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How established is Aramaic Primacy?
#1
The past weeks, i have been busy reading all kinds of things on Aramaic Primacy. It seems, that this Forum is the major spot for original research on the topic. Also dukhrana.com seems the place to go to for original languages studies. i have to say that i am very interested in this topic, and that i see a lot of substance to the claim of Aramaic Primacy. But, i must wonder, though the CoE and other organizations have existed for so many centuries, it yet seems that the Aramaic Primacy research is just at the beginning.

Many posts on this forum are original research, books promoting aramaic primacy seem hard to get (if you can get them at all), there is no establisehd numbering system (Like Strong's, TWOT etc.(you may not see the need as many of you speak aramaic, but, if you want to be taken seriously, you have to make original language study available for everyone)), there are very few dictionaries, and the dictionaries available seem way too concise concise (are there no dictionaries like the TWOT?), a lot of information available (original research or not) seem a little biased, or at least irreprucible on a scolarly level, and then, quite frankly, this forum does not seem very active considering it is supposed the central of such an fundamental and crucial matter.

So, i am wondering, where do the advocates of Aramaic Primacy see themselves? Do you feel like you have exhausted the information that could be made available to advocate this topic properly? Or do you see yourselves in a position where that is not necessary? Or, do you maybe believe that your work is meely at its beginning (which is kind of the way i see it)?
Jesus is the one true God of the Bible.
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#2
for over 1000 years, the byzantium text, was considered the most reliable source.
In Europe, it was the vulgate until the protestant movement made the KJV translation etc.

Then in the 19th century, the W&H+NA variants became the 'standard'

During all the KJV times, the Belgium 'Antwerp Polyglot' (having the aramaic edessa version) and probably other bibles, had the Aramaic version as well.
since there is / was a lack of scientists that consider the Aramaic as the language of Jesus and -all- middle-east semitic people, it might take a few hundred years before they finally switch to the idea that Greek was just a translation of...

However, more and more Bible translations are being made from the Aramaic sources. Not so long ago, the Codex Khabouris became known. So, it progresses more and more.

Have faith... <!-- sSmile --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="Smile" title="Smile" /><!-- sSmile -->
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#3
People who have spent many years learning NT greek are very unlikely to admit that they may have been studdying the wrong language. As people become aware of the peshitta, a minority of younger people will begin to study it in preference to the greek NT. Sooner or later the ammount of people studying the peshitta will reach "critical mass". The debate will move from internet forums to more scholarly places. Greek primacy is well and trully finished once this happens. They have nothing. No evidence.
For many decades christians have had their texts attacked, as lacking integrity.
The time will come when christains themselves see that the best argument for the integrity of the NT comes from peshitta primacy. No longer will the arguments used to show that the hebrew bible was editted and redacted be able to be used to show the same process occorred to the NT.
This will be interesting because the various christians cults and sects (and I include protestantism and catholicism in this) will be more then likely be forced to let go of other ideas and traditions.
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#4
Shlama,


personally, although there have been great strides already in this area that supports the cause, i think the Peshitta Primacy movement is still in its infancy stage. nothing has yet been exhausted in this realm: there are multiple avenues of research taking place from people here, and yet there are definitely other avenues that have not yet been sufficiently addressed. so much more lay in store for us who are seeking to present an undeniably solid case. textually-speaking, the Peshitta has yet to be truly mined in order to bring out to the masses the plethora of instances that show it to be an obvious source-text by way of many facets.

all this takes time. the Greek-Primacy movement really seems to only have been in full swing since the 1800s, but it seems to be hitting a roadblock now, in my opinion. personally, i firmly believe this is all providence, for if such massive study into the Greek texts had never been performed, collating the variants and text-types, etc., then it would be much more difficult to prove the veracity of the Peshitta's reading, which can really only be appreciated once the witnesses of the Greek manuscripts are seen to be a spectrum that can be traced back to the light of the Peshitta. so for me, personally, i laud the efforts of those in the Greek-Primacy arena, for they have done most of the difficult work for us in establishing the witnesses that serve to show which text really is the most reliable -- the Aramaic! we joke about the "Zorban's" who were responsible for generating the Greek manuscripts, but in all honesty, we don't know who they were (Semitic?? Roman?? Latin?? Egyptian??), and we are ultimately in debt to their works, for it is by inspecting them that the truth of the Peshitta's authority comes to light.

praise Yah for His Word!


Chayim b'Moshiach,
Jeremy
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#5
If we can find just one case where all the Greek versions have obviously mistranslated the Aramaic text, the primacy is proved.

One such case is Romans 5:7.

I don't thing there is an inverse example.

Otto
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#6
Shlama Otto,

The thing about Romans 5:7 is that there is no simple way to mistranslate from the Peshitta to the Greek. A skeptic can easily say that the Peshitta could have "smoothed over" that part of the text by correcting an obvious error, but the Greek texts continued to preserve the text that they had from that point forward, even though the text reads clumsily. I'm not saying that I believe the Peshitta is a translation from Greek or anything like that, just that Romans 5:7 is not the slam-dunk piece of evidence that it is sometimes said to be.

bar Sinko
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#7
Shlama Khulkon:
Personally I think the best example of Aramaic Primacy (if there is such a thing as "best") is the variance amongst the four lists of the disciples. Only the Peshitta resolves the conflict where Canaanite is falsely translated from "kanania". "Kanania" is a Hebrew word which is equivalent to "tanania", meaning zealot.

Four Lists of the Disciples

There are four complete lists of Jesus? disciples. Matthew 10:1-4, Mark 3:16-19, Luke 6:13-16, Acts 1:13 (Judas Iscariot is missing because he is dead).

Matthew 10:4, ?Shimon Kenania?
Mark 3:18, ?Shimon Kenania?
Luke 6:15, ?Shimon ham?takara Tanania? ?ham?takara? means, ?who is called?.
Acts 1:13, ?Shimon Tanania?

There is a spelling of Canaanite in Matthew 15:22, ?Cananita?. This is the Aramaic transliteration which is the feminine for Canaanite. The spelling is completely different. It would be best to compare the two spellings on <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.dukhrana.com">http://www.dukhrana.com</a><!-- m --> on the Peshitta Page.
The interesting thing here is that ?kanania? is a Hebrew word whose root is shared in Aramaic. The noticeable difference is the ?K? in Hebrew and the ?T? in Aramaic. Nevertheless this same root in Hebrew can be found in Zechariah 1:14. The synonym ?jealous? is also used in English translations.

It is written in Zechariah 1:14?

?kinayti???.liYerushalayim..wal?Tzion??kin?ah g?dolah
I am zealous?for Jerusalem?and for Zion..with greal zeal

?I am zealous for Jerusalem
And for Zion with great zeal.?

The Greek scribe comes along in the second or third century and not knowing Jewish ways, culture, the Law or history translates ?zeal? incorrectly as Canaanite.

Shlama,
Stephen Silver
Dukhrana Biblical Research
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.dukhrana.com">http://www.dukhrana.com</a><!-- m -->

bar Sinko Wrote:Shlama Otto,

The thing about Romans 5:7 is that there is no simple way to mistranslate from the Peshitta to the Greek. A skeptic can easily say that the Peshitta could have "smoothed over" that part of the text by correcting an obvious error, but the Greek texts continued to preserve the text that they had from that point forward, even though the text reads clumsily. I'm not saying that I believe the Peshitta is a translation from Greek or anything like that, just that Romans 5:7 is not the slam-dunk piece of evidence that it is sometimes said to be.

bar Sinko
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#8
Concerning the mistranslation of Romans 5:7---

In his "The Original New Testament in Plain English", Dave Bauscher suggests that the original Aramaic New Testament was probably written in the First Century using the same script as found in the Dead Sea Scolls (DSS).

In the DSS script the Aramaic words for "wicked" and "righteous" look very similar with 75% correlation. The original Greek translator could have easily made this mistake.

On the other hand all of the Greek words for "wicked" look very different from the Greek word used for "righteous". It is unlikely that an Aramaic translator would make that mistake.

Otto
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#9
Stephen Silver Wrote:The Greek scribe comes along in the second or third century and not knowing Jewish ways, culture, the Law or history translates ?zeal? incorrectly as Canaanite.

I'm writing a Dutch article about this phenomenon, that translaters -just translate- using their own context, mind, history background, social thinking etc.

How is it possible that the Aramaic NT has -both- Aramaic as Greek speaking people, while the Greek NT, simple ignores the existence of 'Arameans'.

* It is because in there was a long Greek translation tradition e.g: you don't tranliterate (eg) Mar-Jah to Greek, since that is a girlsname and non-septuagint tradition.
* You don't transliterate Aram-na-rhain but translate it as 'Mesapotamia'. (therefore loosing connection between the aramaic speaking people and their homeland)
* Aramean speaking people, were associated with their neighbours, the Syrian nation. So, Estrangelo became syriac, Aramaens became 'Syrians'

These two backgrounds, would make it very strange to translate it this way, so that e.g. the former Cilicia (turkey) would seem full of syrian people.

Since there was no 'homeland' such as "Aram-land" for Arameans (but Syriac~Syria), I believe that Greek NT translators and readers simply did not understand geographic spreading of that language.
It would make scratch the head of Greek readers in churches. So, the transfer to 'pagans' / Greeks, would be their best decision for the translation.

For me, this again, is a case for Aramaic primacy.

Aramaic Primacy also can be established, using these phenonemons, according to true history facts, that turkey, Cilicia and other parts, were full of Jews and Arameans.

Another very *funny* NT passage, is the mention of the syrophoenician greek woman in the Greek NT.
Wow! Compare this: "An American-canadian russian, spoke with ..."

What was the Greek Mark referring to? To etnic or linguistic or to cultural context?
The Aramaic NT has: "A pagan Phoenician from Syria."
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#10
i think this is getting a little off topic. As i said, Aramaic Primacy has a lot of substance, i am just wondering what you think how well presented this substance is.
ograabe Wrote:On the other hand all of the Greek words for "wicked" look very different from the Greek word used for "righteous". It is unlikely that an Aramaic translator would make that mistake.
Not to say that i believe in Greek primacy or anything, but it may be entirely possible that an Aramaic copyist caused the change. Meaning, an Aramaic writer that copied the Aramaic NT from Aramaic to Aramaic may have misread that word, or may have (consciously or subconsciously) thought that it must be a mistake, and corrected it (since "righteous" makes much more immediate sense in the context). There is no reason for us to think that greek writers have less reading skills than Aramaic ones.
There would still be the question as to why there are no variations in the other Aramaic manuscripts, meaning all Aramaic manuscriupts would have to stem from one bad copy. Konwing some of the Peshitta history, that is making the above scenario somewhat unlikely.
Jesus is the one true God of the Bible.
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#11
Andrej Wrote:i think this is getting a little off topic. As i said, Aramaic Primacy has a lot of substance, i am just wondering what you think how well presented this substance is. .

I think it was Paul who some time ago wrote that there was doctorate or a masters thesis waiting to bew written on this (maybe using the material from just this site).
I think that presenting the idea will become easier when something appears in a peer reviewed journal.

Im not sure what the best tac would be on that front. Should one hit them with the full thing? Or just the edge of the wedge? :-)
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#12
Stephen Silver Wrote:Shlama Khulkon:
Personally I think the best example of Aramaic Primacy (if there is such a thing as "best") is the variance amongst the four lists of the disciples. Only the Peshitta resolves the conflict where Canaanite is falsely translated from "kanania". "Kanania" is a Hebrew word which is equivalent to "tanania", meaning zealot.

That is a great example.
I liked the beth abara example, as one could see where the copier's eyes had 'skipped ahead" and caused the error. :-)
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#13
judge Wrote:I think it was Paul who some time ago wrote that there was doctorate or a masters thesis waiting to bew written on this (maybe using the material from just this site).

Im not sure what the best tac would be on that front. Should one hit them with the full thing? Or just the edge of the wedge? :-)

If that is going to happen, I would like to do that. On my site, I collected a lot of information about this and I wrote about it.
Historically, poetically, etc.
I live near Leiden, in the Netherlands, where an Aramaic (OT) research department is.
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#14
Andrej Wrote:There would still be the question as to why there are no variations in the other Aramaic manuscripts, meaning all Aramaic manuscriupts would have to stem from one bad copy. Konwing some of the Peshitta history, that is making the above scenario somewhat unlikely.
it just came to my mind, there are no vartiants (that i know of) here in the greek, so we are left with the claim that the aramaic "makes more sense".
judge Wrote:I think it was Paul who some time ago wrote that there was doctorate or a masters thesis waiting to bew written on this (maybe using the material from just this site).
I think that presenting the idea will become easier when something appears in a peer reviewed journal.

Im not sure what the best tac would be on that front. Should one hit them with the full thing? Or just the edge of the wedge? :-)
Personally, i think you should release an easy to follow book, with maybe a hundred to two hundred pages, but then one should also be able to obtain the entire original research, which chould hold a few thousand pages, examining every single variant as well as all the other issues (OT quotations, wordplays, ...). In that way, you can reach the scolars as well as the masses.
Jesus is the one true God of the Bible.
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