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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] What language?

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>
  • To: Yohanan bin-Dawidh <yohanan.bin.dawidh AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] What language?
  • Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 20:51:24 +0100

On 14/04/2007 20:17, Yohanan bin-Dawidh wrote:
Shoshanna,

I would agree with Gary here, except for the idea that it was the lingua
franca of the day, for outside of the NT there is no evidence of such per
se. Actually, most honest Greek speakers would tell you that Koine is trash
talk, gutter language, i.e. not good Greek, and the reason why is that it is
as if a bunch of people who did not speak Greek took a dictionary, and tried
to translate from their language into Greek without knowing the language to
which were translating.

Dictionary? I doubt it! Koine was not good literary Greek, but it was what most people spoke. Think of it as like street language today, or how people with little education write letters.


As to Matthew, I think most of the so-called church fathers attest to it
having been written in Hebrew originally, and not Greek, and they denote
that the Jerusalem community used the Hebrew version, and were pretty much
Jewish.

Although it was in the back of an anti-missionary work titled Evon Bochen,
written by Shem Tov bin-Shaprut, most scholars believe the Hebrew Matthew
there to be a copy of the original. The reason is that there are Hebraisms
which would not exist if it were a mere copy of the Greek. Also this text
differs from the Greek text in many instances.

Well, I can argue that this is relevant to this biblical Hebrew forum in that according to Dr James Tabor "Shem-Tov's text is basically BH (Vav Consecutive predominates) with a mixture of MH and later rabbinic vocabulary and idiom." (http://www.religiousstudies.uncc.edu/jdtabor/shemtovweb.html) This certainly seems to be an interesting work. But I suspect that the following (from http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/archives/96-11/0405.html) is a more accurate reflection of how it is understood by the scholarly community:
The Hebrew version of Matthew that George Howard published is the
one found in Shem-Tov ben-Isaac ben-Shaprut's 14th century polemical
treatise, the Even Bohan, written in Spain. Howard has convincingly
demonstrated that the Hebrew text was not a medieval Jewish translation
for polemical purposes, but pre-dates Shem-Tov. However, no one knows
by how much and at any rate the text has suffered corruptions and
vulgatizations.

See also http://shemtov.org/, where you can see the text of this, but note that it says:
Please note that the text of the Shem Tov version of the Gospel of Matthew is NOT the original Hebrew of the Gospel of Matthew but has been copied from an earlier text, and modified by Shem Tov to suit his purposes.

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail: peter AT qaya.org
Blog: http://www.qaya.org/blog/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/





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