Some have dissented from the popular view. Wrote James Holding in 1884, "But He [Christ], their True Shepherd, addressed them [His apostles] in their own common speech, and where His very words have come down to us, they need no translation in the Peshito. Let the reader just dismiss his Greek, until its claim to be the first apostolic Testament can be based on firmer ground than any which we can find put forward by its boldest supporters. One-sided learning they may exhibit, but, to us, it appears devoted to trying to prop up a shaky theory."[1] In connection with the gospel of John, Holding remarks, "It may be noticed that we write Syriac _readings_, and not _renderings_; and this we do advisedly, for we wish to avoid words which would lead the reader to think that we admit that his Syriac is only a version from Greek. We see proof ever augmenting that the Peshito is no translation, but an original production of the first writers, slightly revised perhaps, and enriched by, here and there, a note from the pen of inspired revisers, but in its main bulk, the work of those holy men whom Jesus told the Jews, in His last public discourse, would yet appear and make a final appeal to the nation before its overthrow."
In 1855, James Murdock quoted Yale College President Ezra Stiles as saying in his Inaugural Oration, “Kindred with this, [the Hebrew,] or rather a _bath-kol_, and daughter-voice, is the Syriac, in which the greater part of the New Testament (I believe) was originally written, and not merely translated, in the Apostolic age. ... The Syriac Testament, therefore, is of high authority; nay, with me, of the same authority as the Greek.” [2] Murdock goes on to observe that, "Many have believed that Matthew's Gospel and the Epistle to the Hebrews, if not also some other books, were originally written in Hebrew or Jewish Aramaean," and adds, "J.A. Bolten (in his German Translation of the Epistles, with Notes, Altona, 1800, 2 vols. 8vo.) maintains that nearly all the Epistles must have been first composed by the Apostles in Aramaean, their native tongue, and then committed by them to some of their Grecizing companions, (e.g. Titus, Timothy, Tertius, Sosthenes, &c.,) by whom they were translated into Greek before their publication. And Bertholdt (Einleitung, § 46, vol. i. p. 148–154) accedes to, and defends, this opinion. And he thinks that, after due time for reflection, the learned world will generally come into it."
1. _The Rainbow, a magazine of Christian literature_, Volume 21 (1884), pg. 209 https://books.google.com/books?id=a0MEAA...22&f=false
2. _Murdock's Translation of the Syrian New Testament from the Peschito Version_ (1855), 515 pp., 499-500 https://books.google.com/books?id=Ve5FAQ...22&f=false
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"much of it was written in Greek" How'd you come to that conclusion?
John Hancock Pettingell, _Views and Reviews in Eschatology: A Collection of Letters, Essays, and Other Papers Concerning the Life and Death to Come_ (1887), 501 pp., essay "The Gospel of Life in the Syriac New Testament" pp. 41-98, on 48
https://books.google.com/books?id=WXZIAA...&q&f=false
I propose nothing more in this paper than, in a modest way, to give the results of my own inquiry in this line, for the consideration of others.
1. The common impression that the entire New Testament was first written in Greek, and that all the copies we now have, in whatever tongue, are copies, or translations of the original manuscripts, when seriously examined, is found to have no certain foundation. And yet this has been taken almost universally, for granted. It is probable, that this is true with respect to some, possibly a majority of these books. But it is more than probable, if not quite certain, that some portions of the New Testament, such as the Gospel of Matthew, the Epistles to the Hebrews, and others, which will hereafter be mentioned, were first written in the vernacular Syriac of the Jews, and were afterward translated into Greek; and that other portions, perhaps most of the books, were duplicated, at the time they were written, by their authors, or under their direction,-- one copy being furnished to those who were familiar with the Greek, and another to those who knew only the Syriac.
In 1855, James Murdock quoted Yale College President Ezra Stiles as saying in his Inaugural Oration, “Kindred with this, [the Hebrew,] or rather a _bath-kol_, and daughter-voice, is the Syriac, in which the greater part of the New Testament (I believe) was originally written, and not merely translated, in the Apostolic age. ... The Syriac Testament, therefore, is of high authority; nay, with me, of the same authority as the Greek.” [2] Murdock goes on to observe that, "Many have believed that Matthew's Gospel and the Epistle to the Hebrews, if not also some other books, were originally written in Hebrew or Jewish Aramaean," and adds, "J.A. Bolten (in his German Translation of the Epistles, with Notes, Altona, 1800, 2 vols. 8vo.) maintains that nearly all the Epistles must have been first composed by the Apostles in Aramaean, their native tongue, and then committed by them to some of their Grecizing companions, (e.g. Titus, Timothy, Tertius, Sosthenes, &c.,) by whom they were translated into Greek before their publication. And Bertholdt (Einleitung, § 46, vol. i. p. 148–154) accedes to, and defends, this opinion. And he thinks that, after due time for reflection, the learned world will generally come into it."
1. _The Rainbow, a magazine of Christian literature_, Volume 21 (1884), pg. 209 https://books.google.com/books?id=a0MEAA...22&f=false
2. _Murdock's Translation of the Syrian New Testament from the Peschito Version_ (1855), 515 pp., 499-500 https://books.google.com/books?id=Ve5FAQ...22&f=false
==========================================================.
"much of it was written in Greek" How'd you come to that conclusion?
John Hancock Pettingell, _Views and Reviews in Eschatology: A Collection of Letters, Essays, and Other Papers Concerning the Life and Death to Come_ (1887), 501 pp., essay "The Gospel of Life in the Syriac New Testament" pp. 41-98, on 48
https://books.google.com/books?id=WXZIAA...&q&f=false
I propose nothing more in this paper than, in a modest way, to give the results of my own inquiry in this line, for the consideration of others.
1. The common impression that the entire New Testament was first written in Greek, and that all the copies we now have, in whatever tongue, are copies, or translations of the original manuscripts, when seriously examined, is found to have no certain foundation. And yet this has been taken almost universally, for granted. It is probable, that this is true with respect to some, possibly a majority of these books. But it is more than probable, if not quite certain, that some portions of the New Testament, such as the Gospel of Matthew, the Epistles to the Hebrews, and others, which will hereafter be mentioned, were first written in the vernacular Syriac of the Jews, and were afterward translated into Greek; and that other portions, perhaps most of the books, were duplicated, at the time they were written, by their authors, or under their direction,-- one copy being furnished to those who were familiar with the Greek, and another to those who knew only the Syriac.