"_Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel_ by Maurice Casey.... He has the most disciplined approach to this question and he is very critical of Torrey, eg, on pp 19-26"
In looking over pages 19, 22-25 of
_Aramaic Sources of Mark's Gospel_ by Maurice Casey
https://books.google.com/books?id=oxlrUXf7xr4C&
I noticed Casey discussing a mere 4 of Torrey's 20 alleged instances of "Wrong Vocalization of the Aramaic" (specifically, Lk 7:45, Jn 7:38, Mk 7:3, and Lk 16:18/Mk 10:12).
Goodspeed was commended to me:
"Edgar Goodspeed, a linguist and specialist in Semitic languages without peer, extensively criticized Torrey and pointed out how Semiticists disagreed among themselves (DMI)." - https://ehrmanblog.org/forum/the-manuscr...11/#p28485
Casey criticizes Goodspeed on 25-26.
Do you agree with this Goodspeed?:
_New Chapters in New Testament Study_ by Edgar J. Goodspeed (1937), 223pp., on 165
https://archive.org/details/newchaptersinnew008790mbp
The advocates of the Aramaic school.... give us no list of Aramaic works created in Palestine in the first half of the first century. There is no record of any written composition in Aramaic at that time.
======================================================
"Goodspeed (1937).... 'The advocates of the Aramaic school.... give us no list of Aramaic works created in Palestine in the first half of the first century. There is no record of any written composition in Aramaic at that time.'"
"At the time, Goodspeed was right.... Goodspeed should have acknowledged hints of contemporary Aramaic literature. Instead his work on contemporary Greek sources was in fact dealing with the hard evidence available at the time. Subsequently, with the discovery of the Aramaic texts at Qumran, Casey and others are in a much better position to focus on contemporary Aramaic sources, rather than dictionaries compiled from much later sources such as the Talmud, Targums, and Syriac."
Do you disagree with any of this?:
"The Possible Aramaic Gospel" by Edgar J. Goodspeed in _Journal of Near Eastern Studies_ (July 1942), 315-340, a paragraph on 339
https://vdocuments.mx/the-possible-aramaic-gospel.html
http://www.jstor.org/stable/543054
For my own part, I long ago did what seemed to me full justice to the very just claims of the Aramaic gospel theory. I quite agree that there was an Aramaic gospel, and that it was the earliest of gospels. But it was an oral, not a written gospel, and that is what Papias was trying to convey in his somewhat baffling remarks on the subject, preserved in Eusebius, _Church History_ iii. 39.15. This is why Paul and Luke, Clement and Polycarp, quote from it with such words as "_Remember_ the words of the Lord Jesus." It was a memorized gospel, handed down in that characteristic Jewish fashion, by word of mouth, like the Mishnah. Of course, such an impractical method did not long satisfy the Greek church, which had to have written gospels.
_Matthew: Apostle and Evangelist_ by Edgar J. Goodspeed (1959), 166pp., on 137-138
https://archive.org/details/matthewapostleev0000good
Matthew doubtless took down many of Jesus’ sayings in Aramaic; though, in the strongly anti-literary atmosphere that prevailed among the Jews at that time, that he circulated them as an Aramaic book is hardly probable. We know of no other book composed in Aramaic!
====================================================
"One doesn’t give a loaded gun to a child"
Are you aware of any mistakes in the Peshitta?
[Paul Younan]”point me to a mistake in the Aramaic Peshitta which arose from a grammatical error while translating from the Greek. In your model, there should be plenty that exist. ….point me to one error in the Peshitta which can only be explained by the Aramaic translator making a grammatical mistake that could have only happened if he had a Greek original in front of him.”
====================================================
"Is this passage in Isaiah among the textual variants attested in cave 4?"
Nothing about cave 4 for DSS Isaiah 29:13 is mentioned in my DSS copy.
DSS Isaiah 29:13
_The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible_ (1999), 649pp., on 313
https://archive.org/stream/B-001-001-932...2_djvu.txt
And the Lord said,
Inasmuch as this people draw near to honor me with their mouth
and with their lips,
but have removed their hearts far from me,
and _fear of me_^526 has been _like a human commandment_^527 that has been taught them;
526: 1QIsa^a. _their fear of me_ MT.
527: 1QIsa^a. _a human commandment_ MT.
"look at the grammar of the sentence.... Pay attention to the syntax. Parse the sentence. What is the subject? what is the verb? What is modifying what?
If you look at the pair of sentences, 'the wolf ate the child' and 'the eating child petted the dog,' you can find a lot of verbal similarities (‘dog is similar to ‘wolf’; ‘eating’ is similar to ‘ate’; both sentences talk about a ‘child’, but they are two totally different sentences....
One can’t do textual criticism by looking at translations. It could be a crappy translation. It could be capturing an Hebraism that is usually smoothed out in other translations and seems odd to people unfamiliar with Hebrew. Or it could reflect a corrupted text that can’t be translated because it just doesn’t make any sense"
_The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible_ (1999), 649pp., on 269-270
https://archive.org/stream/B-001-001-932...2_djvu.txt
Because Isaiah is a lengthy book virtually preserved in its entirety in 1QIsa^a, and since there are so many Isaiah scrolls, for the translation of this book and accompanying variants a somewhat different approach has been taken here than with other books in The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible. The translation that follows is consistently from 1QIsa^a, with the readings from the other scrolls shown in the footnotes. Some of the insignificant variants (usually involving spelling) are not noted. Moreover, in this translation the Septuagint is sometimes, but not always, collated for variant readings. The main reason for this is that Isaiah is mainly poetry,^c and the Septuagint contains a rather free Greek translation of the unvocalized Hebrew poetry; it is thus often difficult to tell exactly which Hebrew form is being translated. However, most of the more significant Septuagint variants are recorded.
c: However, text was subsequently written down in prose format in the scrolls as well as in the Hebrew text used by the Septuagint translator(s).
====================================================
“The last two lines are completely different.
‘Isaiah 29:13 (JPS Tanakh 1917) . . .
But have removed their heart far from Me,
And their fear of Me is a commandment of men learned by rote;’
vs
‘LXX Isaiah 29:13 Oxford NETS . . .
while their heart is far from me,
and in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts and teachings.'”
“But have removed their heart far from Me” is similar to
“while their heart is far from me.”
“And their fear of Me” is similar to
“and… they worship me.”
“A commandment of men learned by rote” is similar to
“teaching human precepts and teachings.”
“Swete does not lack it:
‘*μάτην* δὲ σέβονταί με διδάσκοντες ἐντάλματα ἀνθρώπων καὶ διδασκαλίας.’
It seems Google translate led you astray on that”
Indeed.
3155. matén
https://biblehub.com/greek/3155.htm
matén: in vain, to no purpose
Original Word: μάτην
Part of Speech: Adverb
Transliteration: matén
Phonetic Spelling: (mat’-ane)
Definition: in vain, to no purpose
Usage: in vain, in an unreal way, to no purpose.
HELPS Word-studies
Cognate: 3155 mátēn (an adverb) – properly, “aimlessly”; pointless, without ground or any real purpose (fruitfulness). See 3152 (mataios).
“we have the Dead Sea Scrolls now, and those show the MT (including of this passage) was pretty well preserved”
Cave 4 showed there was another textual stream for certain books, whose renditions were captured in the LXX but absent from the Masoretic.
“why does Young’s suggest to you the MT is corrupted?”
It seems to me a word(s) is missing where the dash is. This doesn’t read well: “their fear of Me is —
A precept of men is taught!”
Isaiah 29:13 (Young’s Literal)
https://biblehub.com/ylt/isaiah/29.htm
And the Lord saith:
Because drawn near hath this people, with its mouth,
And with its lips they have honoured Me,
And its heart it hath put far off from Me,
And their fear of Me is —
A precept of men is taught!
================================================
Which Matthew quotes of Isaiah do you think came from the LXX?
_Matthew: Apostle and Evangelist_ by Edgar J. Goodspeed (1959), 166pp., on viii-ix
https://archive.org/details/matthewapostleev0000good
Summary of the section “Isaiah in Matthew”:
Isaiah 7.14 = Matthew 1.23
Isaiah 40.3 = Matthew 3.3
Isaiah 9.1+ = Matthew 4.15-16
Isaiah 53.4 = Matthew 8.17
Isaiah 61.1 = Matthew 11.5
Isaiah 14.13-15 = Matthew 11.23
Isaiah 42.1-4; see also Isaiah 41.8-9 = Matthew 12.18-21
Isaiah 6.9-10 = Matthew 13.14-15
Isaiah 29.13 = Matthew 15.8-9
Isaiah 62.11 = Matthew 21.5
Isaiah 56.7 = Matthew 21.13
Isaiah 5.1+ = Matthew 21.33
Isaiah 19.2 = Matthew 24.7
Isaiah 13.10; compare Isaiah 34.4; = Matthew 24.29
Isaiah 27.13 compare Matthew 24.31– an allusion to Isaiah 27.13
==============================================
Do you agree with this?:
_Edgar Johnson Goodspeed: Articulate Scholar_ (1981), 88pp., on 55
https://www.amazon.com/Edgar-Johnson-Goo...891304398/
Black's own study of syntax, grammar, vocabulary, Semitic poetic form in the Gospels and evidence of mistranslation and interpretation in Aramaic, yields only one conclusion which can be regarded as in any degree established: that an Aramaic sayings source or tradition lies behind the synoptic Gospels. Whether that source was written or oral, cannot be determined from the evidence.
==============================================
Do you agree with Goodspeed that "Tobit.... was probably written in Greek"?
_The Story of the Apocrypha_ by Edgar J. Goodspeed (1939), two paragraphs on 13-14
https://archive.org/details/storyoftheapocry012726mbp/
Of all the Apocrypha the earliest in date is the Book of Tobit, written about 200 B.C. Tobit is the ideal Jew. In times when Greek ideals were coming into fashion, Greeks and Jews too needed to be reminded of the strong features of the Jewish character. Progressive young Jews had to be kept in line, and heathen made to see the values of Judaism, as a way of life.
So early in the second century before Christ some Jew in Egypt wrote the Story of Tobit, to exalt the Jewish ideal in the eyes of Jews and Gentiles alike. For the Jews in Egypt were already at work to win recognition and if possible acceptance of their ideals from the peoples among whom they lived. They were translating their Hebrew scriptures into Greek, to make their religion and their culture known in the stirring Greek world in which they found themselves in Egypt. It is as a part of this missionary movement in Egyptian Judaism, in the days of the first Ptolemies, that Tobit must be understood. It was probably written in Greek, for the movement of which it was a part was putting Hebrew literature into Greek, and would hardly express itself in the language from which Egyptian Judaism was so pointedly turning away.
_The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible_ (1999), 649pp., a paragraph on 636
https://archive.org/stream/B-001-001-932...2_djvu.txt
Before the discovery of copies of the book of Tobit among the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars debated whether the tale was originally written in Greek or perhaps a Semitic language (Hebrew or Aramaic). As is often the case with new discoveries, the Dead Sea Scrolls answered the original question but raised another. Of the five scrolls uncovered in Cave 4, four are written in Aramaic while one is in Hebrew. The debate has already begun as to which represents the _original_ tongue. Another important discussion concerns the date of the writing. Those experts who argued before the Qumran findings for the first to third centuries CE have now been silenced, because the oldest manuscript-- 4QTobit^d-- dates to 100 BCE (though the tale was probably composed as early at the late third century BCE).
In looking over pages 19, 22-25 of
_Aramaic Sources of Mark's Gospel_ by Maurice Casey
https://books.google.com/books?id=oxlrUXf7xr4C&
I noticed Casey discussing a mere 4 of Torrey's 20 alleged instances of "Wrong Vocalization of the Aramaic" (specifically, Lk 7:45, Jn 7:38, Mk 7:3, and Lk 16:18/Mk 10:12).
Goodspeed was commended to me:
"Edgar Goodspeed, a linguist and specialist in Semitic languages without peer, extensively criticized Torrey and pointed out how Semiticists disagreed among themselves (DMI)." - https://ehrmanblog.org/forum/the-manuscr...11/#p28485
Casey criticizes Goodspeed on 25-26.
Do you agree with this Goodspeed?:
_New Chapters in New Testament Study_ by Edgar J. Goodspeed (1937), 223pp., on 165
https://archive.org/details/newchaptersinnew008790mbp
The advocates of the Aramaic school.... give us no list of Aramaic works created in Palestine in the first half of the first century. There is no record of any written composition in Aramaic at that time.
======================================================
"Goodspeed (1937).... 'The advocates of the Aramaic school.... give us no list of Aramaic works created in Palestine in the first half of the first century. There is no record of any written composition in Aramaic at that time.'"
"At the time, Goodspeed was right.... Goodspeed should have acknowledged hints of contemporary Aramaic literature. Instead his work on contemporary Greek sources was in fact dealing with the hard evidence available at the time. Subsequently, with the discovery of the Aramaic texts at Qumran, Casey and others are in a much better position to focus on contemporary Aramaic sources, rather than dictionaries compiled from much later sources such as the Talmud, Targums, and Syriac."
Do you disagree with any of this?:
"The Possible Aramaic Gospel" by Edgar J. Goodspeed in _Journal of Near Eastern Studies_ (July 1942), 315-340, a paragraph on 339
https://vdocuments.mx/the-possible-aramaic-gospel.html
http://www.jstor.org/stable/543054
For my own part, I long ago did what seemed to me full justice to the very just claims of the Aramaic gospel theory. I quite agree that there was an Aramaic gospel, and that it was the earliest of gospels. But it was an oral, not a written gospel, and that is what Papias was trying to convey in his somewhat baffling remarks on the subject, preserved in Eusebius, _Church History_ iii. 39.15. This is why Paul and Luke, Clement and Polycarp, quote from it with such words as "_Remember_ the words of the Lord Jesus." It was a memorized gospel, handed down in that characteristic Jewish fashion, by word of mouth, like the Mishnah. Of course, such an impractical method did not long satisfy the Greek church, which had to have written gospels.
_Matthew: Apostle and Evangelist_ by Edgar J. Goodspeed (1959), 166pp., on 137-138
https://archive.org/details/matthewapostleev0000good
Matthew doubtless took down many of Jesus’ sayings in Aramaic; though, in the strongly anti-literary atmosphere that prevailed among the Jews at that time, that he circulated them as an Aramaic book is hardly probable. We know of no other book composed in Aramaic!
====================================================
"One doesn’t give a loaded gun to a child"
Are you aware of any mistakes in the Peshitta?
[Paul Younan]”point me to a mistake in the Aramaic Peshitta which arose from a grammatical error while translating from the Greek. In your model, there should be plenty that exist. ….point me to one error in the Peshitta which can only be explained by the Aramaic translator making a grammatical mistake that could have only happened if he had a Greek original in front of him.”
====================================================
"Is this passage in Isaiah among the textual variants attested in cave 4?"
Nothing about cave 4 for DSS Isaiah 29:13 is mentioned in my DSS copy.
DSS Isaiah 29:13
_The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible_ (1999), 649pp., on 313
https://archive.org/stream/B-001-001-932...2_djvu.txt
And the Lord said,
Inasmuch as this people draw near to honor me with their mouth
and with their lips,
but have removed their hearts far from me,
and _fear of me_^526 has been _like a human commandment_^527 that has been taught them;
526: 1QIsa^a. _their fear of me_ MT.
527: 1QIsa^a. _a human commandment_ MT.
"look at the grammar of the sentence.... Pay attention to the syntax. Parse the sentence. What is the subject? what is the verb? What is modifying what?
If you look at the pair of sentences, 'the wolf ate the child' and 'the eating child petted the dog,' you can find a lot of verbal similarities (‘dog is similar to ‘wolf’; ‘eating’ is similar to ‘ate’; both sentences talk about a ‘child’, but they are two totally different sentences....
One can’t do textual criticism by looking at translations. It could be a crappy translation. It could be capturing an Hebraism that is usually smoothed out in other translations and seems odd to people unfamiliar with Hebrew. Or it could reflect a corrupted text that can’t be translated because it just doesn’t make any sense"
_The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible_ (1999), 649pp., on 269-270
https://archive.org/stream/B-001-001-932...2_djvu.txt
Because Isaiah is a lengthy book virtually preserved in its entirety in 1QIsa^a, and since there are so many Isaiah scrolls, for the translation of this book and accompanying variants a somewhat different approach has been taken here than with other books in The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible. The translation that follows is consistently from 1QIsa^a, with the readings from the other scrolls shown in the footnotes. Some of the insignificant variants (usually involving spelling) are not noted. Moreover, in this translation the Septuagint is sometimes, but not always, collated for variant readings. The main reason for this is that Isaiah is mainly poetry,^c and the Septuagint contains a rather free Greek translation of the unvocalized Hebrew poetry; it is thus often difficult to tell exactly which Hebrew form is being translated. However, most of the more significant Septuagint variants are recorded.
c: However, text was subsequently written down in prose format in the scrolls as well as in the Hebrew text used by the Septuagint translator(s).
====================================================
“The last two lines are completely different.
‘Isaiah 29:13 (JPS Tanakh 1917) . . .
But have removed their heart far from Me,
And their fear of Me is a commandment of men learned by rote;’
vs
‘LXX Isaiah 29:13 Oxford NETS . . .
while their heart is far from me,
and in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts and teachings.'”
“But have removed their heart far from Me” is similar to
“while their heart is far from me.”
“And their fear of Me” is similar to
“and… they worship me.”
“A commandment of men learned by rote” is similar to
“teaching human precepts and teachings.”
“Swete does not lack it:
‘*μάτην* δὲ σέβονταί με διδάσκοντες ἐντάλματα ἀνθρώπων καὶ διδασκαλίας.’
It seems Google translate led you astray on that”
Indeed.
3155. matén
https://biblehub.com/greek/3155.htm
matén: in vain, to no purpose
Original Word: μάτην
Part of Speech: Adverb
Transliteration: matén
Phonetic Spelling: (mat’-ane)
Definition: in vain, to no purpose
Usage: in vain, in an unreal way, to no purpose.
HELPS Word-studies
Cognate: 3155 mátēn (an adverb) – properly, “aimlessly”; pointless, without ground or any real purpose (fruitfulness). See 3152 (mataios).
“we have the Dead Sea Scrolls now, and those show the MT (including of this passage) was pretty well preserved”
Cave 4 showed there was another textual stream for certain books, whose renditions were captured in the LXX but absent from the Masoretic.
“why does Young’s suggest to you the MT is corrupted?”
It seems to me a word(s) is missing where the dash is. This doesn’t read well: “their fear of Me is —
A precept of men is taught!”
Isaiah 29:13 (Young’s Literal)
https://biblehub.com/ylt/isaiah/29.htm
And the Lord saith:
Because drawn near hath this people, with its mouth,
And with its lips they have honoured Me,
And its heart it hath put far off from Me,
And their fear of Me is —
A precept of men is taught!
================================================
Which Matthew quotes of Isaiah do you think came from the LXX?
_Matthew: Apostle and Evangelist_ by Edgar J. Goodspeed (1959), 166pp., on viii-ix
https://archive.org/details/matthewapostleev0000good
Summary of the section “Isaiah in Matthew”:
Isaiah 7.14 = Matthew 1.23
Isaiah 40.3 = Matthew 3.3
Isaiah 9.1+ = Matthew 4.15-16
Isaiah 53.4 = Matthew 8.17
Isaiah 61.1 = Matthew 11.5
Isaiah 14.13-15 = Matthew 11.23
Isaiah 42.1-4; see also Isaiah 41.8-9 = Matthew 12.18-21
Isaiah 6.9-10 = Matthew 13.14-15
Isaiah 29.13 = Matthew 15.8-9
Isaiah 62.11 = Matthew 21.5
Isaiah 56.7 = Matthew 21.13
Isaiah 5.1+ = Matthew 21.33
Isaiah 19.2 = Matthew 24.7
Isaiah 13.10; compare Isaiah 34.4; = Matthew 24.29
Isaiah 27.13 compare Matthew 24.31– an allusion to Isaiah 27.13
==============================================
Do you agree with this?:
_Edgar Johnson Goodspeed: Articulate Scholar_ (1981), 88pp., on 55
https://www.amazon.com/Edgar-Johnson-Goo...891304398/
Black's own study of syntax, grammar, vocabulary, Semitic poetic form in the Gospels and evidence of mistranslation and interpretation in Aramaic, yields only one conclusion which can be regarded as in any degree established: that an Aramaic sayings source or tradition lies behind the synoptic Gospels. Whether that source was written or oral, cannot be determined from the evidence.
==============================================
Do you agree with Goodspeed that "Tobit.... was probably written in Greek"?
_The Story of the Apocrypha_ by Edgar J. Goodspeed (1939), two paragraphs on 13-14
https://archive.org/details/storyoftheapocry012726mbp/
Of all the Apocrypha the earliest in date is the Book of Tobit, written about 200 B.C. Tobit is the ideal Jew. In times when Greek ideals were coming into fashion, Greeks and Jews too needed to be reminded of the strong features of the Jewish character. Progressive young Jews had to be kept in line, and heathen made to see the values of Judaism, as a way of life.
So early in the second century before Christ some Jew in Egypt wrote the Story of Tobit, to exalt the Jewish ideal in the eyes of Jews and Gentiles alike. For the Jews in Egypt were already at work to win recognition and if possible acceptance of their ideals from the peoples among whom they lived. They were translating their Hebrew scriptures into Greek, to make their religion and their culture known in the stirring Greek world in which they found themselves in Egypt. It is as a part of this missionary movement in Egyptian Judaism, in the days of the first Ptolemies, that Tobit must be understood. It was probably written in Greek, for the movement of which it was a part was putting Hebrew literature into Greek, and would hardly express itself in the language from which Egyptian Judaism was so pointedly turning away.
_The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible_ (1999), 649pp., a paragraph on 636
https://archive.org/stream/B-001-001-932...2_djvu.txt
Before the discovery of copies of the book of Tobit among the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars debated whether the tale was originally written in Greek or perhaps a Semitic language (Hebrew or Aramaic). As is often the case with new discoveries, the Dead Sea Scrolls answered the original question but raised another. Of the five scrolls uncovered in Cave 4, four are written in Aramaic while one is in Hebrew. The debate has already begun as to which represents the _original_ tongue. Another important discussion concerns the date of the writing. Those experts who argued before the Qumran findings for the first to third centuries CE have now been silenced, because the oldest manuscript-- 4QTobit^d-- dates to 100 BCE (though the tale was probably composed as early at the late third century BCE).