The "O" argument

[Dawid]

Now I have time for a complete response.

Shlama Akhi Dawid,

"There are so many more possibilities." ?

How many possibilities are there? Chinese, Hindi, Latin, Parsi, Arabic, Ethiopic, Sanscrit, Egyptian, Ugaritic?

Please don't get sarcastic. Obviously the maximum is...I was terrible at algebra, but I think it's four to the twenty-seventh power. Four plausible languages, twenty seven books, so any number of possible combinations among the four. That's the maximum possible. Far fewer are plausible.

Seriously, David, if there were an original Hebrew NT, it has not been known to exist for as long as we have any historical record or manuscripts.
The only possible viable candidates for the original are Greek and Aramaic, as they both exist. I know you believe the NT is Divine scripture.
It makes no sense that the Tanak would be preserved and the NT entirely destroyed; it makes no sense religiously, historically or theologically.
A medieval and corrupt Hebrew Matthew cannot be a stand-in for the original NT.

First, I think you know what I think of the idea of supporting the Shem Tov. I find it completely insupportable.
Second, record and manuscripts, "record" depends entirely on your interpretation of the various terms for "Hebrew." If you believe, as I do, that it really means "Hebrew" then we do have fourth-century witnesses to a Hebrew gospel, most famously in Eusebius. As far as texts, so we don't have any extant Hebrew texts. Note my previous appeal to Enoch. For centuries scholars thought it was probably written in Greek.
Now, if you make the canonical argument, I have a response. Enoch is treated as canonical in several communities. So, yes, both of them were preserved, but in their traditional, not necessarily original, languages.
Secondly, I do not believe in divine preservation of the text. All I have to say is Psalm 22. Preserve in a traditional form. Not necessarily the original form.

The Peshitta distinguishes the southern Judean Aramaic from the northern and Syrian Aramaic with the word, "Hebrayth" -"Hebrew". The written scripts differed as well as the pronunciations, as the Ashuri of Daniel's Aramaic of chapters 2-7 differs from the Estrangela of the oldest Peshitta mss. extant. Acts 1:19 establishes that the language (one language, not two or more) of Jerusalem was Aramaic. "Khaqeldama" is Aramaic; the Greek text transliterates it "Akeldama". Hebrew does not have a word, "Khaqel"; Modern Hebrew does have noun variations, including "khaqelayoth"- "farming???, but that is apparently an Aramaicized form; Biblical Hebrew has no such word. "Field" in Hebrew is "Sadeh" or "Shedamah"; "dma" is the Aramaic for "blood". Acts 1:19 in the Greek tells us that "Akeldama" represents the language
of Jerusalem and the region- clearly an Aramaic compound word.

Please don't try to school me in Aramaic. I'm certainly not Mr. Younan, but I have spent countless hours pouring over Judean Aramaic texts and over the Peshitta.
I have never contended that they were speaking Biblical Hebrew. I would contend that, if they spoke Hebrew, it was somewhere between Biblical Hebrew and Mishnaic Hebrew. This kind of Hebrew is attested to in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Most notably in the Great Isaiah Scroll, which I will go into in a moment. But we would expect to see borrowed words in post exilic Hebrew. We would also expect this in Judean Aramaic. And either of these being the spoken language does not preclude the possibility of a Greek written original.
As I said, I still prefer a Peshitta original, but based on a traditional argument. Sort of an NT "Unbroken Chain of Tradition." Or, as the introduction to the new JPS calls it, an "Unbroken Chain of Uncertainty."

But let's suppose for the sake of argument that Hebrew proper was the language to which Luke referred. That would mean the Jews spoke Hebrew and only Hebrew, as only one language is predicated of the residents of the region of Judea in Acts 1:19. Aramaic would not have been commonly spoken in that case.

This in no way precludes that other languages were spoken. It simply states that it was in the primary tongue of the region. If I said "in the language of Amsterdam and all of the Netherlands" then I would mean Dutch. Naturally. That doesn't mean that people who live in Amsterdam don't also speak French, German, and English. Virtually all Dutch citizens speak German and/or French. But it would be completely normal for me to say "The language of the Netherlands" and mean Dutch.

But history tells a different story. The Jews had Hebrew scrolls read in their synagogues on the Sabbath; then after the reading of the Hebrew, a Targum was read, because the people did not understand Hebrew. This practice started at Babylon after the Jewish captivity. The Targums are evidence that in Babylon and in Palestine, the common language of the Jews was not Hebrew and was in fact, Aramaic.More powerful historical evidence is provided by Josephus, who wrote that "he composed" his Jewish Wars "in the language of his country and sent them also to the upper Barbarians."

As you point out, this practice began in Babylon. And Jews are notorious for retaining traditions that are no longer relevant simply for the sake of tradition.
I pointed to the Great Isaiah Scroll earlier. It contains clear updates in vocabulary including, note, Aramaicisms. These indicate a colloquial Hebrew in which the prophets were read. This is just one example of colloquial Hebrew in postexilic Israel.
On the other hand, it does not say that He wrote it in the language of the upper barbarians, but sent it to them. Whiston makes a deduction, which is not completely unsupported, from this. However, this conclusion is also not entirely undisputed.
Note, also, that this indicates nothing about the "Hebrew" of Eusebius and the New Testament, since Josephus never calls it Hebrew.

Whiston???s note on the ???upper Barbarians???: Who these Upper Barbarians, remote from the sea, were, Josephus himself will inform us, sect.
2, viz. the Parthians and Babylonians, and remotest Arabians [of the Jews among them]; besides the Jews beyond Euphrates, and the Adiabeni, or Assyrians.
Whence we also learn that these Parthians, Babylonians, the remotest Arabians, [or at least the Jews among them,] as also the Jews beyond Euphrates, and the
Adiabeni, or Assyrians, understood Josephus's Hebrew, or rather Chaldaic, books of The Jewish War, before they were put into the Greek language.

"Chaldaic" is an old term for Aramaic, though often referred to as "Hebrew", as here by Whiston, the translator of Josephus' works in Greek. Josephus composed his works in Aramaic. The Assyrians and Parthians and Babylonians would have been able to read Aramaic, but not Hebrew. He also says he translated his works into Greek for the Romans.

Yes, sir, I know what Chaldaic means. However, multiple other explanations have been offered for this passage. Such as it not necessarily being meant for everyone, but for the scholars who would have understood Hebrew. It could have also been translated from Hebrew to Aramaic. On the other hand, they undoubtedly did speak Aramaic in Israel at the time. No reasonable scholar would deny this. The only question is whether or not they also spoke Hebrew. Note, also, that Whiston's comments are extremely outdated. They're three hundred years old. Much research has been done, and much new information has been discovered since then.
That's one thing about Peshitta primacy I've noticed. Much of the information used is outdated. Whiston, Lamsa, and Murdock all get quoted regularly. They were all great. And we would not be where we are without them. But we see further because we are standing on their shoulders.

Internal Biblical and historical evidence confirms the position that the Jews of the 2nd Temple period, and certainly of the 1st century AD, spoke, read and wrote Aramaic as their national language.
Alfred Edersheim wrote that ???the language spoken by the Hebrews was no longer Hebrew, but Aramaean, both in Palestine and in Babylonia; in the former the Western, in the latter the Eastern dialect. In fact, the common people were ignorant of pure Hebrew, which henceforth became the language of the student and of the Synagogue.??? -p. 10, The Life and Times of Jesus The Messiah

Again, this has been disputed in the two hundred years since Edersheim died.

Hebrew would have been reserved for Rabbinical school exercizes and for the scribes who copied the Hebrew scrolls for the synagogues. Students might learn Hebrew in a classroom setting, but that would be a far cry from making it their native language, even as a Seminary student learning Greek, Hebrew or Latin will hardly ever make those his or her spoken language. How many Jewish kids who go to Hebrew school in the U.S. speak Hebrew in everyday conversation at home? Most likely, they speak English at home.

That is one way to explain the evidence. On the other hand, it could be that most people were bi (or even tri) lingual.

As for the Hebrew letters found from the post AD 70 period, I would say that the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple changed everything for the generations following. The former traditions and the national spirit were radically altered and compromised, and understandably so. Even the prospect of the Temple???s destruction was seen by Peter, James and John as ???the end of the world???, as per Matthew 24:1-3; imagine the effect the actual destruction had upon the people of Israel at the time and upon their children. Perhaps they attempted to revive their pre-Babylonian Hebrew as a spoken tongue, to counter the effect of Gentile oppression and tyranny. It would be a major error to cite post Temple practices and documents as evidence to establish customs and traditions for pre AD 70 Israel. They were two different worlds entirely!

Exactly. They were two different worlds. One was when the cultural center of the nation was still there, the people were a much more solid unit, and before many of the people were scattered.