The "O" argument

[Dawid]

Hi Dawid, always a pleasure... <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!-- s -->

Shalom Christina,
The "Hebrew is Aramaic" argument fails to hold water to me, since both the Septuagint and Eusebius use an entirely different word to refer to Aramaic.

Hmm..what do you make of even the greek NT using Aramaic words rather than Hebrew? I am not 100% but am pretty sure that all the semitic NT words are Aramaic.
This seems to me, a reasonable argument for peshitta primacy. Other wise we have the greek either replacing Hebrew words with Aramaic in a direct translation from an hebrew original (this seems quite unlikely) ..or the greek being translated very early from an Aramaic translation of an Hebrew original. This too seems unecessarily complex , especially in the absense of any Hebrew versions (apart from some of Matthew which seem to date from the middle ages)

As has been noted, the Hebrew that might have been spoken in the first century was heavily Aramaised. Second, the fact that the place names are in Aramaic is not evidence for Peshitta primacy for several reasons. First, these names are in the Judean dialect of Aramaic, not the Syriac dialect like the Peshitta. I only know of a couple of Aramaic inscriptions from Israel that are in Syriac. Most are in Judean Aramaic, which was much more Hebrew influenced.
Finally, the fact that the place names are in another language is not evidence for what the book was originally written in. It could have just as easily (on that count anyway) been written in Greek originally with transliterated place-names from Hebrew or Aramaic.

We also have the evidence of Peter's accent. This was only applicable in the context of Hebrew, where Galilean accents became an issue because of Synagogue usage. Galileans were forbidden from reading the Torah in Judean synagogues because of their accent when speaking Hebrew. The Judeans were afraid they would mispronounce the Torah and render a different meaning to it.

There are so many more possibilities.

Ok, but why would this preclude a Galileans having a different accent in Aramaic as well? Couldn't this be equally explainable in the context of Aramaic? (perhaps I misunderstood?)

They probably did have a different accent in Aramaic. The thing is that in Aramaic nobody cared. If you had a funny Aramaic accent, it didn't make any difference. If you had a Hebrew accent that prevented you from being allowed to read from the Torah, then people cared.