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Pe****ta Primacy, Palistinian Prophet, & why Jesus didn't speak Syriac

LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
So why do we have in the Greek NT KNOWN, DOCUMENTED fabrications and fraudulent entries?
Because that's what happens with manuscripts. All of them. Regardless of language. The only exception to this is texts that we don't have, namely the Greek originals (or the Aramaic texts that are independent and/or predate the Greek).
 
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godnotgod

Thou art That
Because that's what happens with manuscripts. All of them. Regardless of language. The only exception to this is texts that we don't have, namely the Greek originals (or the Aramaic texts that are independent and/or predate the Greek).

And yet, the accuracy of the Pe****ta/o translations are significantly greater than those of the Greek. Perhaps that is due to the presence of a Massorah for Aramaic, which is absent for the Greek:


"Accuracy and consistency among Pe****to-Pe****ta mss. as opposed to inaccuracy and inconsistency among Greek mss. of The NT. The most consistent and closely agreeing Greek texts (Elzevir’s 1633 TR and Stephen’s 1550 TR) tend to contain ten times the variation in letter number as The Pe****to- Pe****ta mss. The Critical Editions and mss. have much greater variation.

A tradition representing the original NT text is certainly to be expected, similar to the tradition of The Massoretic Tradition of copying mss. and preserving the original Hebrew text (notes and methods which insure that the utmost care will prevail in the preservation of the Divine utterances delivered to the prophets). The Pe****to-Pe****ta has such a Massorah. The Greek NT never did.

How is it that a supposed translation of the the NT has a Massorah and the supposed original Greek text has nothing even resembling such a tradition?"


David Bauscher

http://aramaicnt.com/Research/Proofs of Pe****ta Primacy.pdf
 

LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
And yet, the accuracy of the Pe****ta/o translations are significantly greater than those of the Greek.

How does one judge accuracy? The Pe****ta manuscripts do disagree, but as there are only a few hundred naturally they vary less than 6,000+ manuscripts. That's just a numbers game. However, the Pe****ta also differs from the underlying Aramaic of the Greek NT but conforms to a translation of the Greek NT.
 

LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
A tradition representing the original NT text is certainly to be expected, similar to the tradition of The Massoretic Tradition of copying mss. and preserving the original Hebrew text (notes and methods which insure that the utmost care will prevail in the preservation of the Divine utterances delivered to the prophets). The Pe****to-Pe****ta has such a Massorah.

This is the most ridiculous nonsense you've quoted yet. It makes zero sense.
 

godnotgod

Thou art That
How does one judge accuracy? The Pe****ta manuscripts do disagree, but as there are only a few hundred naturally they vary less than 6,000+ manuscripts. That's just a numbers game. However, the Pe****ta also differs from the underlying Aramaic of the Greek NT but conforms to a translation of the Greek NT.

Bauscher is referring to the percentage of accuracy.

So why is it that there are fewer Pe****ta translations (360 compared to over 2200 for the Greek)? Is it that the Greek texts had to be revised more often due to internal problems?

No one is claiming 100% accuracy for the Pe****ta.
 
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LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Bauscher is referring to the percentage of accuracy.

No he's not. He's referring to something that doesn't exist as if it should (this "original tradition" crap), and misusing or misunderstanding what the Masoretic tradition is to do so.
So why is it that there are fewer Pe****ta translations (360 compared to over 2200 for the Greek)?
There are not fewer. The Pe****ta is simply a number of copies. So are the Greek texts we possess (and it's over 6,000). Like the extant Greek manuscripts, we can divide the Syriac manuscripts into families: the Old Syriac, Pe****ta, Philoxenian, Harclean, and (from a lectionary) a Palestinian Syriac version. The Pe****ta is designated as the Pe****ta based solely on agreement of the extant Syriac manuscripts: those that show close agreement in a particular way are deemed to be the Pe****ta vs. those that of the same language and very similar but differ just enough to be counted as one of the 4 (or 5) other textual families.
 

godnotgod

Thou art That
There are not fewer. The Pe****ta is simply a number of copies. So are the Greek texts we possess (and it's over 6,000).

There is some confusion here: you stated that:

The Pe****ta manuscripts do disagree, but as there are only a few hundred...

I understood the 'few hundred' to be 360 in number.
 

godnotgod

Thou art That
No he's not. He's referring to something that doesn't exist as if it should (this "original tradition" crap), and misusing or misunderstanding what the Masoretic tradition is to do so.

Uh, he's talking percentage, dude:


The agreement between two avg. Pe****ta mss. amounts to 99.98% !
A pair of average Eastern Pe****ta mss. agree 99.99%.
A pair of average Western mss. agree 99.97%.
The best we can expect from two Greek mss. (Textus Receptus) is 99.80% .
The letter # differences are 10 times greater between Elzevir's 1633 TR edition and Stephens 1550 TR edition. The Greek NT Textus Receptus exists in various editions, whose mss. are the most consistent and carefully copied of all Greek mss. Elzevir's 1633 edition differs from Robert Stephens 1550 edition by about 87 letters in 1 Corinthians ! That , while only 2 thousandths of the book's 33,260 letters, (0.2%) is still ten times the variation found in the Pe****ta mss. (compare 2 ten thousandths for Pe****ta-Pe****to)-Lukes highest variation of 0.09%)

The Byzantine NT (1991 edition -Pierpoint) has 691,023 letters. Stephens 1550 has 693,395 letters. This is pretty good for Greek texts overall- 99.66 % agreement.This is 0.33 % variation ; Pe****ta- Pe****to Lukes vary by 0.09%, 56 letters (the highest variation of Pe****ta books) , just 1/3rd of Greek variation. Overall Pe****ta-Pe****to variation, comparing only 22 common books and disregarding John 7:53-8:11 which is found only in Western Pe****to, is 0.023%. That is an overall variation in The Greek 10 to 14 times as great as The Pe****ta(o) versions. (1 Cor. is 10 times as great.)
The modern Critical Editions of The Greek NT have much wider divergences.
Westcott & Hort's Greek NT has 679,885 letters. That differs from Byzantine by 11,038 letters, or 1.60%. 98.40% agreement is still not bad at all, but relative to the Byzantine-Textus Receptus comparison, about five times as great. This is 70 times the Pe****ta variation.
1 Cor - W&H 32717; Byzantine 33182; 1550 TR 33256.
WH 98.60% of Byz. ; TR 100.22% of Byz.

WH varies 1.40% from Byzantine - Majority text in 1 Cor.
TR varies 0.22% from Byzantine - Majority text in 1 Cor.

WH variation is 6.36 times as great as TR from Majority text.
I don't have USB NT or Nestles' 26th Edition stats yet. They will be better than W&H comparison numbers, however. The Eastern Pe****ta text mss. have even less variation among some mss. than some of the variation
we see in Western editions.Consider 8 variants in one ms. in all of Paul's epistles- (one for every ten pages), in an 8th century manuscript from a 2000 year old version. The average for two Eastern mss. at 0.01% variation , or 0.0001 , is one twentieth the variation found between two editions of the Textus Receptus -(1633 Elzevir and 1550 Stephens). Two Greek mss. will vary more than this. P32 and P33 , , two Eastern Pe****ta mss. in Pusey and Gwilliams’ critical apparatus of Matthew, differ only once in the whole of Matthew’s Gospel ! That is 0.000017 variation , or 99.9983% agreement !
That is less than one thousandth the variation between the two closest Greek editions.

Bauscher
 

gnostic

The Lost One
godnotgod said:
It makes sense to me, as the Aramaic texts exhibit greater accuracy.
There is no Aramaic NT gospels or letters, ergo there are no "accuracy" whatsoever in this non-existent NT bible.

Why do you keep insisting there are ones?

Those Semitic NT texts, as LegionOnomaMoi and angellous_evangellous have already told you, were actually written in Syriac, not Aramaic.

The fellow you have defended Victor Alexander of having translating this so-called "original Aramaic scriptures", either can't distinguish the difference between Aramaic and Syraic, or he just plain, bold-face lying.

Like LegionOnomaMoi said, Jesus may have spoken and taught in late Aramaic with Jewish Galilean dialect, but the written texts of the 1st century CE, were never written in Aramaic, but in Greek. A large number of Paul's letters were addressed to churches in Greek-speaking provinces in Greece-Macedonia and Asia Minor, so I doubt very much that he wrote to these churches in Aramaic.

And lastly, modern translators rarely translate texts directly from books, manuscripts, codices, parchments, scrolls, etc. They normally transcriptions, like photos or digital scans.

This Alexander have been watching too many Hollywood movies, if he think he can translate ancient Aramaic by using modern Aramaic, which are nothing alike.

Worse of all, he is claiming ancient Aramaic to be the language of god, of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and David, that Aramaic is THE FIRST language.

How can I take someone like Alexander when he make such stupid claim like that on his own website?

He can make such dishonest claim because he want to sell his books. Nothing sell books better than fiction.
 

LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Uh, he's talking percentage, dude:

It may seem that way. He's talking nonsense. He's throwing out percentages about haphazardly thrown together bases for e.g., an edition of the Greek NT published several centuries ago and admits he doesn't have the stats on the edition of the Greek NT most widely used today. And the entire comparison is ******** too as (again) the Pe****ta manuscripts are called this because they differ from the other Syriac manuscripts and are more similar to each other. You can't compare a single manuscript tradition within a language with the entirety of the manuscript traditions in another language, still less compare the single one with odd grouping of manuscript like the TR. It's ludicrous. By this argument, Tatian's Diatessaron was the original NT. It wasn't just written in Syriac, nor did the copies simply agree, the entire thing was a harmonization of the gospels themselves!

The Greek NT exists in thousands of manuscripts which, like the smaller number of traditions and manuscripts in Syriac, are subdivided into various textual families. However, the divisions behind the Syriac are surprisingly numerous and not well-supported. That is, while we have enormous amounts of material to work from regarding the Greek traditions, we have a few good manuscripts in Syriac and a lot of bad ones. That said, there are still so many variants in the Pe****ta that the ways in which they diverge allow us to trace the tradition back to the Old Syriac tradition (see e.eg., NATIONALE, A. C. O. M. B., & JUCKEL, A. (2009). RESEARCH ON THE OLD SYRIAC HERITAGE OF THE PE****TA GOSPELS ; for an alternative view which is based on the shared and in two cases divergent West Aramaic in the Old Syriac and Pe****ta, see Joosten, J. (1991). West Aramaic Elements in the Old Syriac and Pe****ta Gospels. Journal of Biblical Literature, 110(2), 271-289.
). Worse still, the variant count of the Pe****ta is lower than should be even in critical apparati (see e.g., Williams, P. J. (2008). An Evaluation of the Use of the Pe****ta as a Textual Witness to Romans. TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism).

A central problem with playing the percentage game is that despite the appearance of a standard Pe****ta nearly 100 years ago, there is no standardized textual critical apparatus (although one has been in progress for years now). The variants between the Pe****ta gospels have grown more problematic, not less, with additional research. Nobody knows how many variants there are and most of the manuscripts are very poor. What we do know is that
1) The Pe****ta is clearly related to the Old Syriac tradition either directly or through a common source like Tatian.
2) The Pe****ta shows the influence of several other languages and manuscript traditions, including Greek and West Aramaic.
3) There are variants in the manuscript that are not found in any other manuscript tradition known
4) The Pe****ta, like the Syriac traditions in general, are plagued with difficulties:
"Research on the New Testament versions in Syriac labors under a special handicap. Peculiarly among the versions, the first stage of the tradition was not a translation of the four canonical Gospels, but Tatian's Diatessaron. This harmony came into use toward the end of the second century as the "Gospel" of the "orthodox" of Edessa, and succeeded in maintaining its position into the fifth century against increasing opposition. The many historical and critical textual problems of the Syriac version may be traced to it. For not only does the Syriac tradition present translation problems which are formidable, but the ubiquitous heritage of the Diatessaron must also be dealt with properly. In the course of history a constant process of revision produced a whole series of Syriac New Testament versions with the result that they cannot always be distinguished from each other with precision: besides the Diatessaron there is the Old Syriac (Vetus Syra), the Pe****ta, the Philoxeniana and the Harklensis, as well as the Palestinian Syriac version."
Aland, B., & Aland, K. (1989). The Text of the New Testament: an Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Textual Criticism.
 

godnotgod

Thou art That
Galilean Aramaic or סוריסטון (Suriston) is an obscure, Western dialect of Aramaic. Where it shares a great deal of core vocabulary and grammar with other Aramaic dialects (as all dialects do) there are a large number of quirks and differences that make it unique.

First is Galilean’s phonology, or how they pronounced words. The Eastern Aramaic speakers who were prominent in Judea prided themselves on articulate speech and viewed Galileans “loose” pronunciation with contempt. Where they would pronounce what are known as the Emphatic Consonants and Gutterals with exactness, such sounds were softened in Galilean. Several consonants that were distinct in Eastern Aramaic were blurred or interposed by Galileans and unstressed vowels tended to reduce to simple shwas (like the vowel in “up”). Vowels also tended to be different in places than a Judean would expect. For example, where the Sabbath was classically referred to as shabta, in Galilean they pronounced it shubta.

Second is Galilean’s vocabulary. Like the differences inherent between British and American English, Galilean differed in its choice of words, as well as many of the meanings of words held in common. For example, the Aramaic verb som (which means “to put” or “to place”) is completely ubiquitous in most Aramaic dialects. It is even recorded in the Syriac Pe****ta as part of Jesus’ last words “abba b-idaik sa’em ‘na ruh” (“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit”) and appears in the same volume in nearly 800 other places. However, som is completely absent in Galilean. It does not occur even once in the entire known corpus. Galilean also employs a rather large number of loan words from Koine Greek (including its autonym Suriston) as well as Latin.

Third is Galilean’s grammar. This has as much to do with word order as it does do with how words are used. A very common example is the Present Participle. In Galilean it is used very much like the English Present Tense (“I go.”) rather than a true Participle (“I am going.”) as it appears in other dialects and it is used in much higher frequency. Furthermore, where with most Aramaic dialects, the subject follows the verb (like in the Syriac phrase rahem ‘na lek = “I love you [f]“), in Galilean the Participle’s subject always preceeds it (‘ana rahem lek = “I love you [f]“). Another good example is the verb/particle ‘ith, which means “there is.” In Eastern dialects, such as Syriac, ‘ith tends to be inflected with endings and used in conjunction with the verb “to be” or hwey (for example ‘ithau(h)i sabra = “There is hope”). In Galilean, ‘ith is never inflected, and is usually used on its own regardless of number or gender (‘ith s’bar = “There is hope”).

Last is Galilean’s orthography, or method of spelling. Like nearly all other Aramaic dialects, Galilean is written without using true vowels. Instead, half-vowel letters (which represent our a, y and w) are used in combinations such as doubling them to indicate diphthongs. This was the precursor to the modern Hebrew vowel system known as “Tiberian” which gets its name from the Sea of Tiberias (better known as the Sea of Galilee). Galileans were also known to interchange א alef and ה he at the end of words, and opted to spell phonetically rather than classically.

With all of these differences, a Galilean speaker tended to stick out with their speech in Jerusalem as much as someone from the American South sticks out in New England (and vice versa), and this is exactly what we see in the Bible:

After a little while those who stood by came and said to Peter, “Surely you are also one of them, for your speech gives you away.” - Matthew 26:73

http://aramaicnt.org/galilean-aramaic/differences-of-dialect/
 

oldbadger

Skanky Old Mongrel!
Galilean Aramaic or סוריסטון (Suriston) is an obscure, Western dialect of Aramaic. Where it shares a great deal of core vocabulary and grammar with other Aramaic dialects (as all dialects do) there are a large number of quirks and differences that make it unique.

First is Galilean’s phonology, or how they pronounced words. The Eastern Aramaic speakers who were prominent in Judea prided themselves on articulate speech and viewed Galileans “loose” pronunciation with contempt. Where they would pronounce what are known as the Emphatic Consonants and Gutterals with exactness, such sounds were softened in Galilean. Several consonants that were distinct in Eastern Aramaic were blurred or interposed by Galileans and unstressed vowels tended to reduce to simple shwas (like the vowel in “up”). Vowels also tended to be different in places than a Judean would expect. For example, where the Sabbath was classically referred to as shabta, in Galilean they pronounced it shubta.

Second is Galilean’s vocabulary. Like the differences inherent between British and American English, Galilean differed in its choice of words, as well as many of the meanings of words held in common. For example, the Aramaic verb som (which means “to put” or “to place”) is completely ubiquitous in most Aramaic dialects. It is even recorded in the Syriac Pe****ta as part of Jesus’ last words “abba b-idaik sa’em ‘na ruh” (“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit”) and appears in the same volume in nearly 800 other places. However, som is completely absent in Galilean. It does not occur even once in the entire known corpus. Galilean also employs a rather large number of loan words from Koine Greek (including its autonym Suriston) as well as Latin.

Third is Galilean’s grammar. This has as much to do with word order as it does do with how words are used. A very common example is the Present Participle. In Galilean it is used very much like the English Present Tense (“I go.”) rather than a true Participle (“I am going.”) as it appears in other dialects and it is used in much higher frequency. Furthermore, where with most Aramaic dialects, the subject follows the verb (like in the Syriac phrase rahem ‘na lek = “I love you [f]“), in Galilean the Participle’s subject always preceeds it (‘ana rahem lek = “I love you [f]“). Another good example is the verb/particle ‘ith, which means “there is.” In Eastern dialects, such as Syriac, ‘ith tends to be inflected with endings and used in conjunction with the verb “to be” or hwey (for example ‘ithau(h)i sabra = “There is hope”). In Galilean, ‘ith is never inflected, and is usually used on its own regardless of number or gender (‘ith s’bar = “There is hope”).

Last is Galilean’s orthography, or method of spelling. Like nearly all other Aramaic dialects, Galilean is written without using true vowels. Instead, half-vowel letters (which represent our a, y and w) are used in combinations such as doubling them to indicate diphthongs. This was the precursor to the modern Hebrew vowel system known as “Tiberian” which gets its name from the Sea of Tiberias (better known as the Sea of Galilee). Galileans were also known to interchange א alef and ה he at the end of words, and opted to spell phonetically rather than classically.

With all of these differences, a Galilean speaker tended to stick out with their speech in Jerusalem as much as someone from the American South sticks out in New England (and vice versa), and this is exactly what we see in the Bible:

After a little while those who stood by came and said to Peter, “Surely you are also one of them, for your speech gives you away.” - Matthew 26:73

Differences of Dialect » The Aramaic New Testament

Best post on the thread, imo. I copied the lot. Thanks.
 

LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
The Eastern Aramaic speakers who were prominent in Judea prided themselves on articulate speech and viewed Galileans “loose” pronunciation with contempt.
That is ridiculous.


For example, the Aramaic verb som (which means “to put” or “to place”) is completely ubiquitous in most Aramaic dialects. It is even recorded in the Syriac Pe****ta as part of Jesus’ last words “abba b-idaik sa’em ‘na ruh” (“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit”)

Apart from the fact that the author writes "completely ubiquitous", this actually contains something useful. First, you quoted a source that states Galilean Aramaic has "a rather large number of loan words from Koine Greek (including its autonym Suriston) as well as Latin." If this were Jesus' language, he'd be speaking a lot of Greek words. However, the reason that so-called "Galilean Aramaic" included so many loan words was because by 200CE there hadn't been a Jewish homeland for over a century and the influence of Greek and Roman cultures had permeated the entire Roman empire.
Second, your own source separates not just the dialect of the Pe****ta from that of Jesus, but the entirety of Eastern dialects of which Syriac is one from the Western dialects including Galilean Aramaic.

That said, the details are all wrong. Our "entire corpus" is pretty small and replete with loan words. It's also rather late and is not represented in any NT. Finally, the Aramaic of the NT is Judean anyway, not Galilean. Whatever Aramaic traditions underlie the NT, they don't come from Galilee but rather Jerusalem.


Third is Galilean’s grammar.
Your source seems to be conflating Western Aramaic, which was composed of multiple dialects, with some nebulous "Galilean Aramaic". A lot of the grammar and other details you quoted are not unique to Galilean Aramaic but found throughout Western dialects (Samarian, Judaean, East Jordanian). What really makes it distinct is some rather specific phonological differences (aw and ay) as well as a few very specific grammatical details like the replacement of the perfect/imperfect afformatives with personal pronoun endings. Not word order, not the participle, and certainly not pronunciation as reported in your source.
 
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A

angellous_evangellous

Guest
For the punch line:

1 The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 2 As it is written in the prophets,

Hinni shole’ah malâki u-pinna-derek le-panai
“Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you. (Malachi 3:1, Hebrew)

Qol qore ba-midbâr,

3 The voice of one crying in the wilderness,

Pannu derek YHWH!
‘Make ready the way of the Lord!

Yashshru bâ’arâbâh msillâh l-elohenu!
Make his paths straight!’” (Isaiah 40:3, Hebrew)

============
Here's the actual translation:

I am lying to you. Really.
Give me your money and pass this along to all your friends at RF.
 
A

angellous_evangellous

Guest
Jeez. My poop is more useful that that stuff.

It's very encouraging that I can just take a giant dump, take a few pictures of it, say that it's Jesus, and sell it.

CA_CHING
 

LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Jeez. My poop is more useful that that stuff.

It's very encouraging that I can just take a giant dump, take a few pictures of it, say that it's Jesus, and sell it.

CA_CHING
Alas, this nonsense is only worth it if you sacrifice integrity. If you were going to do that, it should've been before spending too many years as a grad student slaving away for pennies to earn a doctorate so that you could make nickels instead. But there's still time! Now that you have the doctorate, you can now sell your integrity for much more! Simply copy and paste from a bunch of websites, stick your name and degree on it, and publish! You'll make tons because unlike the rest of these...well, whatever they are.. you actually have the training, knowledge, and expertise to know the truth! Granted, that should preclude you from publishing about this crap but hey, apparently everybody's doing it.
 
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