Biblical Hebrew Forum

["George F. Somsel" <gfsomsel AT juno.com>]

On Mon, 21 Jun 2004 20:50:58 EDT Bearpecs AT aol.com writes:
>  
> My understanding is that the Syriac churches maintain that since the 
>  
> apostles (like Jesus) spoke Aramaic, they would naturally have 
> written in  Aramaic 
> and then translated into Greek, so they consider the Peshitta NT to 
> be  the 
> authentic original writings of the apostles.  Am I correct?
>  
> In a message dated 6/21/2004 8:16:13 PM Eastern Daylight Time,  
> gfsomsel AT juno.com writes:
> 
> Syriac  Church that
> they would translate from the Peshitta rather than use the  Greek of 
> the
> New Testament
> 
> _______________________________________________

There is a strong possibility / probability that the people of Judea
generally spoke Aramaic.  That doesn't eliminate the fact that the New
Testament writings were in Greek.  Avoiding the question of the
historicity of the gospel portraits of Christ, this would mean that any
statements purporting to come from Christ would therefore be translated
into Greek.  The Peshitta, however, is a translation from the Greek.  It
would seem to me that the Greek would therefore have the claim to be the
more original unless there was a case of suspected corruption of the
text.  The problem is that I don't come from that tradition and haven't
discussed it that specifically with my Syriac acquaintance.  It could be
that they view the Peshitta to be more original.

gfsomsel