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On the Incoherence of Aramaic Primacy III
#1
On the Incoherence of Aramaic Primacy III

Aramaic Primacy, formerly known as ???translation Greek theory,??? appears convincing. Its basic assumptions are simple: (a) the earliest Christians used Aramaic to advance the Christian movement in and outside Judea (b) composing books in Aramaic was common in Judaism and Christianity © every word in the Greek Gospels, written in koine Greek, is a translation of the Aramaic originals. The scope of this essay is limited to assumption ©. Aramaic primacy???s general methodology used to prove its case includes (1) locating a piece of composition within the Greek NT that ???looks Semitic??? and/or corresponds to Semitic syntax, deeming it evidence of translation (2) locating an alleged Aramaicism in the Greek Gospels that seems corrupted, deeming it as evidence of mistranslation. I will show that method (2) is a subjective, inadequate method of detecting mistranslation in the Greek gospels.

To reiterate, A.P. proponents have the presumption that the Greek Gospels are no more than mere translations of Aramaic originals. With this in mind, they assume that every item in the Greek ultimately belongs to the Aramaic language. Hence, when determining a mistranslation in the Greek Gospels, they locate a piece of writing therein that supposedly compromises an original Aramaic idiom. For my purposes, I will use two famous examples of "mistranslation." Let us start with Matthew 7:6, in which we read ???do not give what is holy to dogs?????? It is supposed that ???earring??? should be read instead of ???holy??? because it neatly corresponds to ???pearls??? on swine. The problem with this reconstruction of the ???original??? idiom is that A.P. proponents do not provide idiomatic parallels from contemporaneous Aramaic literature; therefore, without providing evidence that the reconstruction is based on a once living idiom, the process is artificial. For example, we know that Jews in the second century BCE would have used mrn or marana for God because it appears in the literature found in Qumran; in 4QEnb 1 iii 14, the text reads: ['nth hw'] mrn' rb' [hw]' mr' 'IC ', "[You are] our great Lord; (you) [ar]e the Lord of the world." Based on this principle, we can rule out ???maran??? as a title used by Jews of this period because it only appears in Late Aramaic.

In a more intriguing example, one could argue, based on his ability to remit sins, that the claim that Jesus was divine is insufficient; in contemporaneous literature found in Qumran, we find that pre-Christian Jews thought that human beings could remit sins in the name of God :

[bshn' b'y' ] 3 ktls hwyt snyn sbc wmn ['ns'] swy '[nh wslyt 'lh' 'ly'] 4 wht' sbq lh gzr whw' [gbr] yhwdy m[n bny glwt' w 'mr ly]

"[With the evil ulcer] was I smitten (for) seven years, and unlike [a human being] was I made; [and I prayed to the Most High God]; and an exorcist remitted my sins for Him; he (was) a Jew fr[om (among) the deportees, and he said to me], . . (4QPrNab 1-3:2-4).

As a side-note, Jesus echoes this view in Mark 2:7 and Luke 5:21, in which he asks ???who can forgive sins but God alone????
With these parallels in mind, as examples, let us return to Matt 7:6. W.F. Albright notes:

???.a reconstruction of the Aramaic or Hebrew original, however, is not as simple a task as it may seem. Various attempts have been made to reconstruct the Aramaic wording behind the saying. A conjecture which many have found appealing is based on the assumption that the Aramaic (qdsh') should be read as qedasha' ('earring') instead of qadisha' or qud- sha' the Aramaic word for ???? ?????????? ('what is holy'). This way a neat parallel to the "pearls" in the second part of the saying would be retrieved: "Do not give a (precious) ring to dogs, and do not adorn the snout of swine with your pearls."' The thesis is hardly acceptable, however, since this conjecture would presuppose at least an additional mistranslation ('snout') to restore the alleged meaning of the underlying Aramaic form. In that case, we would have to accept two or even more translation errors in such a short saying.14 Moreover, since an Aramaic proverb associating pearls and earrings remains nonattested in the sources, this solution to the problem is philologically inadequate. There is no evidence that a semitic expression "do not adorn the snout of swine with your pearls" ever existed in juxtaposition with "do not give a (precious) ring to the dogs."

Consider John 7:38, which reads:
He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water (KJV).

Some A.P. proponents have argued that an anonymous Greek scribe mistook ma???yan for me???in because of the wrong pointing of the Aramaic. But since no parallel to this reconstruction has surfaced, it cannot be said to have been a living idiom in first century Palestine. Most interestingly, however, the idiom (as presented) has parallel. Because the Gospel of John shows strong Gnostic influence, it is no surprise to find that this idiom is prominent in Gnostic symbolism:

Both the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians believed that their respective two rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates on the one hand, and the two Niles on the other, sprang from a common source or mouth, which was represented symbolically either as the mouth of a sacred animal (serpent, bull, ibex, etc.) or as a spouting vase, held by a god or genius of fertility in the underworld. The latter conception was the more popular of the two, and was represented times without number in Egyptian iconography and on Mesopotamian seals. The spouting vase is held by our genius to his breast. In a remarkable series of statues at the entrance of a palace in Dfir Sar-rukin, discovered by Place, each statue represents such a genius of fertility, wearing the horned tiara (they were primarily conceived of in the form of bulls), and holding the spouting vase, from which four streams rise, to his bosom, with its base at his navel. Similar genii are pictured on the seal-cylinders. The conception of four rivers, instead of two, rising from the common source is found also in both Egyptian and Mesopotamian sources, both literary and monumental; it originated in a symmetrical development, one river for each direction, each quarter of the earth (kibrdt arba'im). In intimate association with it arose the idea that the four rivers arose at the centre, or navel, of the earth, a notion wide-spread in early oriental and Aegean mythology. We have, moreover, absolute proof that these Syro-Mesopotamian conceptions survived into Hellenistic times, and later. In Mandaean religion the spouting vase played an important r61e in the ritual, under the name mambu'a, equivalent, as Zimmern has shown, to Babylonian namba'u, 'fountain.'7 This vase is naturally, as was fully recognized by the Gnostics themselves, the source of ???.(cf. John 4, 14) which is so characteristic of Johannine and Gnostic mysticism. Furthermore, in the Peratic, i.e. Euphrataean, sect of Gnostics, we have the lineal offspring of the Euphrates worshippers from whom came the mosaic pavement described by Von Oppenheim, who found it at el- Mas'fidtyeh on the middle Euphrates. In it the river-god Euphrates, with name attached both in Greek and in early Syriac characters (prdt malkd), holds the spouting vase. Incidentally it may be observed that the amphora with the two streams spouting from its mouth has a long and complicated history in Hellenistic and Roman- Byzantine decoration, appearing in many original and derived forms, especially on mosaic pavements. The Peratics believed, according to Hippolytus, that the river Euphrates was the source of all life, spiritual as well as physical, and that it arose in the middle of the perfect man (i.e. both protanthropos and the individual mystic ??????????????) from great ocean (the old Babylonian apsu).9 Though we have merely touched the fringe of a vast and important subject the source of the Christian conception of baptism in ancient Syro- Mesopotamian symbolism - enough has been said to make the genuinely oriental character of John 7, 38 clear. To change the meaning of the text so completely as Burney has done is to spoil it; we must remember that ???????????? meant to the ancient not 'belly' in the vulgar modern sense, but 'seat of the liver and reins,' where the true source of being and thought was fancied to be - a popular conception which was but slowly dislodged. Jesus meant that the Holy Spirit, enter- ing into the hearts of men, would make them a source of purity and truth to all around them. If understood, the symbolism is beautiful, though one may freely admit its unhellenic character- another proof of Burney's own thesis.

In conclusion, before A.P proponents reconstruct the ???original??? idiom or pun, they must provide evidence of its equivalent in the relevant literature or context, in the relevant time-frame. Otherwise, the reconstruction is artificial and therefore weightless.

Bibliography

Riddle, Donald. "The Logic of the Theory of Translation Greek." Journal of Biblical Literature 51.1 (1932): 14.
Fitzmyer, Joseph A. "The Aramaic Language and the Study of the New Testament." Journal of Biblical Literature 99.1 (1980): 13, 15. 27 Mar 2010.
van de Sandt, Huub. "'Do Not Give What Is Holy to the Dogs' (Did 9:5D and Matt 7:6A): The Eucharistic Food of the Didache in Its Jewish Purity Setting." Vigiliae Christianae, 56.3 (2002): 228. 27 Mar 2010.
W.F., Albright. "Some Observations Favoring the Palestinian Origin of the Gospel of John." Harvard Theological Review, 17.2 (1924): 191-192. 27 Mar 2010.
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#2
Consider C:\Peshitta\Peshitta.pps;
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#3
Sorry, I meant C:\Peshitta\Peshitta.pps
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