A topic arose in another thread which quickly became more off-topic than on, and I had intended to just leave things as they were. And I am to some extent doing this, despite starting this thread. I say this because the reason for this thread comes not from the discussion in another, but from a realization I had during and after the back-and-forth about the Pe****ta.
The topic here is the idea that the New Testament Pe****ta is. But first I need to introduce the claim I'm arguing against, using the following quote frequently found on various websites:
Basically, "Pe****ta primacy" holds that the NT wasn't originally written in Greek. Instead, it was translated into Greek from Aramiac documents which were preserved in a bible called the Pe****ta.
I knew this idea was around, but until my recent exchange I did not know how pervasive the idea is on the web, and in what ways. The deciding factor behind my decision to start this thread was not Pe****ta primacy per se, but rather what I learned about the touted Khabouris Codex, which alone seems to have created new versions of Aramaic primacy (see e.g., the Heartland site).
I would like to think that I am usually an open-minded, fair individual and that I make a point of constantly questioning and re-evaluating my own views. However, apart from the fairly universal causes behind judgmental, irrational criticisms of other individuals or ideas (e.g,. bad mood, exhaustion, illness, mood-altering substances like coffee or alcohol, etc.), there are certain things which tend to irritate me. Apart from the sound of someone chewing with mouth open, they only thing I can think of is the one relevant here: when someone displays a dogmatic, irrational, and baseless attachment to a particular understanding of some technical aspect of some research, field, or similar component of academia which is not only due to the stubborn refusal to research the issue, but makes claims about technical arguments which the individual cannot even in principle evaluate.
The easiest examples are those which involve certain science research, as much of this depends heavily upon a rather sophisticated mathematical background most do not possess. "But only slightly less well known is this": people talking about text, literature, or written work which is composed in a language they can't read yet which they feel confident making claims about. And I do not mean making claims about translations, or based on translations, but rather making claims about some property/meaning in the relevant document(s) which is based on assertions about the proper way to interpret or understand the language(s) they can't read.
Pe****ta primacy is such an example.
But what is the Pe****ta? The way it is described on the countless sights, blogs, posts, etc. (not to mention entire books and various papers), one would get the impression that it is a cohesive, single bible (or at least NT), which has existed along side the Greek texts, yet is written in Aramaic, the language Jesus almost certainly spoke.
In reality, the only part of this which is true is that Jesus did almost certainly speak Aramaic. There is no the Pe****ta, at least in the sense of some cohesive collection dating back to around Jesusu' day.
Textual critics rely mainly on the thousands of Greek witnesses to the NT (a "witness" in this sense is anything from a papyri scrap to a quote by an early Christian author to a complete or almost complete bible). Or, more accurately, they rely on certain generally considered superior witnesses, which the others can be checked against (and vice versa). In addition, however, textual critics rely on NT texts written in Latin, Gothic, and other languages as well.
Without getting into the issues of using a translation to support one variation vs. another, we can simply see how these manuscripts are generally classified (or organized). For example, the "Latin" manuscripts are divided into two main sub-groups: copies of the Vulgate and "Old Latin" manuscripts. Both are written in Latin, of course, but the former (at least largely) the work of Jerome and those who copied his translation. Nonetheless, this category of texts is still further divided because of inevitable copying errors which were repeated faithfully in one set of copies, and some variation consistent to another. And as we have about 9,000 vulgate manuscripts, we must focus on some of the most complete and early codices which are are distinct enough from one another but are sufficiently close to a diverse subset within the thousands of manuscripts such that we can easily check whether a given manuscript probably relied on one of the "main" codices.
The "Old Latin" manuscripts, on the other hand, are far feweer and are divided mainly by region of origin.
The Pe****ta fits into a similar classification schema. And here's the first rather important point: websites all over the place frequently use the word Aramaic, whether describing the language of the Pe****ta, or the training (or native language) of some person responsible for a translation (e.g., Dr. George Lamsa, who is described as a "native Aramaic speaker"), or Jesus, as if we're dealing with the same language in all cases. To begin to address that little problem, we have only to look at how the Pe****ta fits into the our collection of NT manuscripts.
First, the Pe****ta isn't one "text" the way that the Codex Sinaiticus is, or even the way that the Vulgate (with the thousands of representative manuscripts) is. It isn't simply that there are multiple different manuscripts of which show multiple variations. Instead, Pe****ta manuscripts aren't initially divided into different scribal traditions, or by dialectical differences, or similar methods. Instead, they are divided in that "Pe****ta" can refer to to entirely different sets of manuscripts "groups". Why? Because there is an "Old Testament" Pe****ta and a seperate (but later combined) New Testament Pe****ta. Not only that, but there isn't exactly a clear distinction between what manuscripts constitute the OT Pe****ta and which should be otherwise categorized. This is due largely to the Leiden publication of the OT Pe****ta and the lack of any documentation behind which manuscripts were included. In fact, an ongoing area of debate is what actually constitutes the "OT Pe****ta" and what are simply manuscripts of the "Syriac bible". We do have "old syriac" gospel witnesses which are distinct from the Pe****ta NT texts. It is also true that we have clear evidence for a distinct composition over a rather lengthy period of time and in various places by various scribes of what is called the "OT Pe****ta" (among other titles). However, what we don't know is
1) How the "Pe****ta", understood as the various manuscripts which appear in the 5th and 6th centuries, are related to what are referred to as the "OT Pe****ta" (i.e., the Syriac texts used in the composition of the Pe****ta manuscripts). In other words, the "Pe****ta" which includes both the later NT syriac manuscripts along with what are clearly translations from a different time (this we know from references to the texts, not the texts themselves) of Hebrew into Syriac, is supposed to be distinguished not just from the "Old Syriac" gospels, but also from other biblical "Syriac" texts in general (e.g., the Philoxenian & Harklean versions). We know that the scribes behind the NT Pe****ta relied on earlier Syriac translations of the OT, but we don't know what constitutes the "Pe****ta" OT syriac version versus some other.
2) What the OT Pe****ta was translated from. Laying aside the problem of what the Old Syriac OT is in relation to the OT Pe****ta, there is still the issue of how the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Syriac. The relationship between the Pe****ta and the Targumin, for example, seems to indicate that the former relied on the later. However, a good argument can be (and has been) made that the Proverbs Targum relies on the Pe****ta, giving us an exception. A much larger issue, however, is that for the past century there have repeatedly been studies published arguing that the OT Pe****ta relies (at least in places) on the Greek Septuagint, rather than Hebrew, Aramaic, or Syriac.
3) We don't to to what extent, given the almost certain reliance of the OT Pe****ta on Targumin and possible or likely reliance on the Greek LXX, the OT Pe****ta is related to the Masoretic (Hebrew) version.
4) And finally, just to complete the mess, we don't actually know how to relate the various manuscripts which fall under various collections referred to as the "Pe****ta". The issue of the "western" vs. "eastern" is, for the most part, considered resolved, but current editions of the Pe****ta either arbitrarily rely on e.g., the Leiden edition include a different set of manuscripts.
All of the above, however, barely begins to get at the real issue: The relationship between the language of the Pe****ta and the dialects of Aramaic during Jesus' life, and the utterly obvious reliance of the Pe****ta gospels on the Greek.
The topic here is the idea that the New Testament Pe****ta is. But first I need to introduce the claim I'm arguing against, using the following quote frequently found on various websites:
"With reference to...the originality of the Pe****ta text, as the Patriarch and Head of the Holy Apostolic and Catholic Church of the East, we wish to state, that the Church of the East received the scriptures from the hands of the blessed Apostles themselves in the Aramaic original, the language spoken by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and that the Pe****ta is the text of the Church of the East which has come down from the Biblical times without any change or revision."
Mar Eshai Shimun
Basically, "Pe****ta primacy" holds that the NT wasn't originally written in Greek. Instead, it was translated into Greek from Aramiac documents which were preserved in a bible called the Pe****ta.
I knew this idea was around, but until my recent exchange I did not know how pervasive the idea is on the web, and in what ways. The deciding factor behind my decision to start this thread was not Pe****ta primacy per se, but rather what I learned about the touted Khabouris Codex, which alone seems to have created new versions of Aramaic primacy (see e.g., the Heartland site).
I would like to think that I am usually an open-minded, fair individual and that I make a point of constantly questioning and re-evaluating my own views. However, apart from the fairly universal causes behind judgmental, irrational criticisms of other individuals or ideas (e.g,. bad mood, exhaustion, illness, mood-altering substances like coffee or alcohol, etc.), there are certain things which tend to irritate me. Apart from the sound of someone chewing with mouth open, they only thing I can think of is the one relevant here: when someone displays a dogmatic, irrational, and baseless attachment to a particular understanding of some technical aspect of some research, field, or similar component of academia which is not only due to the stubborn refusal to research the issue, but makes claims about technical arguments which the individual cannot even in principle evaluate.
The easiest examples are those which involve certain science research, as much of this depends heavily upon a rather sophisticated mathematical background most do not possess. "But only slightly less well known is this": people talking about text, literature, or written work which is composed in a language they can't read yet which they feel confident making claims about. And I do not mean making claims about translations, or based on translations, but rather making claims about some property/meaning in the relevant document(s) which is based on assertions about the proper way to interpret or understand the language(s) they can't read.
Pe****ta primacy is such an example.
But what is the Pe****ta? The way it is described on the countless sights, blogs, posts, etc. (not to mention entire books and various papers), one would get the impression that it is a cohesive, single bible (or at least NT), which has existed along side the Greek texts, yet is written in Aramaic, the language Jesus almost certainly spoke.
In reality, the only part of this which is true is that Jesus did almost certainly speak Aramaic. There is no the Pe****ta, at least in the sense of some cohesive collection dating back to around Jesusu' day.
Textual critics rely mainly on the thousands of Greek witnesses to the NT (a "witness" in this sense is anything from a papyri scrap to a quote by an early Christian author to a complete or almost complete bible). Or, more accurately, they rely on certain generally considered superior witnesses, which the others can be checked against (and vice versa). In addition, however, textual critics rely on NT texts written in Latin, Gothic, and other languages as well.
Without getting into the issues of using a translation to support one variation vs. another, we can simply see how these manuscripts are generally classified (or organized). For example, the "Latin" manuscripts are divided into two main sub-groups: copies of the Vulgate and "Old Latin" manuscripts. Both are written in Latin, of course, but the former (at least largely) the work of Jerome and those who copied his translation. Nonetheless, this category of texts is still further divided because of inevitable copying errors which were repeated faithfully in one set of copies, and some variation consistent to another. And as we have about 9,000 vulgate manuscripts, we must focus on some of the most complete and early codices which are are distinct enough from one another but are sufficiently close to a diverse subset within the thousands of manuscripts such that we can easily check whether a given manuscript probably relied on one of the "main" codices.
The "Old Latin" manuscripts, on the other hand, are far feweer and are divided mainly by region of origin.
The Pe****ta fits into a similar classification schema. And here's the first rather important point: websites all over the place frequently use the word Aramaic, whether describing the language of the Pe****ta, or the training (or native language) of some person responsible for a translation (e.g., Dr. George Lamsa, who is described as a "native Aramaic speaker"), or Jesus, as if we're dealing with the same language in all cases. To begin to address that little problem, we have only to look at how the Pe****ta fits into the our collection of NT manuscripts.
First, the Pe****ta isn't one "text" the way that the Codex Sinaiticus is, or even the way that the Vulgate (with the thousands of representative manuscripts) is. It isn't simply that there are multiple different manuscripts of which show multiple variations. Instead, Pe****ta manuscripts aren't initially divided into different scribal traditions, or by dialectical differences, or similar methods. Instead, they are divided in that "Pe****ta" can refer to to entirely different sets of manuscripts "groups". Why? Because there is an "Old Testament" Pe****ta and a seperate (but later combined) New Testament Pe****ta. Not only that, but there isn't exactly a clear distinction between what manuscripts constitute the OT Pe****ta and which should be otherwise categorized. This is due largely to the Leiden publication of the OT Pe****ta and the lack of any documentation behind which manuscripts were included. In fact, an ongoing area of debate is what actually constitutes the "OT Pe****ta" and what are simply manuscripts of the "Syriac bible". We do have "old syriac" gospel witnesses which are distinct from the Pe****ta NT texts. It is also true that we have clear evidence for a distinct composition over a rather lengthy period of time and in various places by various scribes of what is called the "OT Pe****ta" (among other titles). However, what we don't know is
1) How the "Pe****ta", understood as the various manuscripts which appear in the 5th and 6th centuries, are related to what are referred to as the "OT Pe****ta" (i.e., the Syriac texts used in the composition of the Pe****ta manuscripts). In other words, the "Pe****ta" which includes both the later NT syriac manuscripts along with what are clearly translations from a different time (this we know from references to the texts, not the texts themselves) of Hebrew into Syriac, is supposed to be distinguished not just from the "Old Syriac" gospels, but also from other biblical "Syriac" texts in general (e.g., the Philoxenian & Harklean versions). We know that the scribes behind the NT Pe****ta relied on earlier Syriac translations of the OT, but we don't know what constitutes the "Pe****ta" OT syriac version versus some other.
2) What the OT Pe****ta was translated from. Laying aside the problem of what the Old Syriac OT is in relation to the OT Pe****ta, there is still the issue of how the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Syriac. The relationship between the Pe****ta and the Targumin, for example, seems to indicate that the former relied on the later. However, a good argument can be (and has been) made that the Proverbs Targum relies on the Pe****ta, giving us an exception. A much larger issue, however, is that for the past century there have repeatedly been studies published arguing that the OT Pe****ta relies (at least in places) on the Greek Septuagint, rather than Hebrew, Aramaic, or Syriac.
3) We don't to to what extent, given the almost certain reliance of the OT Pe****ta on Targumin and possible or likely reliance on the Greek LXX, the OT Pe****ta is related to the Masoretic (Hebrew) version.
4) And finally, just to complete the mess, we don't actually know how to relate the various manuscripts which fall under various collections referred to as the "Pe****ta". The issue of the "western" vs. "eastern" is, for the most part, considered resolved, but current editions of the Pe****ta either arbitrarily rely on e.g., the Leiden edition include a different set of manuscripts.
All of the above, however, barely begins to get at the real issue: The relationship between the language of the Pe****ta and the dialects of Aramaic during Jesus' life, and the utterly obvious reliance of the Pe****ta gospels on the Greek.