Round 1 - First Blood

[Paul Younan]

Hi Darrell,

I don't really care if you see the anti-Conder posts, as you call them, on my forum. They are non-existent, actually - since I cleaned up everything I could find after that bad exchange with Beach and Lamb - and I do not allow any personal attacks on anybody. Posts which are uselessly attacking somebody get deleted immediately.

But if you want access.....here you go........all the access you want.

Now please answer my last email! I don't want to stray off course here! The objections to your statements regarding the Peshitta is the only qualm I have with you. Like I said, I don't want this thing to blow up into a full-fledged anything-goes debate....I could care less about that stuff, as I've stated previously. You should care about presenting the most factual information you possibly can if you want to speak of truth!

Now please answer!

Have a great day,
Paul

[Dave]

hehe,

Little pigs, little pigs, let me in!

[drmlanc]

Exactly Paul, with this guy it is all politics - no substance. He knows he can't beat you so he comes up with all this pathetic crap. Sad really.

[mrripleyhere]

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[Dave]

Hmmm interesting. I'm watching this.

[mrripleyhere]

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[mrripleyhere]

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[drmlanc]

Believe you me I am no lion <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/happy.gif" alt="" title="Happy" /><!-- s --> I am a filthy sinner

[mrripleyhere]

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[Dave]

I'm looking at this input from mister anon here, and something came to mind.

Tempter was only one description of Satan, Slanderer was another.

I could care less what good ol Darrell is doing over at wwwatheistIamforevercom. Him and his friends are doing just fine and headed in the correct path of eternal flame, so there is no input required for them.

If he doesn't get involved on here with his agenda, then that's all the better, we got things to do and we are quite busy. He is just a side project, maybe a distraction, but nevertheless, not the main focus of the site.

[mrripleyhere]

<!-- s:listen: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/listen.gif" alt=":listen:" title="Listen" /><!-- s:listen: --> Dave: your absolutley right, I repent! now I'll just listen and learn. <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!-- s -->

[Dave]

I don't mean to sound mean.

There is a lot here on this site to learn from, many good people who are very wise, didn't want you to miss out of that.

[Paul Younan]

This guy can't stay on topic, can he? Also, notice the personal jab he took at my wife.....

Darrell Conder Answers Paul Younan


Paul, let me begin by complimenting you for living down to my expectations. Whether a Greek-New Testament believer, or one who extolls the supremacy of the Aramaic, you've proved that Christians are all cut from the same cloth. I refer to your friend Chris challenging me to a debate on your behalf, followed by the non-stop anti-Conder mud slinging on your forum, the rules you demanded that effectively stacked this exchange in your favor, and you booting my supporters from your forum and locking me out, even though I had never posted anything there. As you will soon see, none of this will matter. Greek or Aramaic, mud-slinging and underhanded tactics, the truth about your dead, diapered god on a stick and his corrupt book is easily found, for those with eyes to see and ears to hear.

From my history of the New Testament, you take exception to this quotation from the 14th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica: "Rabbula's revision is now used by both the great divisions of the Syriac-speaking Church: to distinguish it from the elaborate later revision of the (Jacobite) Old and New Testament it is usually called Peshitta, i.e. the simple version . . ."

You failed to cite the whole quotation from the Encyclopedia Britannica, which I will correct: "The mss. differ considerably in reading, and each has certainly been influenced by the Diatessaron [of Tatian], so that in Syriac-speaking lands about A.D. 400 the Gospel was extant as a Harmony and as ???separated Gospels,'. . . the single copies having many discordant readings, just as had been the case in Latin before Jerome. To remedy this, Rabbula, bishop of Edessa from 411 to 435, prepared a revised edition of the ???Separated Gospels,' freely correcting the text from Greek mss. such as were then current at Antioch: this edition he established by authority and suppressed the Diatessaron with such success that no Syriac copy of the Diatessaron survives, and of the unrevised version only Syr. S and C. Rabbula's revision is now used by both the great divisions of the Syriac-speaking Church: to distinguish it from the elaborate later revision of the (Jacobite) Old and New Testament it is usually called Peshitta, i.e. the simple version . . . The Peshitta has only the value of a post-Nicene revision." (14th ed., vol. 3, p. 517.)

Paul, neither of us are scholars. For our arguments, we have to rely on the work of men and women with a lifetime's experience in their respective fields. You criticize my sources as outdated, and false. You back this with a quotation from Dr. Bruce Metzger, who, I conceded, is a respected scholar in most Christian circles. The problem with your source is that Dr. Metzger is commenting on a subject for which there is no conclusive evidence, which means that he is offering his opinion based on the circumstantial arguments of others. This aside, you surely know that for every scholarly opinion there's another scholar waiting in the wings willing and ready to dispute. This is especially so in Christian studies.

Your dogmatic claim that Rabbula was not the translator of the present-day Peshitta is by no means certain, as we may ascertain from The Encyclopedia of Religions (edited by Mircea Eliade, New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan, 1995, vol 2, pp. 170-171), and other current religious references. But let's cut through this. I don't give a hoot who translated your "holy" book of mythology. Whether it was Rabbula or Donald Duck the results are the same! The Peshitta's history as outlined in The Encyclopedia of Religions, The Oxford Companion to the Bible (which is edited by your noted scholar, Dr. Bruce Metzger, p. 753), The Encyclopedia Americana, International Edition (Danbury, Conn.: 2002, vol. 5, pl 696), The Dictionary of the New Testament Background, editors Craig A. Evans, Stanley E. Porter (Leicester, England: InterVarsity Press, 2000, pp. 1154, 55), does not disprove Rabbula's authorship, nor prove it, which makes the origin of your "blessed" Peshitta an enigma shrouded in mystery, all of which makes a shambles for your claim for Aramaic primacy for the NT. But, I suspect you know this because by pointing out the minor point about Rabbula, you cloud the real issue.

Notice this from The Dictionary of the New Testament Background: "Diatessaron of Tatian. This harmony of the Gospels produced by Tatian about A.D. 170 became the Gospels of the Syriac-speaking church from the late second century until the mid-fifth century, when it was finally suppressed through the efforts of Rabbula, the bishop of Edessa . . . Besides the four Greek Gospels, Tatian apparently used a West Aramaic Gospel, as evidenced by the use of West Aramaic vocabulary . . . Old Syriac Gospels. Sometime in the third century, a Syriac scholar with a mediocre knowledge of Greek made an attempt to render the Greek Gospels into Syriac. He preserved much of the Diatessaron and followed it in using the OT Peshitta for OT quotations. It is represented by two manuscripts, the Curetonian and the Sinaitic. . . . New Testament Peshitta. Probably in the fourth century, another, more successful, attempt at rendering the Greek Gospels into Syriac was made. The translator used the four Greek Gospels and a revised text of the Diatessaron. He too followed Tatian in using the OT Peshitta for his OT quotations. . . . The NT Peshitta lacks 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude and Revelation. Early manuscripts omit Luke 22:17-18." (op. cit.)

Here's another quotation: "In due course, the rather free translation of the Old Syriac was revised on the basis of an early form of the Koine, or Byzantine, Greek text; this revision, eventually called the Peshitta (to distinguish it from the Harclean), emerged ca. 400 to become the standard New Testament text of the Syriac churches. The Peshitta covers the whole New Testament, apart from 2-3 John, 2 Peter, Jude, and Revelation (none of which formed part of the early Syriac canon)." Paul, this information is from Dr. Bruce Metzger, whom you quote (The Oxford Companion to the Bible, op. cit.), and reveals something of importance to a Jesus-loving, bible believing Christian, which you seem to be: Someone left out significant portions of "God's holy word" when they produced your Peshitta ??? an act that is condemned in your Peshitta: "And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his portion from the tree of life and from the holy city and from the things which are written in this book." (Rev. 22:19, Lamsa edition.) In other words, the missing books from your bible, combined with Revelation 22:19 proves that whoever translated your "holy book" could not have been inspired by Jesus Christ, or whatever you call this dead god in your Aramaic tongue.

Paul, the issue is not Rabbula, and you know it. He is a minor point. The issue is the language behind the Peshitta, which is Greek, and that leads us to the admitted fact that those MSS are a cesspool of contradictions! This is the consensus of current scholarship, as of 2002, and 2000. By the way, Paul, you will notice that history tells us, prior to the translation of the Peshitta, that the Eastern Christian churches were only using the Gospels, which makes a mockery of Jesus' command that Christians are to live by every word of God!

The entire history of the Peshitta, as outlined in any thorough, authoritative work, reveals the origins of the Peshitta to be anything but "holy." However, there is one thing of which we can be sure, and that is the petty bickering among your church's "holy" men over this "divine" book. I refer to the great schism in your church back in the fifth century which produced the Nestorians and the Jacobites, both groups coming out with their own version of Peshitta, which, by that time, was already a Greek-into-Aramaic mess. Paul, how do you explain this in light of the following promise: "For God is not a God of confusion but of peace, and he is in all churches of the saints." (I Cor 14:33, Lamsa edition)? If you believe that the bible is inspired, then you need only look at history to prove that your god of peace and harmony does not dwell in the world's thousands of conflicting Christian churches, which certainly includes your Church of the East!

Of course, I'm using George Lamsa's translation of the Peshitta, which I understand you denounce as corrupt (according to your compatriot, Chris Lancaster). You know what this means Paul? God must not have been with George Lamsa. Or, God is not with you, since you disagree with Lamsa (and, as we shall see in your disclaimer, your own church) and I Cor 14:33 condemns this! None of this bodes well for you and your fellow Aramaic enthusiasts considering the following command: "Now I beseech you, my brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to be of one accord, and let there be no divisions among you but be perfectly united in one mind and in one thought." (I Cor 1:10, Lamsa's Peshitta translation). The King James Version reads: "Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment."

Even if we concede that the New Testament was originally written in Aramaic, history tells us that the oldest Aramaic MSS were endlessly revised by unknown hands over the course of centuries, and when someone, or a group of your "holy" men, decided that the jumble had to be cleaned up, he or they produced the later MSS from which you now work your own brand of translating magic. More to the point, where did they get the MSS from which they worked? Again, history tells us it was from the jumble of fourth-fifth century New Testament Greek MSS, which is still the scholarly consensus, including Dr. Bruce Metzger.

Actually Paul, I must confess to wondering why you don't accept Lamsa's translation work, since in the preface he and his work are lauded by Mar Eshia Shimun, "by Grace, Catholicos Patriarch of the East in 1957" ??? who also takes the occasion to make the absurd statement that the Peshitta had come from the hand of the "blessed Apostles themselves" and handed down to him "without any change or revision"? I say "absurd" because the MSS used for Lamsa's translation work were produced 300-600 years after the time of the "blessed Apostles themselves", which means that old Mar Eshia Shimun was blowing hot ecclesiastical air since he had no evidence to back his statement! (I use the past-tense when speaking of the grand poobah of the East in 1957, since I assume that he has long departed to be with his dead god.)

Paul, I assume can you appreciate the confusion of those long-dead translators, since you posted the following disclaimer when offering up your own translation of the Peshitta: " This translation is not sanctioned by the Church of the East. This is a personal translation only, and all readers are encouraged to verify the work on their own. This translation has not been edited nor verified by anyone other than the author (who does not have official sanction for this work) and is likely to have numerous errors."

Bleedin' Jesus, Paul! Out of your own mouth comes the truth about the Peshitta! What we see here is a mirror of what you "holy" men have been doing for the past 5,000 years ??? purporting to speak for God. "Everyone else is wrong; follow me; I've got the truth; I've got the word of God!" How many billions of Chris Lancasters have followed such "holy" rhetoric to their doom? To put it simply Paul, I Corinthians 1:10 and 14:33 condemns you and your work, and the work of all those Peshitta charlatans who've gone before!

Let me ask you this: Why didn't your god simply make one perfect book for his creation? Why didn't he make it so simple that a babe could understand it? Why didn't he use some of his omnipotent magic to ensure its transmittal in the original language, and then make sure that language survived so that we wouldn't need you "expert" translators to tell us what the hell it says? I'll tell you why: Your god is no god, but a first-century A.D. man who is as dead as a door nail.

You write this to me: "It must have been that the Peshitta was a very ancient version and that because it was so old the common people within the Aramaic Church continued to be loyal to it - regardless of the factions into which they came to be bitterly divided after 431 A.D. - precisely during the episcopate of Rabbula."

What do you mean "It must have been that the Peshitta was a very ancient version"? Am I to accept your word for this ??? you, who are undertaking your own error-laden translation of an obscure, corrupt Aramaic translation of obscure, corrupt Greek MSS? Sorry Charlie, that won't do! The oldest MSS of the Peshitta dates from A.D. 463-464, which can't compare to the surviving Greek MSS of the New Testament (as corrupt as they are), and the scholarly consensus is that your "holy" book originated from translated Greek MSS. If I am wrong, then point me to the 30-40 A.D. Aramaic prototype. If you can't, then you are blowing hot air.

Speaking of "holy," let me ask you something here: In one of your posts to Laurel Browning you claim that God opened the womb of your barren wife after the grand poobah of the East prayed over her, and how that inspired you to go out and preach the superiority of the Peshitta over the Greek New Testament. I take it from this that you are a believer in Jesus Christ. I take it you believe he sits up in heaven directing human affairs, and especially directing the affairs of his church. Paul, why has your god failed so miserably to keep his holy word from corruption, especially since he supposedly commanded his faithful to live by "every word of God"? (Mat 4:4, Luke 4:4, etc.) Indeed, why has he allowed the Greek MSS to dominate the Christian Church for the past two thousand years, and, as a result, sent billions down the wrong road to salvation? If he is a fair, just god, and he is the same god who designed and created all things (John 1:1-3), then isn't he powerful enough to keep his holy word pure from the likes of the Roman/Greek church fathers, or from Rabbula, or indeed, from you, Paul Younan, and your own corrupt Aramaic translation? Or could it be that Jesus, who is the god of the Old Testament, sent his lying-spirit-servants to "inspire" his NT writers and translators? After all, he did this in the Old Testament so that he could torture and murder the confused recipients of his lies ??? a situation that certainly sums up the history of the Christian Church in both the East and the West! Oh, forgive me Paul, you had ruled that the Old Testament was off limits in this exchange, which means "every word of God" is not in your debating vocabulary.

To end this, I challenge you, Paul Younan, to quit hiding behind your translation smoke screen, and debate me on the real issue: Is the Peshitta the word of God, or is it from the pens of nameless, faceless Greek-inspired, Aramaic-speaking 1,500-year-old translator-corpses? How about it? Do you dare open the pages of your Peshitta to expose the truth?

P.S. I will add the following footnote to my New Testament history: It has been pointed out by an amateur Aramaic student (Paul Younan of <!-- w --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.Peshitta.org">http://www.Peshitta.org</a><!-- w -->) that since the 14th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica was published, some current New Testament scholars doubt Rabbula's work on the Peshitta. He is, in fact, correct. Although there is no solid evidence, circumstantial evidence has led many to suppose other, obscure hands produced the current edition of the Peshitta, while other scholars still hold that Rabbula was the translator. This author's opinion is thus: History shows that Rabbula was the driving force behind the thorough suppression of the Diatessaron of Tatian, which, if viewed logically, means he must have had another version ready to promote in its place, whether or not he was its translator. Nevertheless, I thank Paul for pointing out this minor update in the on-going Christian soap opera.

Darrell W. Conder for <!-- w --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.darrellwconder.com">http://www.darrellwconder.com</a><!-- w -->

[Paul Younan]

Dear Darrell,

Thank you for your reply. As much of it had nothing to do with the original point about Rabbula, it will suffice for me to say that I appreciate your footnote which states that the material in question was dated and inaccurate, according to the position of most pre-eminent linguistic scholars today.

I would like to continue on with this debate, if you will. I will not be sidetracked with your amatuerish attempts to draw me into a larger debate that I did not intend. I can understand your reasoning for attempting to do so, but realize that it will not work. Even if you publicly insult my wife. Your words speak volumes about your character, and I will let the readers decide for themselves what your intent was in even bringing that up in this debate which was supposed to be limited to your false claims regarding the Peshitta. You're not going to pull me into a wider debate, no matter how hard you try - so please, give it up!

Now that I have demonstrated that Rabbula did not produce the Peshitta, and even have you admitting that its production and transmission is clouded in mystery - I believe we can move on to another common misconception. As for Tatian's Aramaic Diatesseron being completely wiped out by Rabbula (who lived in the 5th century), are you willing to stand by that statement?

Regards,
Paul Younan

[drmlanc]

What a dumb@$$ this guy is.