How Christianity Became Pagan

[LegionOnomaMoi]

"Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani"

This is a quote in Aramaic -- meaning "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me" -- attributed in the New Testament to Jesus as he was crucified. In English translation, these words also comprise the beginning of the Twenty-Second Psalm.
Matthew 27:46 - ηλι ηλι λαμα σαβαχθανι (/eli eli lama sabachthani/, later Aramaic "E-lee e-lee l-maa saa-baach-taa-nee?") Matthew 27:46 (Lamsa translation)- ηλι ηλι λαμανα σαβαχθανι (/eli eli lamana sabachthani/, later Aramaic "E-lee e-lee l-maa-naa saa-baach-taa-nee?") The late Aramaic Bible researcher George Lamsa claimed that the traditional "forsaken" interpretation is a mistake in the Aramaic scribing that was transferred to later transcriptions. Lamsa claimed that "the correct translation from Aramaic should be "Eli, Eli, lemana shabakthani" or "My God, my God, for this [purpose] I was spared!"

Two issues:

1) שבקתני/sabachthani means "you abandoned me". So apart from anything else, George Lamsa's conclusion based on his claim that lama should be lamana cannot even in theory be correct, as the word he's claiming was corrupted doesn't mean either "abandoned" or "spared" but is the "why"/question part of the clause.

2) The transliteration in Matthew is followed by a translation in Greek:
τοῦτ’ ἔστιν, Θεέ μου θεέ μου, ἱνατί με ἐγκατέλιπες/tout' estin, "thee mou, thee mou, inati me egkatelipes"/ "which means [lit. "exists as" or "is"] for what reason [lit. "thing"] do you abandon me?"

In a less literal and better translation, "for what reason did you forsake me" or "why did..."

Mark is even more definitive here, as the author follows the transliteration with:
ὅ ἐστιν μεθερμηνευόμενον Ὁ θεός μου ὁ θεός μου, εἰς τί ἐγκατέλιπές με/ho estin methermeneuomenon ho theos mou ho theos mou, eis ti egkatelipes me/ "which, being translated, is "my god, my god, with respect to what thing do you forsake me?"

(or, again, "why have you forsaken me?"). So the authors actually tell us what the transliterated Aramaic actually means. Any alternative translation of the Aramaic, then, has to be followed by an explanation of the Greek which the authors supply as a translation in the text.

Rocco Errico writes about the Aramaic spoken in the recent The Passion of the Christ film: "The Aramaic text does not say, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" [Jesus'] words were not a question but a declaration: "My God, my God, for this I was spared! [or "This was my destiny]"..."Interestingly, the recent TV movie Judas portrayed these words correctly."

And this is just incorrect. Modern English relies (at least in written form) on punctuation and word order to distinguish things like questions from declarations, or commands from requests. Greek and Hebrew, on the other hand, rely heavily on morphology. English has all but lost its case system (all that remains is the subject object distinction in things like personal pronouns, such as I vs. me), has merely a basic singular vs. plural for verbs, and the vanishing, barely recognized "subjunctive" in phrases such as "if I were you..." rather than the oft used and incorrect "if I was you..." In both Hebrew and Greek, verbs and nouns have multiple forms to indicate what English would with additional "helping" verbs (e.g, "would", "might", "should"), extra words, and word order.

A "declaration" has a grammatical and technical meaning in linguistics and grammar. So does a question. They are both usually called verbal moods, the former the "declarative mood" and the latter the "interrogative" mood. Distinctions between questions and declarations aren't simply about what words are in the text, but rather the form in which those words appear. If you look at the standard English reference grammar for classical Greek (Smyth-Messing), the section on verb morphology shows the "normal" inflection paradigm for Greek verbs (i.e., all the different forms) using the verb λύω/luo. It goes on for several pages, because there are over a hundred different forms in which this verb can appear (e.g., first person subjunctive aorist passive, or 2nd person plural optative future middle).

Biblical Hebrew is at least as morphologically complex (I'd say more), although it lacks the rather annoying degree of polysemy in Greek as well as what is probably the most intricate particle system of any language.

The point of going into this amount of detail (and believe me, this is nothing) is to impress upon you the difference between looking definitions of words in Strong's or something, and what the text actually says. When John the Baptist says he isn't worthy to "untie" Jesus' shoes in Luke, the Greek word translated as "untie" (or "unloose") is λύω/lou. In a different form, or used in combination with certain words, it can mean everything from "pay wages" to "destroy" or "kill".

Among most Christians the former interpretation is still believed to be correct, and the newer Lamsa interpretation, largely unknown to most Christians, and may be considered unusual and even heretical.

Modern linguistics grew out of biblical studies. The tools used to increase our understanding of biblical languages were borrowed by guys like Bopp and Grimm who founded comparative (and Indo-European) linguistics. Which means that the study of biblical languages from a scientific perspective (inasmuch as early modern science can be called science) predates linguistics and has continued for the past several centuries. Every years new monographs, edited volumes, and journal articles on things the use of a single word in one of Paul's letters or the relationship between the use of a particular verbal mood in some NT text should be considered in light of some findings in recently recovered papyri. Groups like the SBL or Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas are not only large, but have a much broader base of readers for the various monograph series and journals they publish.

So without even factoring in classicists and experts in similar fields (whose research frequently overlaps with that from biblical scholars), the chances that these thousands of doctorates from around the world have, for the last 300 years, continued to miss so basic an issue as the one you describe is nil.

 

[sojourner]

Godnotgod:

Show me where this statement is a reflection of his 'purpose' in dying and rising.

I didn't say there was a "purpose." I think he knew he would die, primarily because he knew what he was teaching would run afoul of the powers-that-be. "Purpose of dying" seems to indicate substitutionary atonement, which I think is crap.

 

[godnotgod]

So without even factoring in classicists and experts in similar fields (whose research frequently overlaps with that from biblical scholars), the chances that these thousands of doctorates from around the world have, for the last 300 years, continued to miss so basic an issue as the one you describe is nil.

The majority of biblical scholars are Greek NT primacists, so that would follow. Lamsa and others belong to a minority group of Pe****ta primacists, whose view that the NT was written in Aramaic first, is rejected by the majority Greek primacists.

 

[godnotgod]

Godnotgod:

I didn't say there was a "purpose." I think he knew he would die, primarily because he knew what he was teaching would run afoul of the powers-that-be. "Purpose of dying" seems to indicate substitutionary atonement, which I think is crap.

But substitutionary atonement is the majority view of orthodox Christians' round the world. You hear it everywhere:

"Jesus died [ie; shed his blood] for YOUR sins".

["...and don't you forget it!....or else!"]

It is to this doctrine of the sacrificial shedding of blood for sin redemption that this topic is addressed. Without this doctrine in place, there is no re-opening of the Gates of Paradise that Adam and Eve closed with their 'sin', an indelible sin which was passed down to all of mankind, which could only be redeemed by the blood of Jesus, the Lamb of God.

I think it is crap as well, therefore this topic, but my reason may differ from yours, in that I see it as a device to make people feel indebted for something that they can never repay, and therefore, to control them, making sure that they don't awaken spiritually.

 

[godnotgod]

So his overturning of the tables in the Temple was an example of vegetarian rage?

No. His outrage was because he saw the sale of animals for blood sacrifice as an abomination in his Father's house.

That Jesus was against animal sacrifice, the incident in the Temple by no means proves. Even if he were against ritual animal sacrifice to God, it wouldn't establish that he abstained from meat during ordinary meals.

Yeshu was a Jewish mystic, belonging to the Nazarene sect. Being a mystic, he would have nurtured inner spirituality, which expresses compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings. Superstitious belief in blood as the life force and therefore it's sacrifice as a means of sin redemption would not have been a part of his doctrine; instead, the life force would be understood as the breath.

Are you aware that the Gospels record Jesus eating the Passover?

No.

 

[sojourner]

But substitutionary atonement is the majority view of orthodox Christians' round the world.

You might be surprised...
But even if it were, it still does not constitute "Christianity." It only constitutes "a particular theological construct" of Christianity. It's like saying, "all Muslims were involved in 9/11," just because a particular, loud and socially unacceptable group made it seem so.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

The majority of biblical scholars are Greek NT primacists, so that would follow. Lamsa and others belong to a minority group of Pe****ta primacists, whose view that the NT was written in Aramaic first, is rejected by the majority Greek primacists.

That isn't a minority group. It's a fringe position which exists almost entirely outside academic circles (I don't know of any scholars of NT or Biblical studies who hold this view). Lamsa is a native speaker of a language close to the Aramaic of Jesus' day, but he is neither a specialist in Aramaic, nor in Semitic languages, and he has no training in either NT or Biblical studies.

And once again, the word he claims should be changed (lema to lemana) isn't the word for "abandon" but the word translated as "why".

 

[Jordan St. Francis]

Yeshu was a Jewish mystic, belonging to the Nazarene sect. Being a mystic, he would have nurtured inner spirituality, which expresses compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings. Superstitious belief in blood as the life force and therefore it's sacrifice as a means of sin redemption would not have been a part of his doctrine; instead, the life force would be understood as the breath.

What's your source here?

 

[godnotgod]

You might be surprised...
But even if it were, it still does not constitute "Christianity." It only constitutes "a particular theological construct" of Christianity. It's like saying, "all Muslims were involved in 9/11," just because a particular, loud and socially unacceptable group made it seem so.

What constitutes any religious belief system is that enough people believe it's doctrines to be true, whether they are or not.

Jesus is the divine being that 'takes on the sins of the world', and in so doing, becomes the scapegoat and then the sacrificial Lamb of God. In psychological terms, I believe this is known as 'transference'. The same psychology is present in the Jewish system of animal sacrifice, wherein the sinner firmly believes that his guilt and/or sin has been transferred onto a host, either animal, or, in this case, a spotless divine host 'worthy' of being offered up in the eyes of God.

Christian doctrine further states that both the historical and literal Jewish scapegoat and Paschal lamb are prefigurements of Jesus.

So Jesus as sacrificial host is not merely another 'theological construct', but instead a core, if not THE core, doctrinal belief without which Christianity would not be what it is. Without the shedding of divine blood there is no sin redemption.

Gnostic Christianity, however, is quite another thing.

 

[godnotgod]

That isn't a minority group. It's a fringe position which exists almost entirely outside academic circles (I don't know of any scholars of NT or Biblical studies who hold this view). Lamsa is a native speaker of a language close to the Aramaic of Jesus' day, but he is neither a specialist in Aramaic, nor in Semitic languages, and he has no training in either NT or Biblical studies.

NT 'scholars' are [allegedly] about the teachings of Jesus, who himself was a member of a fringe group, and who held no academic credentials of any kind as far as we know, and whose message was directed at the common man. This is about spiritual understanding, not academic minutiae. Jesus's message was often misunderstood, because it is outside the realm of rational understanding. Academic knowledge provides only partial leverage in coming to grips with the teachings.

But that is besides the point, which is the question as to whether Pe****ta primacists have a valid argument as pertains to the NT being written in Aramaic prior to it having been written in Greek. Greek NT scholars have always maintained that the Greek NT was transcribed from the Aramaic oral tradition, and that the Pe****ta was translated from the Greek NT back into Aramaic, which alone is an argument that makes little sense.

Sometimes it takes an untrained [ie; 'unconditioned'] mind to see what the so-called 'expert' cannot see.

Who better to interpret what someone from the fringe is saying than another fringe member?


Fringe

Someone who is an outsider, unimportant, on the periphery of a group, a nobody.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/

 

[godnotgod]

What's your source here?

'Source' for what, specifically?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

NT 'scholars' are [allegedly] about the teachings of Jesus, who himself was a member of a fringe group, and who held no academic credentials of any kind as far as we know, and whose message was directed at the common man. This is about spiritual understanding, not academic minutiae.

How is this not "academic minutiae":

Lamsa claimed that "the correct translation from Aramaic should be "Eli, Eli, lemana shabakthani" or "My God, my God, for this [purpose] I was spared!" or "...for such a purpose have you kept me!") According to Lamsa's translation, that rather than a "loss of faith" Christ meant, to say "so this is my destiny."


Rocco Errico writes about the Aramaic spoken in the recent The Passion of the Christ film: "The Aramaic text does not say, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" [Jesus'] words were not a question but a declaration: "My God, my God, for this I was spared! [or "This was my destiny]"..."Interestingly, the recent TV movie Judas portrayed these words correctly."

It all rests upon an variation of a single word and the semantics of an aramaic "declaration" reconstructed from a single Greek line in two gospels. You can't get much more minute than that.

Jesus's message was often misunderstood, because it is outside the realm of rational understanding. Academic knowledge provides only partial leverage in coming to grips with the teachings.

I've no problem with that. I do, however, have a problem with bad scholarship. What I responded to was not beyond or outside the "realm of rational understanding" but was intended by Lamsa to be a rational, logical reason for understanding the Aramaic behind two lines in the NT in a different light: lama ought to be lemana and therefore the sense should be something other than the typical translation. What part of that is "outside the realm of rational understanding"?

But that is besides the point, which is the question as to whether Pe****ta primacists have a valid argument as pertains to the NT being written in Aramaic prior to it having been written in Greek. Greek NT scholars have always maintained that the Greek NT was transcribed from the Aramaic oral tradition, and that the Pe****ta was translated from the Greek NT back into Aramaic, which alone is an argument that makes little sense.

First, there are not "Greek NT scholars" (unless you mean NT scholars from Greece). There are classicists, NT scholars, biblical scholars, historians, near-eastern specialists, scholars of ancient Judaism, even sociologists of religion, which make up the different backgrounds of people who have, for one reason or another, made the texts of the NT, early Christianity, Jesus, and/or other areas relevant to this issue their object of study. Some are better acquainted with semitic languages than they are with Greek, while others are well-acquainted not only with the varieties of Aramaic of the first century but the Greek language from that of Homer to that of Eusebius.

Second, the NT wasn't "transcribed" from some Aramaic oral tradition. The consensus position is that Jesus spoke Aramaic as a first language (whether he was familiar with Greek, and to what extent, is debated) and that most of his initial followers did as well. However, it is also common knowledge that Greek was the lingua franca of the Eastern Roman empire, which is why we have thousands of scraps written in Greek from Egypt, which consist of everything from private letters to records of sales. So while there isn't a consensus as to whether or not the oral tradition behind the gospels existed in Greek during Jesus' life (as some suggest), it is certainly the consensus position that very, very, quickly whatever sayings, stories, and so forth which were being passed around after Jesus' death were told in Greek. Just look at Paul: his letters are in Greek, not Aramaic. Not only did Christianity grow primarily through the conversion of non-Jews (for whom Greek was either a primary or a secondary language, and Aramaic uncomprehensible), but there was a large portion of Jews who knew Greek better than Aramaic and even many who did not know any Semitic language. That's why, before Jesus was even born, the Hebrew scriptures had been translated into Greek for Jews who spoke Greek as a first language.

Third, the Pe****ta isn't written in "Aramaic" but Syriac, a dialect of "Late Aramaic" which began to be used around the beginning of the 3rd century. The dialects of Aramaic spoken in Jesus' day are referred to as "Middle Aramaic". For an introduction to semitic languages and their classification, the edited volume The Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia (Cambridge University Press, 2008) is fine. For a fuller treatment, but still general, there is Semitic Languages: Outline of a Comparative Grammar (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta) by Edward Lipiński.



But here's the real problem. We don't have a Pe****ta or the Pe****ta, but rather manuscripts (some more complete than others), the earliest of which date from the 6th or 7th century CE. This is a problem for a number of reasons, including the fact that these manuscripts aren't all written in the same language. One of the leading authorities of the 20th century on the Pe****ta texts, Jan Joosten, begins one of his studies ("West Aramaic Elements in the Old Syriac and Pe****ta Gospels") with the following: "The attentive reader of the early Syriac translations of the Gospels is confronted with a remarkable phenomenon: some of the words and expressions contained in these Syriac texts are representative not of classical Syriac but other Aramaic dialects."

In fact, there is so much variation in our manuscripts that we don't have really know what the "classical Syriac" Pe****ta looked like, where it came from, or even what "Old Testament" texts were used for it. The only really certainty is the division between an "eastern" tradition, with its own internal language varations, and the "western" tradition (again, with internal variations). The problematic differences between and within our extant manuscripts make it difficult to sort out the various dialectal influences and the influences of other languages, including non-semitic.

Guess what one of those lanugages probably was? Greek. Lund's 1989 dissertation The Influence of the Septuagint on the Pe****ta (not the first work on the issue, but anything before it is either covered by Lund or already shown to be incorrect) is not the most recent demonstration of the dependence on some of the Pe****ta in general (not particular manuscripts) on the LXX. There are, for example, places where Greek words are transliterated in the Old Testament portions "Even in cases where S [the Pe****ta] had a good Syriac equivalent available" (p. 416).

However, regardless of whether Lund and others before and after him are correct here, the fact is that
1) We don't actually have "the Pe****ta" but manuscripts which reflect the influence of different later Syriac dialects (among other influences), so much so that we can actually find places in the manuscripts we do have which clearly differentiate them from classical Syriac. In John 3:18 the Pe****ta has bra bhyr' while the Greek texts have of tou monogenous huiou/"the only begotten son". The problem is this isn't classical Syriac, but rather a later Western aramaic which mistakenly inserts the wording from Luke.

2) The Aramaic Jesus spoke was not classical Syriac, so even if we had the original classical Syriac texts, it still wouldn't change the fact that Jesus didn't speak Syriac of any kind.

Sometimes it takes an untrained [ie; 'unconditioned'] mind to see what the so-called 'expert' cannot see.

How can such a mind (untrained) "see" the relationship between manuscripts written in a language she or he can't read and an earlier form of the language she or he also can't read, and then relate that "reconstructed" earlier text to yet another language (Greek) she or he can't read, and compare all of these with a non-existant "text" of Jesus' Aramaic (yet one more language she or he can't read)?

Spiritual understanding is one thing. Making claims about languages you can't understand isn't "spiritual understanding" it's just ignorance.

Who better to interpret what someone from the fringe is saying than another fringe member?

It's a fringe position that the Holocaust never happened. It's also a fringe position that there are no homosexuals in Iran. Does that mean in order to understand the Holocaust or homosexuality in Iran we need Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

 

[godnotgod]

But here's the real problem. We don't have a Pe****ta or the Pe****ta, but rather manuscripts (some more complete than others), the earliest of which date from the 6th or 7th century CE.

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The Khaburis Manuscript is a copy of a second century New Testament, which was written in approximately 165 AD (internally documented as 100 years after the great persecution of the Christians by Nero, in 65AD). Carbon dating has found this copy of the New Testament to be approximately 1,000 years old. Given its origins, this would make it a copy of the oldest known New Testament manuscript. It was scribed on lamb parchment and hand bound between olive wood covers adorned with gold clasps, hinges and corner-brackets. The scribe would have been in ancient Nineveh (present-day Mosul, Iraq), according to the Colophon signed by a Bishop of the Church at Nineveh. In the Colophon, the Bishop certified (with his inverted signature and seal) that the Khaburis was a faithful copy of the second century original. Of particular interest, is the fact that the Khaburis is written entirely in Aramaic, the tongue of Y’Shua, otherwise popularly known as Jesus, the Nazarite.[/FONT]
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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The original second century manuscript, as well as the Khaburis, were scribed in the ancient Estrangelo script. The script which was developed at the School of Edessa (100AD) in order to record the Teachings of Y’Shua. The word, Estrangelo, actually means “to write the Revealed Message.” Prior to this script, as in the older Syriac and Hebrew writings, ancient Aramaic used only consonants as a form of shorthand. This became a challenge for the early Christians, as the Word spread out from its origin in time and place. To preserve accuracy in comprehension of the message, the writings needed to clearly represent the pronunciation of the vowels in each word. So, in Estrangelo, vowel points were added to clarify the pronunciations, and meanings. It appears that Estrangelo was the first such Semitic writing to include these vowel points. Translations of the New Testament into Greek, then Latin, then Middle English, and then Modern English progressively lost more and more of the nuances of the Aramaic. Until this past century, those Western languages/cultures could not express certain concepts core to the Aramaic understandings of the mind. With the translation of this manuscript using these re-discovered understandings, entire concepts that seemed, at times, baffling, become crystal clear. The message in Y'Shua's Teachings becomes even more logical, and ever more centered around the concepts of Love and Forgiveness.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]http://aramaicpe****ta.com/AramaicNTtools/Khabouris/intro.htm

NOTE: This is a side-topic deviating away from the main topic here. With your permission, I would like to create a new topic devoted to this subject, and carry your last two posts as well as mine there so it can continue.
[/FONT]

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The Khaburis Manuscript is a copy of a second century New Testament, which was written in approximately 165 AD (internally documented as 100 years after the great persecution of the Christians by Nero, in 65AD).

[/FONT]

Meanwhile, we have a piece of the gospel of John written in Greek which is dated to before the time the actual manuscript (not the copy) is supposed to date from. P52 is dated to c. 125 CE. So why do you refer this copy of a manuscript supposed to have been written around the second half of the 2nd century as if it is of some great import, when we have an actual greek papyri fragment of John written in Greek which predates this?

And as long as we're going with whatever google turns up rather than academic sources, I won't waste my time citing and quoting when I can just do the same:
"The Khaboris Codex is a tenth-century codex (that is, it is in a form like that of a modern book, rather than in a scroll) that contains the New Testament written in the Estrangelo Syriac script. It seems to be the most popular Syriac manuscript on the internet. It is a pretty manuscript, and it is very carefully copied, but unfortunately it has almost no real value for the investigation of the history and development of the Pe****ta text. It is rather evidence of the New Testament text of the Pe****ta after that text had already become standardized and fixed in the Syrian church."
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from "Important Manuscripts and Editions of the Pe****ta"
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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Carbon dating has found this copy of the New Testament to be approximately 1,000 years old.[/FONT]

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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Meanwhile, the Codex Sinaiticus contains the complete new testament and dates from the 4th century. So while we have thousands of greek manuscripts, what do we have for the Pe****ta? ~350, most from the 5th and 6th century.[/FONT]

Also, they aren't written in Old syriac, but we do have two old syriac manuscripts, also from around the 5th century. In fact, the Pe****ta is only one of four different types of Syriac manuscripts. And as I said before, it is neither in the Aramaic which Jesus spoke, nor is it the result of a clear, coherent transmission (as, apart from differences between the manuscripts in general, there is a basic "easetern" vs. "western" tradition).
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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Given its origins, this would make it a copy of the oldest known New Testament manuscript.[/FONT]

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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]And how do we know what its origins are? What is this "text" that dates from ~165 which the Khaburis codex is supposed to be a copy of, and how do we know of it? Because of a colophon?[/FONT]
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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Of particular interest, is the fact that the Khaburis is written entirely in Aramaic, the tongue of Y’Shua, otherwise popularly known as Jesus, the Nazarite.[/FONT]

Again:

The fundamental problem with "Pe****ta primacy" advocates is this treatment of Aramaic as a single language. That's like saying that this form of English:
Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum

is the same English used today. Or that the Greek of Homer is the same spoken in Greece today (it isn't, and native Greek speakers can't read classical Greek without being trained just like everyone else).

Old Syriac is not the language of Jesus, and neither is the later Syriac of the Pe****ta. [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT]
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NOTE: This is a side-topic deviating away from the main topic here. With your permission, I would like to create a new topic devoted to this subject, and carry your last two posts as well as mine there so it can continue.

[/FONT]

Sure, as long as there is a point in doing so. In other words, you can continue to cite websites which say things about languages you don't know and texts you can't read, while ignoring the sources I use including those which have nothing to do with the NT but concern linguistics and the classification of Semitic languages, in which case discussion is fruitless. If you don't know the languages, you haven't read the scholarship behind textual criticism and the work on the various manuscripts themselves, and you don't think that there is a difference between finding websites vs. reading academic literature such that despite the fact that specialists on Semitic languages make it unbelievably obvious this idea of an "original Aramaic" of Jesus is represented by a text written in a dialect which didn't exist until long after he was dead, then what's the point?

 

[godnotgod]

[/size][/font]

Meanwhile, we have a piece of the gospel of John written in Greek which is dated to before the time the actual manuscript (not the copy) is supposed to date from. P52 is dated to c. 125 CE. So why do you refer this copy of a manuscript supposed to have been written around the second half of the 2nd century as if it is of some great import, when we have an actual greek papyri fragment of John written in Greek which predates this?

My post was primarily in response to your misleading statement that:

"We don't have a Pe****ta or the Pe****ta, but rather manuscripts (some more complete than others), the earliest of which date from the 6th or 7th century CE."

...which leaves out the fact that it is an internally verified copy of a second century original. This represents a complete Pe****ta New Testament of 22 books. Is there a complete Greek NT, either copy or original, that predates the alleged original Khabouris Codex, and which the Khabouris would have been translated from, as Greek NT primacists would maintain?

As I understand it, the Estrangelo script was developed specifically to enhance understanding of Aramaic scripture that was already in existence. As previously pointed out from Stephen Silver who transcribed the text:

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"Prior to this script, as in the older Syriac and Hebrew writings, ancient Aramaic used only consonants as a form of shorthand. This became a challenge for the early Christians, as the Word spread out from its origin in time and place. To preserve accuracy in comprehension of the message, the writings needed to clearly represent the pronunciation of the vowels in each word. So, in Estrangelo, vowel points were added to clarify the pronunciations, and meanings. It appears that Estrangelo was the first such Semitic writing to include these vowel points.[/FONT]"


Khabouris Codex Introduction

 

[godnotgod]

How is this not "academic minutiae":

It all rests upon an variation of a single word and the semantics of an aramaic "declaration" reconstructed from a single Greek line in two gospels. You can't get much more minute than that.

'Minutiae' is defined as:

A small or trivial detail

If the subject matter were, say, which plant the dye in the thread used in a garment at the time of Jesus were, we might call it 'minutiae'. I would hardly call the words Jesus spoke from the cross a 'trivial matter', so trying to determine exactly what was said is of prime importance.

 

[Jordan St. Francis]

Originally Posted by Jordan St. Francis
What's your source here?

'Source' for what, specifically?

For this:

Yeshu was a Jewish mystic, belonging to the Nazarene sect. Being a mystic, he would have nurtured inner spirituality, which expresses compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings. Superstitious belief in blood as the life force and therefore it's sacrifice as a means of sin redemption would not have been a part of his doctrine; instead, the life force would be understood as the breath.

What in the Gospels suggests Jesus was a Jewish mystic, that he harboured compassion for all sentient beings, that he understood belief in the life force of blood to be superstition, and that the life force consequently was breath?

 

[godnotgod]

For this:

What in the Gospels suggests Jesus was a Jewish mystic?

Many passages.

"The Kingdom of God is within you"

"My kingdom is not of this world"

"In my Father's house there are many rooms"

Mystic:
a person who claims to attain, or believes in the possibility of attaining, insight into mysteries transcending ordinary human knowledge, as by direct communication with the divine or immediate intuition in a state of spiritual ecstasy.

Dictionary.com

Primarily, a mystic is one who seeks the divine within oneself. Jesus referred to himself as the divine nature itself, ie; "I AM".

A Nazarene was a mystic of the Jewish sect of the Nazarenes. Jesus is referred to as a Nazarene.

The mystical view naturally leads to compassion for all sentient beings, contact with the breath as consciousness itself, and an abhorrence of blood sacrifice as a means of dissolution of guilt/shame, etc. Mystical practice involves seeing into the true nature of reality, rather than belief in a doctrine such as blood sacrifice for sin redemption. Therefore, a mystic would tend to see directly into the true nature of his karma-driven path and how it brought him to the place he now finds himself in as a means of resolution, rather than to indulge in a belief in some superstitious mumbo jumbo about bloodshed as a means of redemption. That is purely an egoic endeavor, where a self is imagined that is in need of such redemption.

As far as I know, most of the mystical branches of orthodoxy, such as Zen, Yoga, Sufism, Kabbalism, Taoism, and Gnosticim involve attention to the breath. It is interesting to note that the ancient Greek word for 'spirit' was 'pneuma', which is the root word for words such as 'pneumonia' and 'pneumatic', but which has been eviscerated of its original spiritual meaning and significance by modern scientific views.

 

[godnotgod]

It's a fringe position that the Holocaust never happened. It's also a fringe position that there are no homosexuals in Iran. Does that mean in order to understand the Holocaust or homosexuality in Iran we need Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

Let's not carry the use of logic to the point of being ridiculous, shall we?

Here is a statement from one member of the Aramaic primacy group you refer to as belonging to a fringe:

".....of the thousands of poetic verses in the Bible, none rhyme in Greek or any other language and yet all rhyme in Aramaic. Surely to consider this coincidence is preposterous."

Victor Alexander

http://www.v-a.com/bible/aramaic.html


Other Pe****ta researchers have made the same observation. How do you account for this?

In addition, you had compared the number of Greek manuscripts as far outnumbering the Pe****ta texts, as if that were of some import. However, the Greek manuscripts are full of errors and omissions and differences, while the Pe****ta texts, though fewer, all match each other in the area of 99.x%!

 

[Ingledsva]

An interesting discussion on Mat 27:46. One can see with just a Strong's that Lamsa is correct and the English translation is wrong. I've included the verse with Strong's numbers for anyone that wishes to look it up.

Mat 27:46 andG1161 aboutG4012 theG3588 ninthG1766 hourG5610 JesusG2424 criedG310 with a loudG3173 voice,G5456 saying,G3004 Eli,G2241 Eli,G2241 lamaG2982 sabachthani?G4518 that is to say,G5123 MyG3450 God,G2316 myG3450 God,G2316 whyG2444 hast thou forsakenG1459 me?G3165

The problem is that not understanding - they chose the negative of the words. "Lama" is being translated "why" in the negative = why did you forsake me. It should be "why" as in "This is WHY" = for this REASON.

"Sabachthani" is also being shown in the negative -" left" - as in abandoned. It should be "left" as in "PLACED" for a purpose. The added Greek makes this clear -

ινατι με εγκατελιπες


In other words we can see for ourselves that Lamsa is right. It should read something like;

My God, My God For this REASON/event was I placed (born.)


It is stupid to say that he knew what was to happen - and orchestrated the last events to lead to his death - and then when it happens - to suddenly ask why he is being forsaken by God!