Talitha Qumi

[Paul Younan]

Akhay,

Let's pretend that the only witness we have to the direct Aramaic words of Meshikha are the handful of phrases that Zorba was gracious enough to save for us in the Greek NT? (Forget about the Peshitta for now.)

We are thankful to Zorba, as Aramaic primacists, because he saved for us a direct Aramaic saying of Meshikha in Mark 5:41. It reads as follows:

"And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha qumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise."

Luke also records this event in 8:54 of his gospel, but the Greek doesn't preserve this saying in the original Aramaic...instead it just translates as such:

Code:

"And he put them all out, and took her by the hand, and called, saying, Maid, arise."

Here is Mark 5:41 in the Greek and Aramaic side-by-side:

"And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha qumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise." (GNT)

"And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha qumi." (ANT)

Now, let's look at Luke 8:54:

"And he put them all out, and took her by the hand, and called, saying, Maid, arise." (GNT)

"And he put them all out, and took her by the hand, and called, saying, Talitha qumi." (ANT)

Notice that the Peshitta does not need to translate this saying, like the GNT does - right? Not only that, but it uses the same word - "Talitha", in both the preceeding and following verse! So the vocabulary of the phrase is identical to the Aramaic of the Peshitta.

But let's play devil's advocate here

Let's say the translators of the Peshitta were trying to trick us into believing that they spoke the same dialect of Aramiac that Yeshua did. So they forced this reading and refused to translate it, ok?

IF that's the case, then why does the ANT reading of Acts 9:40, when Shimon raised Tabitha from the dead, read the exact same way with the exact same verbal conjugation pattern that Meshikha used:

"But Peter put them all forth, and kneeled down, and prayed; and turning him to the body said, Tabitha, arise And she opened her eyes: and when she saw Peter, she sat up." (GNT)

"But Peter put them all forth, and kneeled down, and prayed; and turning him to the body said, Tabitha, Qumi And she opened her eyes: and when she saw Peter, she sat up." (ANT)

So as you can see, both the word "Talitha" and the word "Qumi" are exactly the same in the language of the Peshitta vs. the language of Meshikha as recorded in the independent Greek witness.

Now, for the grammar lesson:

We will take this lesson from the book, "Introduction to Syriac", by Prof. Wheeler M. Thackster, pictured below:



In Aramaic, verbs are usually made with a root that is made up of 3 consonants (like Hebrew & Arabic). The exceptions to this general rule are called Hollow Verbs - these are verbs that have only 2-consonant roots.

Now, Meshikha was ordering the little girl to "get up!" Grammatically speaking, we call this type of verb an Imperative - which means an "order."

Meshikha used the root which means "arise", and that happens to be a Hollow Root. It contains only 2 consonants - Qoph and Meem. The root is spelled [font=Estrangelo (V1.1)]Mq[/font].

In "Syriac", when you want to use a Hollow Verb in the Imperative tense for 1st-person Feminine, it is conjugated as such (right-to-left): yXwX

Here is a scan of the lesson from page 81 of Thackston's "Syriac" grammar book:



You see, in "Syriac" - it is the exact same as what Meshikha spoke. The verb is conjugated as yMwQ - [font=Estrangelo (V1.1)]Ymwq[/font]

The Peshitta language is 100% the same language as what the Greek versions preserve of Meshikha's own words.