Linguistic criticism is probably the oldest form of biblical criticism or textual criticism to develop. [1] It relies heavily upon the study and knowledge of the Biblical languages - not just Koine Greek and Hebrew, but also Aramaic (the language Jesus himself most likely spoke) and Egyptian (Moses' mother tongue).
Besides the influence that Aramaic and Egyptian would have on particular texts, i.e. the words we have written down in the extant Hebrew and Greek manuscripts being shaped into that form after first being contrived in the minds of writers whose mother tongues were Aramaic and Egyptian, we also have portions of texts written directly in those languages.
There are numerous Egyptian loanwords in the Torah. For instance, in the account of Moses being placed in the river in an ark (basket) behind the bullrushes (Sh'mot/Exodus 2:3), the words for ark, river, and bullrushes are all transliterated into Hebrew from Egyptian. Yahuda counts at least eighteen Egyptian loanwords in the full account of Moses’ infancy. [2] Large sections of Daniel and Ezra, as well as portions of Jeremiah and Nehemiah are written directly in Aramaic, as well as a few phrases found in the Synoptic Gospels and the Pauline epistles. Other languages that are very important for linguistic criticism include Akkadian, Ugaritic, and Latin. Moreover, Arabic, Hittite, Eblamite, Canaanite, and Phoenician may be helpful depending on the interests of the critic.
Linguistic criticism is not the same as textual criticism, though it does fall under that discipline. Where textual criticism may examine phenomena that occur within a single language, like elision, and even the likelihood of scribal error in recording what is dictated to him; linguistic criticism specifically inspects how languages affect one another in the process of translating from one to another, and how a language changes over time, psycholinguistically and aurally.
A scholar employing linguistic criticism would look at a passage such as Matthew 27: 46/Mark 15:34, which the Greek text renders as "My God, My God! Why have you deserted Me?" (CJB), and instead of blindly accepting the Greek rendering of the Aramaic words Jesus spoke on the execution stake, would look to the Aramaic language for the meaning of that passage and discover that the Greek mistranslated it and that the correct interpretation is, in fact, "My God, My God! For this moment I have been spared!" or "My God, My God! This is my destination!" It would be immediately obvious from a study of the Aramaic passage that the word in the text "shabaktani" does not mean forsaken or deserted (that word would be nashatani); it means spared or destined. [3] [4]
The Bible is a collection of religious texts or scriptures, some, all, or a variant of which, are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, Islam, the Baha'i Faith, and many other Abrahamic religions. The Bible is an anthology, a compilation of texts of a variety of forms, originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek. These texts include instructions, stories, poetry, and prophecies, and other genres. The collection of materials that are accepted as part of the Bible by a particular religious tradition or community is called a biblical canon. Believers in the Bible generally consider it to be a product of divine inspiration, but the way they understand what that means and interpret the text varies.
The Book of Exodus is the second book of the Bible. It is a narrative of the Exodus, the origin myth of the Israelites leaving slavery in Biblical Egypt through the strength of their deity named Yahweh, who according to the story chose them as his people. The Israelites then journey with the legendary prophet Moses to Mount Sinai, where Yahweh gives the 10 commandments and they enter into a covenant with Yahweh, who promises to make them a "holy nation, and a kingdom of priests" on condition of their faithfulness. He gives them their laws and instructions to build the Tabernacle, the means by which he will come from heaven and dwell with them and lead them in a holy war to conquer Canaan, which has earlier, according to the myth of Genesis, been promised to the "seed" of Abraham, the legendary patriarch of the Israelites.
The New International Version (NIV) is a translation of the Bible into contemporary English. Published by Biblica, the complete NIV was released in 1978 with a minor revision in 1984 and a major revision in 2011. The NIV relies on recently-published critical editions of the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts.
The Septuagint, sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy, and often abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Hebrew. The full Greek title derives from the story recorded in the Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates that "the laws of the Jews" were translated into the Greek language at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus by seventy-two Hebrew translators—six from each of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
The Torah is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The Torah is known as the Pentateuch or the Five Books of Moses by Christians. It is also known as the Written Torah in Rabbinical Jewish tradition. If meant for liturgic purposes, it takes the form of a Torah scroll. If in bound book form, it is called Chumash, and is usually printed with the rabbinic commentaries.
The Masoretic Text is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) in Rabbinic Judaism. The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocalization and accentuation known as the mas'sora. Referring to the Masoretic Text, masorah specifically means the diacritic markings of the text of the Jewish scriptures and the concise marginal notes in manuscripts of the Tanakh which note textual details, usually about the precise spelling of words. It was primarily copied, edited, and distributed by a group of Jews known as the Masoretes between the 7th and 10th centuries of the Common Era (CE). The oldest known complete copy, the Leningrad Codex, dates from the early 11th century CE.
The Samaritan Pentateuch, also called the Samaritan Torah, is the sacred scripture of the Samaritans. Written in the Samaritan script, it dates back to one of the ancient versions of the Torah that existed during the Second Temple period, and constitutes the entire biblical canon in Samaritanism.
The Bible has been translated into many languages from the biblical languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. As of September 2023 all of the Bible has been translated into 736 languages, the New Testament has been translated into an additional 1,658 languages, and smaller portions of the Bible have been translated into 1,264 other languages according to Wycliffe Global Alliance. Thus, at least some portions of the Bible have been translated into 3,658 languages.
According to the Bible, Jochebed was a daughter of Levi and mother of Miriam, Aaron and Moses. She was the wife of Amram, as well as his aunt. No details are given concerning her life. According to Jewish legend, she is buried in the Tomb of the Matriarchs, in Tiberias. In the New Testament, she is praised for her faith in God.
Biblical studies is the academic application of a set of diverse disciplines to the study of the Bible. For its theory and methods, the field draws on disciplines ranging from ancient history, historical criticism, philology, theology, textual criticism, literary criticism, historical backgrounds, mythology, and comparative religion.
The God's Word Translation (GW) is an English translation of the Bible. God's Word to the Nations Mission Society managed and funded the translation.
The Law of Moses, also called the Mosaic Law, is the law said to have been revealed to Moses by God. The term primarily refers to the Torah or the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.
There exists a consensus among scholars that the language of Jesus and his disciples was Aramaic. Aramaic was the common language of Judea in the first century AD. The villages of Nazareth and Capernaum in Galilee, where Jesus spent most of his time, were Aramaic-speaking communities. Jesus likely spoke a Galilean variant of the language, distinguishable from that of Jerusalem. Based on the symbolic renaming or nicknaming of some of his apostles it is also likely that Jesus and at least one of his apostles knew enough Koine Greek to converse with those not native to Judea. It is reasonable to assume that Jesus was well versed in Hebrew for religious purposes.
There have been various debates concerning the proper family of biblical manuscripts and translation techniques that should be used to translate the Bible into other languages. Biblical translation has been employed since the first translations were made from the Hebrew Bible into Greek and Aramaic. Until the Late Middle Ages, the Western Church used the Latin Vulgate almost entirely while the Eastern Church, centered in Constantinople, mostly used the Greek Byzantine text. Beginning in the 14th century, there have been increasing numbers of vernacular translations into various languages. With the development of modern printing techniques, these increased enormously.
Biblical languages are any of the languages employed in the original writings of the Bible. Partially owing to the significance of the Bible in society, Biblical languages are studied more widely than many other dead languages. Furthermore, some debates exist as to which language is the original language of a particular passage, and about whether a term has been properly translated from an ancient language into modern editions of the Bible. Scholars generally recognize three languages as original biblical languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek.
Old Aramaic refers to the earliest stage of the Aramaic language, known from the Aramaic inscriptions discovered since the 19th century.
The New Testament was written in a form of Koine Greek, which was the common language of the Eastern Mediterranean from the conquests of Alexander the Great until the evolution of Byzantine Greek.
Ancient Hebrew writings are texts written in Biblical Hebrew using the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.
"My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" is a phrase that appears both in the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible, in the Book of Psalms, as well as in the New Testament of the Christian Bible, as one of the sayings of Jesus on the cross, according to Matthew 27:46 and also Mark 15:34.
The importance of Tamil loanwords in Biblical Hebrew is that linguistically these words are the earliest attestation of the Tamil language. These words were incorporated into the writing of the Hebrew Bible starting before 500 BCE. Although a number of authors have identified many biblical and post-biblical words of Tamil, Old Tamil, or Dravidian origin, a number of them have competing etymologies and some Tamil derivations are considered controversial.