Aramaic Primicists Respond: Josephus and Aramaic Primacy

[Christina]

Dave,
Thanks for the info there, can you provide a reference for:

Josephus wrote his "literary work" in Aramaic and translated it into Greek, by his own testimony?

This would be great reference material for those, like myself, who are much less studied in this field at present (actually my point in bringing up his articles)... Thanks so much!

Shlama

Shlama khathi Brantana,

Here's the citing you asked for, it's in the preface of "The Jewish War":

2...I have proposed to myself, for the sake of such as live under the government of the Romans, to translate those books into the Greek tongue, which I formerly composed in the language of our country, and sent to the Upper Barbarians; (2)

Footnote:

(2) Who these Upper Barbarians, remote from the sea, were, Josephus himself will inform us, sect. 2, viz. the Parthians and Babylonians, and remotest Arabians [of the Jews among them]; besides the Jews beyond Euphrates, and the Adiabeni, or Assyrians. Whence we also learn that these Parthians, Babylonians, the remotest Arabians, [or at least the Jews among them,] as also the Jews beyond Euphrates, and the Adiabeni, or Assyrians, understood Josephus's Hebrew, or rather Chaldaic, books of The Jewish War, before they were put into the Greek language

Here Josephus himself admits that he first recorded the Jewish war in Aramaic for the Aramaic-speaking Middle Easterners (Jews & gentiles), and that he has now translated this same work into Greek for the Greco-Romans!

Also note this interesting quote in the preface of "Antiquities":

2. Now I have undertaken the present work, as thinking it will appear to all the Greeks worthy of their study; for it will contain all our antiquities, and the constitution of our government, as interpreted out of the Hebrew Scriptures...I grew weary and went on slowly, it being a large subject, and a difficult thing to translate our history into a foreign, and to us unaccustomed language...

Antiquities was written about 18 years after the Jewish War, by this time Josephus had settled in Rome for years and had plenty of time to learn Greek fluently, yet he admits that translating into Greek was difficult for him! And he still refers to the Greek language as "foreign" and "unaccustomed" to his own countrymen!Seems that Greek wasn't as widely spoken amongst the Palestinian Jews as the Zorbans want to believe!!!

BTW akhi Paul, you may wanna take Mr. Jenkins articles and rebut them in your apologetics section. It may be a lost cause to personally debate this zorban, but rebutting anti-Peshitta zorban articles will give the rest of us some material to reference for Peshitta primacy debates. If you're interested here's some of Mr. Jenkins articles from his site:

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Shlama w'burkate
Khathi Christina