Your "mistranslations" confirm Greek primacy

[kria]

Paul Younan: Thank you for the explanation. It's possible that the greek manuscripts aren't different translations... they are copies of one original translation which we do not have now...
If so, I would be both greek and aramaic primacist. It's highly probable that the authors wrote in aramaic and they immediately translated it into greek (or they asked somebody for a translation (if they were not familiar with greek)).

[Stephen Silver]

Thirdwoe: The biggest thing that shows me that the Greek came before Peshitta is:

(1) Greek manuscripts agreement (if they are translations by DIFFERENT TRANSLATORS, they should be MUCH MORE DIFFERENT) - that is what I'm talking about in this topic. ALL translators did THE SAME MISTRANSLATIONS? - I can't believe it. ALL translators translated aramaic word for LOVE in the same way (there are at least two different words for love in greek) ...and so on...
and also
(2) Paul wrote mostly to greek-speaking people
(..ok, it is possible that he wrote both in greek and aramaic because he wanted to send his writings to aramaic people as well...)

I think there is nothing else for greek (except controversial numerics) but these two arguments are huge.

I don't have any "biggest thing" for Aramaic primacy (maybe the fact that Jesus spoke aramaic, but it's not so big...).
I admit that most of the linguistic arguments presented by Paul Younan and others are very impressive. But they are nothing because of my "(1)" argument (maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see it now).

I have the feeling that this whole issue is not important for God at all and He does't want us to know the truth and He is just laughing at us :-)

Hi Kria:
Let's start from the beginning with the fact that Jesus spoke Aramaic. Consider that all of his original words are forever lost to the Greek Primacist. The Greek Primacist can only guess at the original words of Jesus. Moreover, since Hebrew and Aramaic are sister languages and share the same roots while Greek does not, the Greek Primacist does not enjoy any linguistic affinity between the Jewish Bible and the Greek New Testament.
The Greek Primacist believes that the Greek New Testament is an early translation from Aramaic. If Jesus spoke Aramaic, then the Greek New Testament is not the "autograph" of the sayings of Jesus, but a translation of his spoken words. The Aramaic Primacist, however, has no middle-man. The Aramaic Primacist understands that the "autograph" of the words of Jesus were recorded faithfully as they were spoken in Aramaic. The scribal mechanism was in place to do this because we have evidence that the second most populous group of the Dead sea Scrolls, written before and during the time of Jesus was in very fact Aramaic. So it's not at all difficult to see that the Peshitta New Testament was not only plausibly written first, but that it was most likely written first. Why would the Jewish New Testament writers, with journalistic abilities within their hands and an Aramaic population in the LAND of Israel, as well as in the East (Nineveh, Babylon, Adiabene), not write down Jesus' words verbatim? That would be a grave neglect, don't you think?
That to say this. The Protestant Reformation which championed the Greek New Testament used Erasmus' "averaged text" (textus receptus). Why not use the "so-called original" Greek New Testament? Why average the polysemy (synonyms) of several Byzantine Greek New Testament manuscripts? Well, it's because no two agreed, let alone the twelve or so that were used by Erasmus. This is the reality of the Greek New Testament's introduction by the Protestant Reformers. They abandoned the Latin Vulgate used consistently by the Roman Catholic Church in favour of the other primary root language (Greek) which spawned the English language. While the five Romantic Languages of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Romanian all are solidly rooted in Latin, only English uses both Latin and Greek. Today, English is the lingua franca of the world. Air traffic controllers in every country of the world use English as prime and their own respective languages secondly. The Greek Primacist rides the wave of popular belief that Greek is king but this is not true of the New Testament. Greek Primacy was promoted by the later Protestant Reformers partly because of its affinity with English. In my opinion it was felt necessary to use a Greek New Testament to offset the use of the Latin Vulgate. The Roman Catholic Church kept redacted Aramaic New Testament manuscripts in their vaults from around the fifth century, which were revised from the original Peshitta to conform to Catholic doctrine. The Latin Vulgate reflects the redaction. So Latin seems to have been championed by the Roman Catholic Church because it was more easily assimilated to the general populations of Italy, Spain and France having a rooted affinity with the Latin Vulgate. It was much easier for England to embrace Protestantism with a Greek New Testament than with the Latin Vulgate.
The Peshitta New Testament has an unbroken history and continual custodianship in the Assyrian Church of the East from Apostolic times. Although the Apostolic period is sketchy concerning the historical record of the Peshitta New Testament, so it is also for the Greek New Testament. There is no doubt in my mind that the Greek New Testament was written in late Apostolic times. The floodgates were opened with the conversion of Cornelius the Centurian and the need was great for a Greek New Testament. However, evidece shows that it is a translation of the Aramaic Peshitta New Testament. The Jewish Nazarenes were in need of the written Gospels in Aramaic and Paul was their "ringleader". (Acts 24:5) long after Cornelius was called to the faith. Paul spoke Aramaic in Tarsus. He was a Pharisee and Pharisees taught that it was inappropriate to learn Greek culture. The Talmud Gamora records this argument. The consistency of all of the eastern Peshitta manuscripts is phenomenal. The discrepancies are a handful. Not so with any two ancient Greek New Testament manuscripts. The presence of synonyms in various Greek New Testament manuscripts can only mean one thing. They are all translations from another language. That other language is none other than Aramaic, the mother tongue of our LORD and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Kindly,
Stephen
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[enarxe]

Kria,

I'm quite surprised to see someone writing about consistency of various Greek manuscripts ("all greek manuscripts contain the same mistranslations"). Actually "surprised" is a British way of saying "shocked".

Have you checked the evidence or just read it as a "truth" in some christian/protestant popular propaganda? There is a different standard for the Bible than that for the works of Homer or editions of Shakespeare.

Please do not take it as an attack just because I disagree with your view, it is an honest question.

Have you seen this:

ograabe wrote:February 4, 2008

According to Barbara Alland in her book on the New Testament, forty percent of the verses in the he various Greek New Testament documents (don't call them manuscripts) are signifcanctly different in that there are at least two significant words that are different. [...]
Otto

I can make an additional comment on that. I'm currently proofreading one of the Greek codices comparing it to the Majority text at the same time. It is one thing to know theoretically that there are variants and another to see with your own eyes 2 to 10 differences in every 50 word chunk of text. And this is only one mss compared to one tradition. I'm convinced that forty percent must be about right as my chunks of text are usually 2 to 4 verses long and I can see at least one difference in almost every such piece. Basically, for someone who is aware how scribes (soferim) treated TaNaKh, Greek texts of NT are one big mess.

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With peace and blessings,
Jerzy

[kria]

enarxe,
I'm not writing about consistency of various greek manuscripts. I was just surprised that all these (so different) manuscripts contain the same "errors", for example in Romans 5,7 and many other verses.

[Thirdwoe]

???

Stephen,

You made a statement that I want to speak with you about please...

The Greek Primacist does not enjoy any linguistic affinity between the Jewish Bible and the Greek New Testament.

Thought: Since the oldest full copy of the Hebrew that we know to exist is the Masoretic version, would the Septuagint be of any more value than it? I am wondering if the oldest copy of the Septuagint reflects a truer text than the Masoretic...I read once that the Hebrew version was altered to disguise some of the more obvious allusions to Y'shua being the fulfilled Messiah, while the Greek Septuagint retains the more original Hebrew text's teaching and shows it clearer...Also, do you think that the Apostles or Y'shua made any use of it, or do you say that they were not learned in Greek at all? I have heard before that a lot of the Greek New Testament quotations come from the Septuagint, but I have also heard that that is not the case....I would like to hear your thoughts on these things...

...

[enarxe]

enarxe,
I'm not writing about consistency of various greek manuscripts. I was just surprised that all these (so different) manuscripts contain the same "errors", for example in Romans 5,7 and many other verses.

Oh, I see. Thanks for clarifying this. You see, this plethora of Greek variants is a real problem. If you one says that Greek NT was written first then the very first question is WHICH or WHAT Greek NT?

Coming back to your original post - I still cannot see how this can be applied as an argument for Greek primacy. Could you possibly explain using let us say three "mistranslation" examples and how these are the same in Greek? Before a synthetic statement (conclusion) one would need to see the details explained.

Peace and blessings,
Jerzy

[judge]

enarxe,
I'm not writing about consistency of various greek manuscripts. I was just surprised that all these (so different) manuscripts contain the same "errors", for example in Romans 5,7 and many other verses.

Well, we don't know a lot about how the gospels were first disseminated, but with Pauls letter to Rome we know a little more.
It was written to one community. Presumably it was translated at first, by this community. So a mistake could quite conceivibly occur during this initial translation and then be passed on to all later copies.

[judge]

In Romans, an older Aramaic idiom was used. In later ages, the meaning of the word reversed. (Translators used the modern meaning).
This happens with many languages. It supports an Aramaic original, not a Greek one.

Is the problem with Romans 5:7 a problem with an idiom though?

I thought that the word for "wicked" was confused with the word for "blame", or blameless if it had the negative particle added.

These two words just looked so very much alike that they were confused by the translator.

[Stephen Silver]

Shlama Thirdwoe:
I will answer your queries one at a time, throughout your post.

Stephen,
You made a statement that I want to speak with you about please...

The Greek Primacist does not enjoy any linguistic affinity between the Jewish Bible and the Greek New Testament.

Thought: Since the oldest full copy of the Hebrew that we know to exist is the Masoretic version, would the Septuagint be of any more value than it? I am wondering if the oldest copy of the Septuagint reflects a truer text than the Masoretic...

The text of the Septuagint (LXX) is a valuable independent witness, the translation of the Torah into Greek, from the 3rd century B.C. The Massoretic text is a copy of the entire T"NK, produced in the same scribal tradition that has been in place since Ezra the Scribe.

I read once that the Hebrew version was altered to disguise some of the more obvious allusions to Y'shua being the fulfilled Messiah, while the Greek Septuagint retains the more original Hebrew text's teaching and shows it clearer...

Balderdash. <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/wink1.gif" alt="" title="Wink" /><!-- s --> Don't believe everything that you read.

Also, do you think that the Apostles or Y'shua made any use of it, or do you say that they were not learned in Greek at all?

No, Yeshua and his disciples "listened to the T"NK" readings in the synagogue. They studied the Hebrew T"NK, not the Greek LXX. The traditional synagogue service has been preserved in Orthodox Judaism. The Siddur (Order of Service) is written in Hebrew and Aramaic. Keeping this in mind, understand that Yeshua was a Jew, living amongst Jews. Greek linguistic influences in the synagogues in the LAND, including HaGalil would not have been tolerated.

I have heard before that a lot of the Greek New Testament quotations come from the Septuagint, but I have also heard that that is not the case....I would like to hear your thoughts on these things...

It's true that the "modern" LXX is the source from which the Greek New Testament quotes from the Old Testament. Apart from the Torah however, the rest of the Greek Old Testament didn't exist before the 3rd Century A.D. Therefore, the Greek New Testament was still in its formative stage at the time of Origen ((185???255).

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There has never existed a Greek scribal tradition to rival that of the Massorites. Please understand that the Jews have consistently used the natural linguistic affinity between Hebrew and Aramaic very effectively from the time of Ezra the Scribe and The Great Synagogue.

Shlama,
Stephen
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[Thirdwoe]

...

It's true that the "modern" LXX is the source from which the Greek New Testament quotes from the Old Testament. Apart from the Torah however, the rest of the Greek Old Testament didn't exist before the 3rd Century A.D. Therefore, the Greek New Testament was still in its formative stage at the time of Origen ((185???255).

Is there any proof that I can look at to validate your statement here Brother Stephen? That only the Septuagint Torah existed till the 3rd Century A.D. and that the Greek New Testament was not available until the Septuagint was completely translated by the times of Origen (185???255... since you see that the quotes in the New Testament books, most often come from it as you state....

Or is this more an educated guess on your part...? I want to believe what I am reading here... <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/wink1.gif" alt="" title="Wink" /><!-- s -->

Also, you seem to say here that the direct Quotes in the Greek New Testament from the Greek Septuagint Old Testament are not trustworthy, where they depart from what we find in the Masoretic text copy of today...since the Masoretic is the more correct text...If you believe this then, would it be safe to say that you believe that there is no use for the Greek New Testament...or the Septuagint for that matter as a whole and especialy where the Greek New quotes the Greek old?

...

[Christina]

Shlama Thirdwoe, a couple of things:

It is important to know the difference between an actual quote (verbatim word for word) and a reference (an allusion to the text), I suggest you read this thread, akhan Paul explains it very well: <!-- l --><a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.peshitta.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1122">viewtopic.php?t=1122</a><!-- l -->

As for the origin of the LXX:

The history of the Septuagint, according to tradition, is first mentioned in
The Letter of Aristeas in which the following origins of the Septuagint are found.
Ptolemy II Philadelphos, King of Egypt and head of the Greek Macedonian
House of Ptolemy (287-247 B.C.) had recently established the famous Library of
Alexandria. Demetrios of Phalaros, the chief librarian persuaded the king to
enrich the famous library with a copy of the sacred books of the Hebrew people.
To win favor with the Hebrew people, whom he needed to translate the sacred
books from Hebrew into Greek, King Ptolemy freed 100,000 Hebrew slaves in
different parts of his kingdom. He then sent delegates, including Aristeas, who
was an officer in the Royal Guard, an Egyptian by birth and a pagan by religion,
to Jerusalem, to ask Eleazar, the Jewish High Priest, to provide him with a copy
of the Torah, and Jewish scholars capable of translating it into Greek. Eleazar
agreed to the King???s request and sent seventy-two scholars (six from each tribe)
to the King so that they could translate the Law into Greek. The letter further
states that the Jewish scholars were successful in translating the Hebrew Torah
into Greek and presented a richly ornamented copy to King Ptolemy. Tradition
also holds that the Hebrew Torah was translated in seventy-two days. Finally,
the Letter of Aristeas also states that the first reading of the translation was in the
presence of the Jewish priests, rulers and people assembled in Alexandria, Egypt,
who all recognized and praised its perfect conformity with the Hebrew original.
King Ptolemy was greatly pleased with the translation and had it placed in the
great Library of Alexandria. The name Septuagint is latin for seventy, in reference
to the seventy-two scholars who translated the Hebrew scriptures into Greek,
and is also referenced with the Roman numerals LXX for seventy.

(Introduction, The Holy Orthodox Bible by Peter A. Papoutsis; emphasis mine)

To sum up, what we DO know is that the Hebrew Torah was translated into Greek in Alexandria by 72 Jewish scholars from Jerusalem in the 3rd century BC. What we DON'T know is who translated the other OT books into Greek, where those translations took place and when, so "Septuagint" and "LXX" are technically misomeaners when referring to the Greek OT because not all the books were translated by those 72 scholars who translated the Torah. Stephen saying that the LXX wasn't completed until the 3rd century AD is correct because the earliest complete mss of the LXX date from that century. It's likely that the Greek translations of the Hebrew OT books weren't codified until then or shortly before that.

[Thirdwoe]

...

Tradition is a funny thing and more often than not, runs afoul of the truth....

You say:

"What we DON'T know is who translated the other OT books into Greek, where those translations took place and when...."

If we don't know, how can you then say:

"not all the books were translated by those 72 scholars who translated the Torah...." "Stephen saying that the LXX wasn't completed until the 3rd century AD is correct because the earliest complete mss of the LXX date from that century."

And you should know that just because the oldest found mss copies date to a certain century, does not mean that is when the orginal mss were made....if you use this same logic with the Aramaic NT you will find a red face looking back in the mirror, not to mention the oldest complete Hebrew Old Testament text we have today.

You also say:

It's likely that the Greek translations of the Hebrew OT books weren't codified until then or shortly before that.

I say that it may not be so likely, unless we say that the Greek New Testament which often makes use of the Greek Old Testament in many places was not written until these late dates...can anyone say with conviction of proof that there existed no Greek New Testament Books, until the times of Origen???

I see lots of proof otherwise, and it looks very obvious that the New Testament books in Greek all appear by the end of the 1st Century...

Now, in saying all this, I want to make clear that I am not a Greek primacist, nor am I trying to prove that the Greek is the Original...I just want to be hearing truth when I want to learn something. And I will work hard to find it if I can...I understand the desire to show the Aramaic to be the Original, and I am all for that when it can be shown, and there are certain realities that we can ignore, or even be ignorant of, but that won't make them non-realities....

...

[judge]

The text of the Septuagint (LXX) is a valuable independent witness, the translation of the Torah into Greek, from the 3rd century B.C. The Massoretic text is a copy of the entire T"NK, produced in the same scribal tradition that has been in place since Ezra the Scribe.

Um...maybe. But how would you explain the fact that there are Hebrews scriptures in the dead sea scrolls that disagree with the massoretic text?
How can you you be sure which, if either preserved the :"original" reading, the dead sea scrolls version or the massoretic version?

In Acts 7:14 the LXX the GNT and the peshitta NT all say 75 souls. Yet the Massoretic text says 70 souls.
Seems that the massoretic text was altered. Wouldn't you agree?

No, Yeshua and his disciples "listened to the T"NK" readings in the synagogue. They studied the Hebrew T"NK, not the Greek LXX.

How can you be sure that they didn't study Aramaic targums.

Why for example does Paul, a pharisee, not quote tghe massoretic text in Ephesians 4?
Paul quotes a version of the psalm that is only preserved in an Aramaic targum.

This seems good evidence that Paul did not study (or study exclusively) the massoretic text we received from the middle ages.

It's true that the "modern" LXX is the source from which the Greek New Testament quotes from the Old Testament. Apart from the Torah however, the rest of the Greek Old Testament didn't exist before the 3rd Century A.D. Therefore, the Greek New Testament was still in its formative stage at the time of Origen ((185???255).

You do not know this to be a fact. You can't say there was no greek translation of the rest of the hebrew bible at that time. All that you can say is that we have evidence that the torah was translated in the 3rd cent BCE. After that you are arguing from silence.

Your conclusion here is based on an unprovable premise.

What we do know is that on many occaisions the NT peshitta agrees closely with the LXX against the massorectic text!

There are many examples. Go here to look at the greek NT compared to the LXX and massoretic text, then check how these OT quotes compare to the peshitta!

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Here is just one example at random from the above link. There are no doubt better examples.

Acts 7:42-43

LXX and GNT: And you took up the tent of Moloch, and the star of the god Rephan, the figures which you made to worship"

Massoretic: You shall take up Sakkuth your king, and Kaiwan your star-god, your images, which you made for yourselves

Peshitta NT: But ye bore the tabernacle of Malchum, and the star of the god Rephon, images which ye had made, that ye might bow down to them. (murdoch translation)

[Thirdwoe]

...

I have looked at that site before and have found it very helpful.... and it does show that the Peshitta in many places shares the readings or the Septuagint we have today, rather than the present readings of the oldest copy of the Masoretic copy that has come down to us from about the year 1000 A.D. and not only in the Torah is this true...

So, what this could mean is that there is either another older Hebrew text than the Masoretic that the Peshitta is quoting from, or it quotes from the Peshitta Old Testament in it's citations and the Peshitta Old Testament text does not agree with the present Hebrew Masoretic text in those places, or, which does not seem likely, is using the Septuagint translation, but maybe it is just that the Septuagint we have today agrees more with the Hebrew text of that time, that the Peshitta New Testament utilizes in it's Old Testament citations...

What we can do here with that site is look to see if the Peshitta New Testament in it's Old Testament quotations agree more with the Hebrew, The Aramaic Peshitta, or the Greek Septuagint in its readings for it's various Old Testament citations.... This may answer some big questions.
...

[judge]

...

...So, what this could mean is that there is either another older Hebrew text than the Masoretic that the Peshitta is quoting from, or it quotes from the Peshitta Old Testament in it's citations and the Peshitta Old Testament does not agree with the present Hebrew Masoretic text in those places, or, which does not seem likely, is using the Septuagint translation, but maybe it is just that the Septuagint we have today agrees more with the Aramaic or Hebrew text, that the Peshitta New Testament utilizes in it's Old Testament citations...


...

I have not done an exhaustive check, but IIUC the peshitta NT is pretty close to the GNT in its quotations and that these are not the same as the peshitta OT (although in some places they may be.
I know that at least in some instances the POT agrees (or is closer to) with the massoretic against the LXX! <!-- s:biggrin: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/biggrin.gif" alt=":biggrin:" title="Big Grin" /><!-- s:biggrin: --> IIRC one can see this by comparing the date for noahs flood in all three texts (but dont quote me on this I am going from memory)
The origin of the POT is quite obscure and is not directly related to the PNT.

I tend to agree with the proposal put forward by Paul in the past, that the NT authors may have been familiar with Aramaic targums that we no longer have. Galilean ones at times.

As it seems Aramaic was the dominant language the scriptures were probably commonly known by the targums.

What we do know is that despite any textual tradition there was a text that varied form the massoretic text (albeit slightly) around at the the time of Christ.
I think, but am not sure, that the DSS show more than one variation in Hebrew at that time too.