Does it matter if Aramaic Primacy is wrong?

[Paul Younan]

The Septuagint was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, so it's possible that Jews of Palestine understood both Greek and Aramaic, and that the New Testament was originally written in Greek, but with Jesus' words in the Peshitta being the original, untranslated words of Jesus.

I have no problem with the Septuagint being found in Qumran. Nor with the Jews in Palestine speaking, writing and composing in Greek.

I have a problem with the Aramaic words of the Messiah being lost. Because if the NT was originally written in Greek, then the Peshitta is a translation and can't possibly contain the original, untranslated words of Jesus. It's simply not possible. It would be a translation of the original language of the NT, Greek in that scenario. Which, in the case of Christ's words, was itself a translation of the original Aramaic He uttered.

So we go from Aramaic (now lost) to Greek, then back to Aramaic. But something would have been lost.

The original, untranslated words of Jesus would (under that scenario) simply not exist. That's what I view as a very problematic viewpoint.

Again, if Jesus spoke Greek in the parables or the sermon on the mount or the Lord's Prayer, I would be a Greek primacist.

But I can't hold to the viewpoint that Jesus spoke in Aramaic, yet His words were only preserved in Greek. That is the nearly unanimous position of Greek Primacists today. That still leaves the problem intact. We've lost the original words of Christ.

+Shamasha