Translations Compared: Eastern or Western?

[mickoy]

:

I have a copy of Matthew's Gospel right here...and it's in Aramaic too. God saw fit to have His Holy Word's preserved through every generation and not lost or mishandled.

So, according to the stories, Apostle Thomas evangelized in India, and later Apostle Bartholomew brought them a copy of Matthew's Gospel...how can we be certain, which way it actually happened...either way, they still have a copy of it today, and it was never lost, and it matches what the rest of The Church of the East has always had from The Apostles. Unless you believe that the Gospel of Matthew that we have today is a forgery, or perhaps that Apostle Matthew wrote two of them.

What say you?

.

Hi Chuck,
this is what the Syrian Orthodox Church is saying:

The Syrian Orthodox Church believes that the Holy Bible, which comprises of the Old Testament and the New Testament, is the divine word of God. Its Fathers labored in translating the Holy Scriptures into Syriac since the very dawn of Christianity. These Syriac translations of the Bible are the oldest and most ancient in any language. Further, the Syriac New Testament is quite unique for it presents the teachings of our Lord in an Aramaic dialect (Syriac) which is akin and would have been mutually comprehensible with the Palestinian dialect of Aramaic in which Christ taught. Since the translation of the Bible into Syriac started as early as the first century, the Syriac version preserves the very ancient renditions of the original texts. In fact, the Syriac Church Fathers produced a number of translations of the Bible and revisions of these translations from the original languages of the Bible. The words of Christ were first transmitted in his native language, the Palestinian dialect of Aramaic, either orally or in a written form. It is from this Aramaic tradition that the Greek Gospels were derived. The Syriac New Testament as we know it today is an early translation of the Greek text back into Syriac, the Aramaic dialect of Edessa (Modern Urfa in Southeast Turkey). The Syriac Old Testament is a translation from the original Hebrew and Aramaic (a different Aramaic dialect from Syriac which is known by the name 'Biblical Aramaic).

Kind regards
Michael