03-02-2013, 02:47 AM
Shlama Akhi Steve.
I in no way meant to discredit your work. I am in fact a big fan, even though the hypothetical is not my forte.
My only objection was to your wording of a "missed pun". That's a statement that assumes a definitive. Perhaps qualifying it with a "potential/hypothetical" would sound much less authoritative and much less misleading.
I also think that the Aramaic of the Peshitta is a lot closer to whatever single dialect of "Galilean" Aramaic you feel obliged to confine Christ's understanding to, than to say "little argument that it's closer than Greek." What argument, little or otherwise? Are you serious? There's absolutely no argument whatsoever, seriously, that any Aramaic (ancient or modern) dialect is a lot closer than Greek is to what Christ spoke on a daily basis. To suggest anything otherwise is ludicrous. It's not even worth mentioning in a serious breath.
It's my personal opinion that Christ spoke multiple dialects of Aramaic, as his apostles must have in order to have evangelized Syria and Mesopotamia. If you don't, that's certainly your right. But you'd be wrong. You're not an Aramaic-speaking person in a multi-dialectic culture, I am. And I see and experience it daily. Much like Christ and His Disciples did.
Please understand that phrases like "missed pun" carry a lot of weight, and require a much more thorough analysis than to simply count the number of occurrences in a still-incompletely analyzed corpus of work. Anyone with any bit of basic search technique can look up entries in CAL. Try living it, and have posters come on your forum and tell you (while flipping pages in a book or a browser) that you must be wrong.
Is there a missing wordplay in the Peshitta? Certainly not. Especially not to the hearers of the teaching...even if it wasn't spelled out in the text, it was understood by both the listener and the educated reader. If, and only if, it was meant as a pun. That's an assumption, of course.
Matthew Black was your predecessor in this line of reasoning, and he not only failed miserably in promoting Aramaic primacy among the firmly entrenched Greek camp, but he also made native Aramaic speakers shake their heads in disbelief at the monstrosities he proposed in the spoken dialect. His book is ridiculous.
It's the same reason Mel Gibson's film was a linguistic flop. Not only is the language of the movie gibberish to anyone alive today, but it's highly improbable that anyone in the past would have understood 10% of it. Perhaps only if they listened to it in slow motion, and with subtitles.
I am not a fan of reconstructionalism, not the sort made by Matthew Black nor by Professor Fulco of Mel Gibson fame. It doesn't strengthen our case or help the Aramaic cause, if anything it weakens it by making it as convoluted as the Greek camp finds itself in.
For some reason you feel compelled to know exactly how Christ said every word, and I feel you are chasing a fruitless goal. Like most Aramaic speakers today, He would and could have said things in multiple ways depending on the audience and the situation. Certainly no one alive today is constrained by a single dialect of Aramaic, so I don't see why it's so important to you to create such a rigid divide between the Aramaic of the Peshitta and "good enough", although I feel Akhan Chuck might be onto something in his comments.
Your constant use of "Syriac" instead of "Aramaic" to describe the language of the Peshitta speaks volumes and gives me a clue into your intentions, and I fear they are no different than that of our opponents in the Greek camp. I hope I am wrong. You have no issue with calling Tkhumnaya, Jiluaya, Elkoshnaya or Baznaya a "Neo-Aramaic" dialect, yet you insist on calling the dialect of the Peshitta, "Syriac". It betrays your intention, it really makes you transparent. You are trying to create a false divide between the Aramaic of the Peshitta, and the Aramaic of Jesus, although there is absolutely no primary textual evidence to support your claim. The reason you are doing it is because you, like other like-minded westerners, don't want there to be a record of His Language in a written document. It would upset your established consensus.
We call it Aramaic, and that right belongs to us and us alone, not you. You are a foreigner and you can have the right to call your language by whatever name you choose. The Assyrians have been speaking Aramaic continuously for the last nearly three thousand years. It was called Aramaic during the empire, during Christ's time, today, and tomorrow. We don't call it "Syriac" and would appreciate it and take you more seriously if you don't, either.
For us, calling it "Syriac" is as offensive as calling us "Nestorians", "East Syrians", "Chaldeans", etc.....or calling you by a derogatory name for Italians. I hope you understand that I don't say this in a mean spirit, but one of instruction. You might not realize what a derogatory term "Syriac" is to Assyrians. You might as well call an African-American the N-word. If you never understood that, please understand it now. We are not "East Syriacs", we do not speak "Syriac", we are not "Chaldeans" nor "Arameans". We are Assyrians. And our language yesterday, today, and tomorrow is called Aramaic.
By taking it upon yourself to define someone else's milieu demonstrates a hubris that comes across as offensive. I don't think you intend to do it, but that is how it comes across. Even if you cloak it with "scholarly consensus" - that's certainly western, not eastern, scholarly thought. And I have less respect in the opinions of someone surnamed "Black" or "Fulco", in matters relating to Aramaic, than I do for the dirt under the shoes of our own scholars.
Look into the Hudra, if you can read it, and see what language it describes itself as. That is how you should refer to it. If you respect the language and the Milieu, you will do just that. If you choose instead to play with semantics to further your own agenda, that's fine too. Just expect to be called out on it. <!-- s
--><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/wink1.gif" alt="" title="Wink" /><!-- s -->
+Shamasha
I in no way meant to discredit your work. I am in fact a big fan, even though the hypothetical is not my forte.
My only objection was to your wording of a "missed pun". That's a statement that assumes a definitive. Perhaps qualifying it with a "potential/hypothetical" would sound much less authoritative and much less misleading.
I also think that the Aramaic of the Peshitta is a lot closer to whatever single dialect of "Galilean" Aramaic you feel obliged to confine Christ's understanding to, than to say "little argument that it's closer than Greek." What argument, little or otherwise? Are you serious? There's absolutely no argument whatsoever, seriously, that any Aramaic (ancient or modern) dialect is a lot closer than Greek is to what Christ spoke on a daily basis. To suggest anything otherwise is ludicrous. It's not even worth mentioning in a serious breath.
It's my personal opinion that Christ spoke multiple dialects of Aramaic, as his apostles must have in order to have evangelized Syria and Mesopotamia. If you don't, that's certainly your right. But you'd be wrong. You're not an Aramaic-speaking person in a multi-dialectic culture, I am. And I see and experience it daily. Much like Christ and His Disciples did.
Please understand that phrases like "missed pun" carry a lot of weight, and require a much more thorough analysis than to simply count the number of occurrences in a still-incompletely analyzed corpus of work. Anyone with any bit of basic search technique can look up entries in CAL. Try living it, and have posters come on your forum and tell you (while flipping pages in a book or a browser) that you must be wrong.
Is there a missing wordplay in the Peshitta? Certainly not. Especially not to the hearers of the teaching...even if it wasn't spelled out in the text, it was understood by both the listener and the educated reader. If, and only if, it was meant as a pun. That's an assumption, of course.
Matthew Black was your predecessor in this line of reasoning, and he not only failed miserably in promoting Aramaic primacy among the firmly entrenched Greek camp, but he also made native Aramaic speakers shake their heads in disbelief at the monstrosities he proposed in the spoken dialect. His book is ridiculous.
It's the same reason Mel Gibson's film was a linguistic flop. Not only is the language of the movie gibberish to anyone alive today, but it's highly improbable that anyone in the past would have understood 10% of it. Perhaps only if they listened to it in slow motion, and with subtitles.
I am not a fan of reconstructionalism, not the sort made by Matthew Black nor by Professor Fulco of Mel Gibson fame. It doesn't strengthen our case or help the Aramaic cause, if anything it weakens it by making it as convoluted as the Greek camp finds itself in.
For some reason you feel compelled to know exactly how Christ said every word, and I feel you are chasing a fruitless goal. Like most Aramaic speakers today, He would and could have said things in multiple ways depending on the audience and the situation. Certainly no one alive today is constrained by a single dialect of Aramaic, so I don't see why it's so important to you to create such a rigid divide between the Aramaic of the Peshitta and "good enough", although I feel Akhan Chuck might be onto something in his comments.
Your constant use of "Syriac" instead of "Aramaic" to describe the language of the Peshitta speaks volumes and gives me a clue into your intentions, and I fear they are no different than that of our opponents in the Greek camp. I hope I am wrong. You have no issue with calling Tkhumnaya, Jiluaya, Elkoshnaya or Baznaya a "Neo-Aramaic" dialect, yet you insist on calling the dialect of the Peshitta, "Syriac". It betrays your intention, it really makes you transparent. You are trying to create a false divide between the Aramaic of the Peshitta, and the Aramaic of Jesus, although there is absolutely no primary textual evidence to support your claim. The reason you are doing it is because you, like other like-minded westerners, don't want there to be a record of His Language in a written document. It would upset your established consensus.
We call it Aramaic, and that right belongs to us and us alone, not you. You are a foreigner and you can have the right to call your language by whatever name you choose. The Assyrians have been speaking Aramaic continuously for the last nearly three thousand years. It was called Aramaic during the empire, during Christ's time, today, and tomorrow. We don't call it "Syriac" and would appreciate it and take you more seriously if you don't, either.
For us, calling it "Syriac" is as offensive as calling us "Nestorians", "East Syrians", "Chaldeans", etc.....or calling you by a derogatory name for Italians. I hope you understand that I don't say this in a mean spirit, but one of instruction. You might not realize what a derogatory term "Syriac" is to Assyrians. You might as well call an African-American the N-word. If you never understood that, please understand it now. We are not "East Syriacs", we do not speak "Syriac", we are not "Chaldeans" nor "Arameans". We are Assyrians. And our language yesterday, today, and tomorrow is called Aramaic.
By taking it upon yourself to define someone else's milieu demonstrates a hubris that comes across as offensive. I don't think you intend to do it, but that is how it comes across. Even if you cloak it with "scholarly consensus" - that's certainly western, not eastern, scholarly thought. And I have less respect in the opinions of someone surnamed "Black" or "Fulco", in matters relating to Aramaic, than I do for the dirt under the shoes of our own scholars.
Look into the Hudra, if you can read it, and see what language it describes itself as. That is how you should refer to it. If you respect the language and the Milieu, you will do just that. If you choose instead to play with semantics to further your own agenda, that's fine too. Just expect to be called out on it. <!-- s
--><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/wink1.gif" alt="" title="Wink" /><!-- s -->+Shamasha