Aramaic original New Testament theory

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Different parts of the New Testament have been suggested to derive from an Aramaic original Aramaic Proto Gospels + Rev.svg
Different parts of the New Testament have been suggested to derive from an Aramaic original

The Aramaic original New Testament theory is a hypothesis within Biblical scholarship which argues that the Christian New Testament derives from an Aramaic original. It was first advanced in the 17th and 18th centuries, arguing that all Gospels and Acts could derive from one Aramaic proto-Gospel. [1] [2] Subsequent current-day scholarship trying to better establish this hypothesis, usually argues some parts of the Gospels could derive from an Aramaic sayings-source. [3] [4] [5] In current scholarship it enjoys no notable support compared to the consensus hypothesis that the New Testament was written in Koine Greek. [6] [7] [8]

Contents

It is related to and often overlaps with the Hebrew Gospel hypothesis, which posits a similar idea but with Hebrew instead of Aramaic.

Greek original New Testament hypothesis

The current consensus view held by almost all scholars of the New Testament is that all of its contents were originally written in Koine Greek. [9] [10] [11]

An example of how mainstream scholars have dealt with Aramaic influences within an overall view of the Gospels' original Greek-language development may be found in Martin Hengel's synthesis of studies of the linguistic situation in Palestine during the time of Jesus and the Gospels:

Since non-literary, simple Greek knowledge or competency in multiple languages was relatively widespread in Jewish Palestine including Galilee, and a Greek-speaking community had already developed in Jerusalem shortly after Easter, one can assume that this linguistic transformation [from "the Aramaic native language of Jesus" to "the Greek Gospels"] began very early. ... [M]issionaries, above all 'Hellenists' driven out of Jerusalem, soon preached their message in the Greek language. We find them in Damascus as early as AD 32 or 33. A certain percentage of Jesus' earliest followers were presumably bilingual and could therefore report, at least in simple Greek, what had been heard and seen. This probably applies to Cephas/Peter, Andrew, Philip or John. Mark, too, who was better educated in Jerusalem than the Galilean fishermen, belonged to this milieu. The great number of phonetically correct Aramaisms and his knowledge of the conditions in Jewish Palestine compel us to assume a Palestinian Jewish-Christian author. Also, the author's Aramaic native language is still discernible in the Marcan style. [12]

Aramaic original New Testament hypothesis

The hypothesis that the New Testament could have been written in Aramaic, the language of Jesus, and then translated to Greek is not held by the absolute majority of modern scholars. [9] [10] [11]

Richard Simon of Normandy in 1689 [13] initially asserted that an Aramaic or Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, lay behind the Nazarene Gospel, and was the Proto-Gospel. [1] A more extensive version of this theory only claiming an Aramaic Proto-Gospel was first proposed by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in 1784. [2] It was expanded on by Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, [14] who in 1804 provided a comprehensive basis for the Proto-Gospel hypothesis and argued for an Aramaic original gospel that each of the Synoptic evangelists had in a different intermediate form. [15]

In 1887 John Hancock Pettingell in spite of the then-well established view of Greek originals, argued that some texts of the New Testament such as "the Gospel of Matthew, the Epistles to the Hebrews" might have been written "in the vernacular Syriac of the Jews". [16] Some 19th-century scholars believe the place names in the Peshitta New Testament indicate it was written by someone with independent knowledge of Aramaic place names in Palestine mentioned in the Greek New Testament. [17] [18]

Throught the 20th-century Matthew Black tried to advance Lessing's hypothesis further, but only was able to establish with some degree of certainty that some parts of the Gospel of Mark could derive from an Aramaic sayings-source or tradition. [19] His work was heavily critiqued for its methodology. [20] [21] [22] It is republished today with a critical preface lauding it as the "highmark" of an older theory, but describing consequent developments in scholarship. [23]

The 20th-century scholar Charles Cutler Torrey held to a view that the Gospels were composed in Aramaic. He also argued in a posthumous publication that the Greek in the Book of Revelation was so bad that it might be indicative of having been composed in Aramaic. [24] [25] [26]

The 20th-century Vetus Syra translator E. Jan Wilson believed that Luke was written "in the Syriac dialect of Antioch", that Matthew also might be an Aramaic composition, that Mark was unlikely to be Aramaic and that John could not have been written in Aramaic. [27] Fellow 20th-century translator George Lamsa advocated for a similar Syriac-based theory asserting a "Peshitta-original" in his translation of his Peshitta New Testament. However, his work is poorly regarded by most scholars in the field. [28] [29]

The common response by scholars in the field of New Testament studies to these theories is expressed by Sebastian Brock:

The only complete English translation of the Peshitta is by G. Lamsa. This is unfortunately not always very accurate, and his claims that the Peshitta Gospels represent the Aramaic original underlying the Greek Gospels are entirely without foundation; such views, which are not infrequently found in more popular literature, are rejected by all serious scholars. [30]

Outside of academia

At times leaders of the Assyrian Church of the East express the belief that the entire Syriac Peshitta New Testament in liturgical use by them is the original of the New Testament. [31] However, almost all modern scholars view its Old Testament as a 2nd-century translation from Hebrew and its New Testament as a 5th-century translation from Greek. [32] [33]

Claims exalting Aramaic in such ways are directly connected to the emergence and current expression of Assyrian nationalism. [34] [35] [36] [37] Similar beliefs are present in various Messianic Jewish groups. [38] [39]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Orchard, Bernard; Longstaff, Thomas R. W. (2005-10-06). J. J. Griesbach: Synoptic and Text - Critical Studies 1776-1976. Cambridge University Press. ISBN   978-0-521-02055-8.
  2. 1 2 Kloppenborg, John S., ed. (2020). "The History of the Synoptic Problem". The Oxford Handbook of the Synoptic Gospels (PDF). Oxford University Press. ...tracing the variations to differing translations of the same Aramaic original... [as earlier hypotheses now contrasted with later approaches].
  3. ↑ Fitzmyer, Joseph A. (1968). "Review of An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts. Third Edition". The Catholic Biblical Quarterly. 30 (3): 417–428. ISSN   0008-7912. I see no reason to contest B.'s 'one established conclusion'[…] that an Aramaic sayings-source or tradition lies behind the Synoptic Gospels. It is vaguely enough stated to be tenable.
  4. ↑ Casey, Maurice (1998). The Aramaic Sources of Mark's Gospel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  5. ↑ Casey, Maurice (2002). An Aramaic Approach to Q. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  6. ↑ Longacre, Drew (2023-04-29). "Was the New Testament Written in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek?". Logos. In light of all of this, it is clear that the scholarly consensus that the New Testament was written in Greek is correct.
  7. ↑ Porter, Stanley E., ed. (2014-03-27). "Greek Language". Oxford Bibliographies in Biblical Studies. Oxford University Press. The New Testament, apart from a few words in Aramaic and Hebrew, is written in a form of the Greek language used throughout the Roman Mediterranean world.
  8. ↑ Brown, Raymond E. (1997). "Textual Criticism". An Introduction to the New Testament. Doubleday / Yale University Press. Almost two thousand years ago evangelists wrote four Gospels in Greek.
  9. 1 2 Longacre, Drew (2023-04-29). "Was the New Testament Written in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek?". Logos. In light of all of this, it is clear that the scholarly consensus that the New Testament was written in Greek is correct.
  10. 1 2 Porter, Stanley E., ed. (2014-03-27). "Greek Language". Oxford Bibliographies in Biblical Studies. Oxford University Press. The New Testament, apart from a few words in Aramaic and Hebrew, is written in a form of the Greek language used throughout the Roman Mediterranean world.
  11. 1 2 Brown, Raymond E. (1997). "Textual Criticism". An Introduction to the New Testament. Doubleday / Yale University Press. Almost two thousand years ago evangelists wrote four Gospels in Greek.
  12. ↑ Martin Hengel. 2005. "Eye-witness Memory and the Writing of the Gospels: Form Criticism, Community Tradition and the Authority of the Authors." In The Written Gospel, ed. by Markus Bockmuehl and Donald A. Hagner. Cambridge University Press. Pp. 89f.
  13. ↑ Histoire critique du texte du Nouveau Testament, Rotterdam 1689.
  14. ↑ Einleitung in das neue Testament, Leipzig, Weidmann 1804.
  15. ↑ Schnelle, Udo (1998), The history and theology of the New Testament writings, p. 163.
  16. ↑ Pettingell, John Hancock (1887). "The Gospel of Life in the Syriac New Testament". Views and Reviews in Eschatology: A Collection of Letters, Essays, and Other Papers Concerning the Life and Death to Come. p. 48.
  17. ↑ Michaelis, Johann David (1802). Introduction to the New Testament, tr., and augmented with notes (and a Dissertation on the origin and composition of the three first gospels) by H. Marsh. 4 vols. [in 6 pt.]. 4 vols. [in 5 pt.]. Vol. 2, part 1 (2nd ed.). pp. 43–44.
  18. ↑ Norton, William (1889). A Translation, in English Daily Used, of the Peshito-Syriac Text, and of the Received Greek Text, of Hebrews, James, 1 Peter, and 1 John, With an Introduction on the Peshito-Syriac Text, and the Revised Greek Text of 1881. London: W. K. Bloom.Introduction, pages l–li: "In the names of places, the Peshito shows the same independence of the Greek. . . . . in Acts xxi. 7, the Gk. has, Ptolemais; the Syriac has, Acu. Mr. Jer. Jones, in his work on the Canon, 1798, contends that the use of the name Acu, for Ptolemais, is a decisive proof that the Peshito must have been made not far in time from A.D. 70, when Jerusalem was destroyed. (vol. i. p. 103. ) He says that the most ancient name of this place among the Israelites was Aco, or Acco, Judges i. 31; that this name was afterwards changed to Ptolemais; that some say it had its new name from Ptolemy Philadelphus, about 250 B.C. He says it is certain that the old name Aco, was antiquated and out of use in the time of the Romans, and that the use of the old name Acu, in the Peshito, can be accounted for in no other way, but by supposing that the persons for whom the version was made were more acquainted with it, than with the new name Ptolemais; that upon any other supposition it would have been absurd for him to have used Acu. He says, that until the destruction of Jerusalem, one may suppose that the Jews may have retained the old name Aco still, out of fondness for its antiquity; but, he says, "how they, or any other part of Syria, could, after the Roman conquest, call it by a name different from the Romans, seems to me impossible to conceive. . . To suppose, therefore, that this translation, in which we meet with this old name, instead of the new one, was made at any great distance of time after the destruction of Jerusalem, is to suppose the translator to have substituted an antiquated name known to but few, for a name well known to all" (pp. 104, 105.) Mr. Jones says that a similar proof that the Peshito cannot have been made much after A.D. 70, is found in the fact that the Peshito often calls the Gentiles, as the Jews were accustomed to do, profane persons, where the Greek calls them the nations, that is, the Gentiles. The Peshito calls them profane, in Matt. vi. 7; x. 5; xviii.17; Mark vii. 26; John vii. 35; Acts xviii.4, 17; 1 Cor. v. 1; x. 20, 27; xii. 2; 1 Pet. iv.3. The expression is used, therefore, throughout the Peshito. Mr. Jones says, that it shows that the writer was a Jew, for no other person would have called all the world profane; and that after the destruction of the temple, all Hebrew Christians must have seen that other nations were not to be reckoned unclean and profane in the Jewish sense, and that therefore this version must have been made either before, or soon after, A.D. 70." (On Canon, Vol. i., pp. 106–110.)
  19. ↑ Black, Matthew (1967). An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (3rd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 271. A survey of the results of this study in this connexion yields one conclusion only which can be regarded as in any degree established, that an Aramaic sayings-source or tradition lies behind the Synoptic Gospels. [...] we have to do with a translation-tradition, sometimes literal, mostly, however, literary and interpretative, but generally bearing the stamp upon it, in one feature or another, of its Aramaic origin. Whether that source was written or oral, it is not possible from the evidence to decide. [...] They may conceivably be construed as evidence of the kind of Greek which an Aramaic-speaking Jew would write. [...] Certainly what evidence we do possess makes the assumption of Aramaic sources for the Marcan narrative much less difficult than for the non-Marcan narrative portions of Matthew and Luke.
  20. ↑ Fitzmyer, Joseph A. (1968). "Review of An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts. Third Edition". The Catholic Biblical Quarterly. 30 (3): 417–428. ISSN   0008-7912. Consequently, any discussion of the Aramaic substratum of the NT today must begin with local and contemporary Aramaic. We should be suspicious of philological arguments[…] when they depend on texts and dialects[…] from a later date.[...] Fragmentary though these [Qumran] texts are, they do give a good impression of the language; B. has written them off too hastily as 'miscellaneous "bits and pieces".'[...] In all of this I am suggesting that the third edition of B.'s book no longer copes with the present-day problem of the Aramaic substratum of the Gospels and Acts.[...] B.'s discussion of Aramaisms often lacks rigor and logic.[...] I see no reason to contest B.'s 'one established conclusion'[…] that an Aramaic sayings-source or tradition lies behind the Synoptic Gospels. It is vaguely enough stated to be tenable.[...] It grieves me to write this way about the latest edition of B.'s book[…] I shall surely continue to be stimulated by it despite the criticisms which I have expressed against the third edition.
  21. ↑ Harrington, Daniel J. (1999). "Review of Matthew Black, An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (3rd ed.; repr. with new introduction)". Review of Biblical Literature. Despite the many justified criticisms raised against it, Black's work has become something of a "classic" in New Testament studies.
  22. ↑ "The Language of the New Testament". The Language Environment of First-Century Judaism (PDF). Brill. 2018. The third edition of this book was very severely reviewed by J. A. Fitzmyer, CBQ.
  23. ↑ Harrington, Daniel J. (1999). "Review of Matthew Black, An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (3rd ed.; repr. with new introduction)". Review of Biblical Literature. Despite the many justified criticisms raised against it, Black's work has become something of a "classic" in New Testament studies. [...] And so we have this reprint of Black's classic study, along with a new 21-page introduction by Evans, who justly hails Black's study as representing "the highwater mark" of the older approaches and as laying "the groundwork for subsequent research"
  24. ↑ Torrey, Charles C. (1958). "The Apocalypse of John: Introduction, Excerpts, and a New Translation". The Preterist Archive of Realized Eschatology. Retrieved 2 March 2020.
  25. ↑ "Charles Cutler Torrey | American theologian, scholar, author | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2025-10-05.
  26. ↑ Charles Cutler Torrey, Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence (1936), 108, 113-114
  27. ↑ xli of his The Old Syriac Gospels: Studies and Comparative Translations (vol. 1, Matthew and Mark) (2003), 381pp.
  28. ↑ Herbert G May (October 1958). "Review of The Holy Bible from Ancient Eastern Manuscripts, Containing the Old and New Testaments Translated from the Peshitta, The Authorized Bible of the Church of the East". Journal of Bible and Religion. 26 (4): 326–327. JSTOR   1460599.]
  29. ↑ P.A.H. de Boer (April 1958). "Review of The Holy Bible from Ancient Eastern Manuscripts by G. M. Lamsa". Vetus Testamentum. 8 (2): 223. doi:10.2307/1516092. JSTOR   1516092.
  30. ↑ Brock, Sebastian P (2006), The Bible in the Syriac tradition, p. 58. See also Raymond Brown et al., eds., "The Jerome Biblical Commentary" (London, 1970), 69:88 (article "Texts and Versions"), pg. 575: "Claims that the Syr[iac] Gospels are the form in which Jesus spoke his teaching—claims often made by people who have every reason to know better—are without foundation."
  31. ↑ For instance the patriarch Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII declared in 1957: "With reference to... the originality of the Peshitta 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 Peshitta is the text of the Church of the East which has come down from the Biblical times without any change or revision." (April 5, 1957)
  32. ↑ Brock, S. P. (2006). The Bible in the Syriac tradition (2nd rev. ed., pp. 17-22). Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press.
  33. ↑ Metzger, Bruce M. (1977). The Early Versions of the New Testament: Their Origin, Transmission and Limitations. Oxford University Press. p. 57–58. The hypothesis that the Peshitta version of the New Testament was made by or for Rabbula, bishop of Edessa, probably in the early years of his episcopate, which extended from A.D. 411 to 435 ... The hypothesis of the Rabbulan authorship of the Peshitta New Testament soon came to be adopted by almost all scholars, being persuaded perhaps more by the confidence with which Burkitt propounded it than by any proof other than circumstantial evidence.
  34. ↑ Juedes, John P. (1989). "George M. Lamsa: Christian Scholar or Cultic Torchbearer?". Christian Research Journal. 12 (2). Christian Research Institute. Archived from the original on 2018-08-02.
  35. ↑ Murre-van den Berg, Heleen (2021). "Texts, Language, and Religion in the Making of Syriac Orthodox Communities in Europe". In Meyer, Birgit; van der Veer, Peter (eds.). Refugees and Religion: Ethnographic Studies of Global Trajectories (PDF). London: Bloomsbury Academic. p. 183. doi:10.5040/9781350167162.0019.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  36. ↑ Becker, Adam H. (2015). Revival and Awakening: American Evangelical Missionaries in Iran and the Origins of Assyrian Nationalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN   9780226145310.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  37. ↑ Atto, Naures (2011). Hostages in the Homeland, Orphans in the Diaspora: Identity Discourses Among the Assyrian/Syriac Elites in the European Diaspora. LUP Dissertaties. Leiden: Leiden University Press. ISBN   9789087281489.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  38. ↑ Rudolph, David (2013). Willitts, Joel (ed.). Introduction to Messianic Judaism: Its Ecclesial Context and Biblical Foundations. Zondervan Staff, David J. Rudolph. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. ISBN   978-0-310-33063-9. Messianic congregations are committed to Jewish continuity because they believe God is committed to Jewish continuity. Contemporary Messianic rabbis, like their mainstream counterparts, recognize the dangers of assimilation and labor to convey Jewish identity to the next generation of Messianic Jewish families. Messianic Jewish use of Hebrew expressions (even for New Testament terms) is in keeping with this spirit of resisting assimilation pressures in order to preserve Jewish identity. Jesus and the shlichim (apostles) were 1st-century Jews who taught in Hebrew/Aramaic. New Testament teaching was originally Hebraic. Messianic synagogues, therefore, see the use of Hebraic New Covenant terminology, such as the name "Yeshua" instead of "Jesus," as the restoration of something that is historically accurate. It links Messianic Jewish families to their 1st-century roots.
  39. ↑ Klayman, Seth (2003). "Tephillat HaAdon in Mattityahu 6:9–13 and Luke 11:2–4: A Linguistic Approach with Historical Implications". Kesher: A Journal of Messianic Judaism. 15: 22–61.

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