01-01-2008, 05:31 PM
Albion Wrote:Shlama Friends,
I'm wondering if anyone here can tell me if there once was a New Testament in either Latin, or in Armenian, that is as ancient as the P'shitta N.T.?
[..]
Do these New Testaments still actually exist, does anyone here know?
Shlama Albion,
Here is what Bruce Metzger (http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obi...293454.ece) and Bart Ehrman wrote in "The Text of the New Testament Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration" about Old Latin (Vetus Latina):
"When and where it was that the earliest attempts were made to translate the Bible into Latin has been much disputed. In the opinion of most scholars today, the Gospels were first rendered into Latin during the last quarter of the second century in North Africa, where Carthage had become enamored of Roman culture. Not long afterward, translations were also made in Italy, Gaul, and elsewhere. The wooden and literalistic style that characterizes many of these renderings suggests that early copies were made in the form of interlinear renderings of the Greek.
During the third century, many Old Latin versions circulated in North Africa and Europe, including distinctive versions that were current in Italy, Gaul, and Spain. Divergent renderings of the same passage (e.g. at Luke 24.4-5 there are at least 27 variant reading in the Old Latin manuscripts that have survived) bear out Jerome's complaint to Pope Damasus that there were almost as many versions as manuscripts (tot enim sunt exemplaria paene quot codices).
No codex of the entire Old Latin Bible is extant. The Gospels are represented by about 32 mutilated manuscripts, besides a number of fragments. (..) These witnesses date from the fourth century to the thirteenth century, thus proving that the Old Latin version was still copied long after it had gone out of general use."
Philip Burton wrote a scholarly book about Old Latin Gospels, I believe it contains a lot of his doctoral dissertation. In his book Burton tries to answer the question if there was one Old Latin version or rather many differing translations (of course from Greek, I do not think he even considered possibility of translating from Peshitta into Latin). A review <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/vol06/Burton2001rev1.html">http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/vol06/Burton2001rev1.html</a><!-- m --> summarizes some conclusions.
Hope it helps with the Latin part of your question,
Jerzy