Greek-isms???????

[gbausc]

Shlama AKhi Paul,

The 2 Peter I used in my interlinear translation and Plain English is not the Harklean used in The 1982 Assyrian NT I purchased recently; neither is it the Harklean version used in the Western 5 for The famous "Red Book" edition of The Aramaic Bible Society's Peshitta of 1986 and following. It is found in The 1979 Syriac Bible and is based on the Crawford ms. and other mss. This edition of these epistles is John Gwynn's collation of 20 Jacobite manuscripts dated from the 9th to the 18th centuries; some are 10th, 11th and 12th century; several are 14th to 16th century. Several unique editions of The Peshitto and versions are also compared, including a 9th century Arabic translation of the same text (in the opinion of other authorities).
Gwynn shows plainly that this is not The Harklean. It is idiomatic Aramaic and rivals the style and quality of The Peshitta, whereas The Harklean is non idiomatic and slavishly literal to the Greek text it follows. Gwynn believed (falsely, in my opinion) that this text is The Philoxenian version of AD 507. His Greek primacy belief blinded him to the concept of this being the original text of those books. Yet he states several times in this and his other book that these epistles and Revelation could easily be explained and received as part of The Peshitta text by Aramaic scholars without batting an eye, if they had been presented in a Peshitta NT volume (apart from knowing Peshitta history, of course).

Remnants of The Later Syriac Versions of The Bible is the book in which this edition was published, originally in 1909. The other is his publication of The Crawford of Revelation: The Apocalypse of Saint John.

These books and Aramaic texts deserve reading and serious study. It seems most scholars are unaware of their contents and uniqueness.

Blessings,

Qashisha Dave