05-24-2020, 07:49 PM
"It's occurred to me that both Greek and Aramaic manuscripts were produced right from the beginning. That would have been a logical thing for them to do."
Makes sense.
"It's simply that the Greek manuscripts proliferated being the universal language of the day"
Greek mss. certainly proliferated in the West. After the destruction of Jerusalem, Aramaic material became scarcer and scarcer.
"and minor textual differences are simply due to linguistic preferences in each language, and of course centuries of manuscript copy errors"
Some of the textual differences are because of mistranslations from the original Aramaic into Greek. The Church of the East's mss. recopying tradition was superior to that in the West, resulting in far fewer variants in Aramaic mss. than what's seen in the morass of conflicting Greek mss. variants.
"In other words, both Greek and Aramaic copies may have been produced under the supervision of the Apostles themselves"
Sounds right. I'd add that the Aramaic came first.
"and therefore the descending manuscripts from both languages carry equal Apostolic authority, despite the minor difference"
The NT writers wrote in Aramaic, supervised translations of their writing into Greek, and supported the release and dissemination of those translations.
"It's a reasonable theory anyway. Tatian may have been translating the Greek being a native speaker of both languages, but it's just as likely he was working from seldom used extant Aramaic manuscripts at that time"
Tatian was working with the gospels in the Peshitta.
Makes sense.
"It's simply that the Greek manuscripts proliferated being the universal language of the day"
Greek mss. certainly proliferated in the West. After the destruction of Jerusalem, Aramaic material became scarcer and scarcer.
"and minor textual differences are simply due to linguistic preferences in each language, and of course centuries of manuscript copy errors"
Some of the textual differences are because of mistranslations from the original Aramaic into Greek. The Church of the East's mss. recopying tradition was superior to that in the West, resulting in far fewer variants in Aramaic mss. than what's seen in the morass of conflicting Greek mss. variants.
"In other words, both Greek and Aramaic copies may have been produced under the supervision of the Apostles themselves"
Sounds right. I'd add that the Aramaic came first.
"and therefore the descending manuscripts from both languages carry equal Apostolic authority, despite the minor difference"
The NT writers wrote in Aramaic, supervised translations of their writing into Greek, and supported the release and dissemination of those translations.
"It's a reasonable theory anyway. Tatian may have been translating the Greek being a native speaker of both languages, but it's just as likely he was working from seldom used extant Aramaic manuscripts at that time"
Tatian was working with the gospels in the Peshitta.