.
A comment was made by Andrew on the evident Aramaic nature and composition of the 22 book Peshitta (including John and 1 John) and also, the very clear compositional nature of Greek in the Western 5. I would really like to know more about this or if Andrew or someone can shed some more light on this. As far as we know the Apostle John wrote his Gospel along with his other 3 epistles. What makes the Gospel of John and 1 John so compositionally Aramaic and Aramaic by nature and, yet, 2 and 3 John so "un-Aramaic." This may be a big assignment. If this is the case maybe you can give 3 examples or summerize it down some as I can imagine one could write a 10 page paper on this.
AGR:
I would start with the free Revelation article on my website Mike as I get into that in great detail there. I am sorry but I don't have time to that all over again right now. I also detail this information in Mari and in my book "Path to Life", not to be confused with the same name of an essay also on my website. I would also encourage you to read the John Gwynn book that Paul calls "Western 5" in a link recently. That is as good a summary on the matter as you are likely to see.
Well, I will leave this last one as an option for reply; at least for now. But Paul, and Andrew, were you both not behind the work of Mr. Lancaster and his book: "Was the New Testament Really Written in Greek?" I am still plagued just a little by this statement: " . . . I do not expect Andrew or any other Aramaic Peshitta Primacist to make a case for any particular example by appealing to the later Aramaic translation of 2 Peter, {2 John, 3 John, Jude, Revelation}. That would fo course, be absurd."
AGR:
I have responded to this at least two other times. Chris Lancaster is now Raphael Lataster, so call him by that name as I am sure he would appreciate it. I wrote the foreword to his book because I thought, and still do, that it did a good job showing a lot of examples from the Eastern 22 books that we all agree on. At the time, there was very little on the web that pooled a lot the research together, so I was glad to help him out. He put it together on his own initiative and created a web space clearinghouse for Aramaic NT stuff so of course that made me happy and of course I view that as worthwhile.
But that doesn't mean I agree 100% with everything Raphael says and I also mentioned that he is NOT a translator. Yes Bauscher is a translator and has a similar postion to Raphael, but so what? That doesn't mean Raphael has the same tools to make that choice as we do here. I have not read Bauscher's NT either, so I can't really comment on that.
What I will say is that I believe Aramaic originals were done for the Western 5, that these originals were lost, that the oldest surviving mss of the Western 5 are from the Greek, and that these Greek versions were the source of the Aramaic versions we have now. That is the chain of events i agree with. That has always been my position.
Next:
Well, Mr. Lancaster is an Aramaic Primacist. He is indeed making a case on these W-5 books for Aramaic origins (for these 5 letters). Both Paul and Andrew endorse this work by Mr. Lancaster and I do not believe to my knowledge that either Andrew or Paul qualified their support when it came to the issue of the Western 5. So, is there any solid support for the Western 5 books as being written originally in Aramaic?? How about any support at all?? Any undisputable support?? Probable support?? Can a case be made that these W-5 books are of Aramaic origins?? Thank-you.
AGR:
Again, the answer, my answer, is NO. There are tanatalizing clues of possible Aramaic origins in BOTH the Greek and later Aramaic versions of these works, but nothing authoritative. I think the whole "coffin/bed" thing in Revelation is the closest piece of evidence approaching a strong hint as to Semitic origins of that book, but I wouldn't use that and maybe half a dozen other intriguing clues to build a "solid case" as you put it. I coined the term "Western 5" myself because that is precisely what they are--WESTERN. Doesn't mean they are not sacred to me, but that's another question.
Y'shua lives. King of kings
Mike Karoules
Shlama w'burkate
Andrew Gabriel Roth