Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Word play in aramaic and syriac
#46
Thirdwoe Wrote:Shamasha Paul, one thing it shows me, erorr or not...is the extreme conservation that all the scribes show here, that they wouldn't fix it for all these centuries, holding the text to such a high regard. The Greek copies seem to be endlessly fixed and altered, where no two Manuscripts are seen to be alike...even down to the late 1800s with W&H's edition, which looks like no single Greek copy/text before it...and which most of the modern Greek/English tranies come from.

Shlama akhi,


this is a great point to bring up; i'm reminded of the tikkuney hasoferim of the Hebrew Tanakh, wherein the scribes would amend the text in margins where they thought necessary, but leave the actual Holy Writ alone, for fear of changing what was traditionally written. might this be a similar issue of leaving what has been handed down alone?

i am also reminded of Jephthah / Yeeftakh from the Hebrew, and how his name is rendered with a Nun instead of a Yudh in the Peshitta OT and NT = Naphtakh. the similarities between the letters are sufficient to have created a confusion at one time, obviously, yet the alteration is standardized in the Peshitta, and has not been changed.


Chayim b'Moshiach,
Jeremy
Reply
#47
memradya Wrote:I'm happy with the answers (a possible pun doesn't mean that it must exist) . But I don't think that Steve agrees with that. I think he will say: why the peshitta is in edessian dialect and not in galilean ? It makes me think about: According to Francis Alichoran , the Peshitta has some tendencies that shows galilee's aramaic and judean's dialect with his hebrew influence.

Indeed, a possible pun doesn't mean it *must* exist. It's not prescriptive, it's a matter of likelihood given the evidence. The /kyp/-/)bn/-/bny/ pun is very likely to have been there originally, regardless of the language of the text in question, given: 1) The original language of the speaker, 2) How the words are arrayed in juxtaposition, and 3) The nature of oral and written transmission itself.

As Paul said earlier, as parables and stories were told and retold, even by the same person, they wouldn't be identical or recited, but likely different, sometimes even changing for the intended audience. Even when scripts were recited by actors in the ancient world, they did similar things.

As for archaic forms in the Peshitta, the consensus is that the text, in its form as we have it *today*, is a 5th century work revised from earlier sources. In some places, older Old-ish Syriac forms do show through, but they are straddled between 5th century Classical Syriac.

++++++++++

Paul Younan Wrote:For the same reason the GNT is in Koine Greek, instead of a Corinthian dialect or an Ephesian Dialect.

Bingo. Audience. Christianity went from an almost exclusively Jewish movement to a nearly all-Gentile movement in a few short generations. Compiling the New Testament in Greek allowed transmission to be a lot more effective.

Paul Younan Wrote:Eastern Aramaic was by and large the most widespread family of dialects. In order to evangelize, the NT was written in this "Koine Aramaic." Instead of Galilean which only a few locales used.

Indeed, Western Aramaic in Jesus' day was only spoken predominantly in Galilee and Samaria and after the fall of the Temple slowly began to die out over the course of 1,000 years. As I mentioned earlier, that's the reason why the Galilean texts we have that survive to this day are in such poor condition (the transmission of Western Aramaic by Eastern Aramaic scribes).

I wouldn't call the language of the Peshitta a "Koine" by any means, though. It's a Classical, literary dialect, very highly structured and very well-written, and in many ways more formal than would have been spoken day by day. That's one of a countless number of things that helped it survive to modern times. :-)

Paul Younan Wrote:Akhi Steve, I must be done with this conversation (in love). We will allow our readers to weigh the evidence we've both provided, and decide for themselves. I'm afraid neither one of us is going to see the other side. The reader is intelligent enough to make up their own mind in regards to the wordplays in Matthew and in James (whether real or imagined.)

We come from two different viewpoints and world views, but we do share a common passion for Aramaic. I commend you and encourage you to continue in your work to the glory of God our Father, in whatever language and dialect you do it in. It is much appreciated and treasured by me and, I'm sure, countless others.

I respect your wishes, akhi. I have truly found our conversation and exchange engaging, and perhaps we may pick it up again in the future. Aramaic studies is a life pursuit, and one that I shall always sustain. God bless you and keep you.

++++++++++

I just can't seem to keep up, this thread is such a hot-potato. <!-- s:onfire: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/onfire.gif" alt=":onfire:" title="On Fire" /><!-- s:onfire: --> More replies forthcoming... <!-- sSmile --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="Smile" title="Smile" /><!-- sSmile -->
Reply
#48
Steve

It's so weird that a thesis for which no evidence exists, but say, hypothetical wordplay that nobody has seen in an ancient authentic NT, has more weight
than the Peshitta which does exist since ancient times.

Say, in James 2 we have a 'Syriac' word pun. Was there an 'ancient Steve Caruso' that added the pun? If so, why should we believe you for any assumptions you make for a hypothetical text?
Reply
#49
distazo Wrote:Steve

It's so weird that a thesis for which no evidence exists, but say, hypothetical wordplay that nobody has seen in an ancient authentic NT, has more weight
than the Peshitta which does exist since ancient times.

Because they've already established as a base for their entire building that the Peshitta is a 5th-century text. To admit otherwise would invalidate much of their other work. It will not happen.

distazo Wrote:Say, in James 2 we have a 'Syriac' word pun. Was there an 'ancient Steve Caruso' that added the pun? If so, why should we believe you for any assumptions you make for a hypothetical text?

What a fantastic thing that would have been. First, that there would have been an ancient Steve Caruso - he would have done everything imaginable with a fierce tenacity to preserve the exact dialect of the village of Nazareth (he would've fought tooth and nail against the eastern-Aramaic leaning Judeans). Secondly, what a fantastic thing that ancient scribe did, cleverly choosing the secondary meaning of "Shayna" as a metaphor to "cultivated land" in which the "seed" is sown. And the wordplay with Shayna's primary meaning of "peace/tranquility" vs. "Shlama". All from the Greek word eyrene, used twice in the same sentence.

Somehow this ancient Steve Caruso made the ANT even better than the GNT (from which Yaqub, brother of our Lord who was writing to the Hebrew tribes in exile, supposedly wrote in Greek.) An amazing thing, indeed. Coincidence of the millennium.

+Shamasha
Reply
#50
Thirdwoe Wrote:Shamasha Paul, one thing it shows me, erorr or not...is the extreme conservation that all the scribes show here, that they wouldn't fix it for all these centuries, holding the text to such a high regard. The Greek copies seem to be endlessly fixed and altered, where no two Manuscripts are seen to be alike...even down to the late 1800s with W&H's edition, which looks like no single Greek copy/text before it...and which most of the modern Greek/English tranies come from.

I agree. Mar Ishodad didn't like it, and didn't use kind words for that (presumably) very ancient scribe. Obvious scribal/copyist errors are often corrected in texts. This one wasn't that big of a deal, someone likely added a gloss to suggest that the quirky Jews spoke this way ("in Hebraic"), and that's was the end of it.

Nun/Lamed always cause problems with students in Sunday school Aramaic classes. Depending on how sloppy their handwriting is, sometimes I can't make out what they are trying to write.

My English L looks like a C. Just throwing that out there. People have complained to me about my handwriting.

+Shamasha
Reply
#51
Shlama'

Honestly, I can't believe that some scribes can make a mistake in the Peshitta, Peshitto, Curetonian and Sinay misreading a nun !!! I can easily imagine a lamad for a 'ain, a yod for a nun, but a lamad for a nun means that the scribe abused of the altar wine... The aramaic scribes knew their text by heart, so it's very difficult to beleive that it was a mistake. I think rabbuli is more original one...

About the greek text... If the apostles wrote originaly their gospels in greek (and the oral tradition, where it is?), it's exactly the same thing that if I was a witness of something incredible and I published that in english instead in French because it's the internationnal tongue... And I won't say you the difficulties I had to write this phrase. (Flavius Josephus haven't wrote his Antiquities of the Jews in greek but in Hebrew/Aramaic?, later translated in greek, with some help). Many times in the epistles, we see that the apostles have some scribes with them, and when they aren't there, they can't continue what they're doing. And a last thing as I said, the Saint Thomas' crhristian used syriac AFTER THEY GET EVANGELIZED by Thomas and Bartolmay ... I have some work about that...

We know that Matthiew wrote a gospel in Hebrew-Aramaic dialect, for the Jerusalem's church, and that this gospel were found by Pantaenus in India... I don't think you'll say that the gospel taken till the India by Bartolmay was in hebrew dialect... It was more likely in syriac one...
Reply
#52
"If both English translations of the Diatessaron are correct in their renderings, then both Manuscripts they come from have/had the "Rabboni" reading, not "Rabbuli". They both have the gloss as the Peshitta does, but also like the Peshitta, they don't have the added gloss as found in the Cureatonian & Sinaitic versions, which further states "and she ran towards him that she might touch him." John 20:16c
Reply
#53
Thirdwoe Wrote:"If both English translations of the Diatessaron are correct in their renderings, then both Manuscripts they come from have/had the "Rabboni" reading, not "Rabbuli". They both have the gloss as the Peshitta does, but also like the Peshitta, they don't have the added gloss as found in the Cureatonian & Sinaitic versions, which further states "and she ran towards him that she might touch him." John 20:16c

I'm telling ya, a Lamed with an ink smudge looks like a Nun. And a Nun without a strong head looks like a Lamed. It's one of the most commonly misread letter combinations, especially in handwritten texts.

+Shamasha
Reply
#54
Akhay

In Mark 10:51, the Peshitta (middle of image) has "Rabbi", the Sinaitic (top of image) has "Rabbuli" and the Harklean (bottom) has "Rabbuni".

[Image: rabbuli.jpg]

So, there is another usage of "Rabbuli" in the "Syriac" textual tradition. And, in a completely different passage.

Akhay, look at how close the Lamed and Nun look (top and bottom circles). And this is a computer-generated font, not handwriting. Lamed and Nun are commonly mistaken for one another.

+Shamasha
Reply
#55
Yes, very easy to mistake...but that is the least of the trouble. <!-- sHuh --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/huh.gif" alt="Huh" title="Huh" /><!-- sHuh --> If you check the parallel accounts in the Peshitta of this same encounter with Jesus and the blind Man/Men, in Matthew 20:33 and Luke 18:41 along with Mark 10:51, we have three (3) different words coming out of their mouth/mouths! Maybe they said all these? Matt=Maran, Mark=Rabbi, and Luke=Mari.

The Curetonian and Sinaitic has Matt=Mari, Mark=Rabbuli, and Luke=Maran...

The Diatessaron has both "my Lord and Master", which seems to be the two forms of "Mari" and "Maran", translated into English...but no hint of "Rabbuli" "Teacher", as in Mark.

Now, I wonder what the Greek and Latin show in these three verses. lol

Shlama,
Chuck
Reply
#56
Thirdwoe Wrote:Yes, very easy to mistake...but that is the least of the trouble. <!-- sHuh --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/huh.gif" alt="Huh" title="Huh" /><!-- sHuh --> If you check the parallel accounts in the Peshitta of this same encounter with Jesus and the blind Man/Men, in Matthew 20:33 and Luke 18:41 along with Mark 10:51, we have three (3) different words coming out of their mouth/mouths! Maybe they said all these? Matt=Maran, Mark=Rabbi, and Luke=Mari.

The Curetonian and Sinaitic has Matt=Mari, Mark=Rabbuli, and Luke=Maran...

The Diatessaron has both "my Lord and Master", which seems to be the two forms of Mari and Maran, translated into English...but no hint of "Rabbuli" Teacher, as in Mark.

Now, I wonder what the Greek and Latin show in these three verses. lol

Shlama,
Chuck

Shlama Akhi Chuck,

http://carm.org/bible-difficulties/matth...ng-jericho

Maybe one said "Mar" and the other one said "Rab?"

In any event, this is unrelated to the point about "Rabbuli", since the alleged contradiction occurs in all versions (of course, it's not a contradiction at all.)

+Shamasha
Reply
#57
Yea...sorry for the rabbit trail there. This is actually one aspect about the Gospels that I love...that they aren't identical in every detail, when it could have been easy to match things up to be the same way, if they were fabrications.

Blessings,
Chuck
Reply
#58
Thirdwoe Wrote:Yea...sorry for the rabbit trail there. This is actually one aspect about the Gospels that I love...that they aren't identical in every detail, when it could have been easy to match things up to be the same way, if they were fabrications.

Blessings,
Chuck

Then we would only need one, right? By the mouth of 2 or 3 witnesses ... they one-upped it to 4.

+Shamasha
Reply
#59
Shlama'

I'm happy because I have found again all my manuscripts. So I just look in my peshitto (according to the text of Rabbula Gospels, 586 AD), and it reads in John "Rabouli"... I've looked to some inscriptions written betwen 6 and 200 AD too, and the "line" of the lamad is 2 times longers than the nun line (the lamad is higher than the others letters too, exept with tet, khaf, taw...) so the two letters are quitely differents...
The Khabouris reads Rabouli too, although Etheridge and Murdock read Rabouni (if the transleters want read rabbouni, it's not impossible that the anciants scribes did it too). And the lamad is higher than the others letters...

The codex bezae D 05 in its greek part reads "rabbwnei" (olegetaikedidaskale) and in its latin part (the mix of the translation with a vetus latina) "rabboni" (quod | dicitturdmemagister).
The III century's coptic (sahidic) version reads: hrabbounei. According to the apparatus, Arm cdd (armenian I suppose) reads rabbi. Sinaic and Alexandrinus read rabbouni.
The Gutenberg Bible reads :rabboni.
The Vaticanus B03 reads Rabbounei.

I still think that rabbouli is the original one, it's more easy to a scribe to "correct" rabbouli in rabbouni (as Etheridge and Murdock did it) than to make a mistake... And as I say, the aramaic scribe knew their text (the latin/greek scribes not, sometime they didn't even know the greek)... And they wasen't evertime copiing: sometime an other one was reading the text aloud, and the scribe wrote... So it's difficult to meisread a lamad for a nun...
Reply
#60
I just don't seem to have the time to keep up with this thread. :-)

++++++++++

Burning one Wrote:but let's cut to the chase and look at the Greek witness, and suddenly the Peshitta's minor apparent scribal error pales in comparison: SIX different readings exist there in this part of the verse (note: not scribal error -- readings), which makes it suddenly a bit more problematic in choosing what to render, if the Peshitta is to be disregarded.

...

that RABBULI is a problem is a red herring. the problem lay with the Greek, which can't decide how to render the term, thus the bazillion* variants there.

Given each and every one of the variants in the Greek traditions (note plural, as the Greek is not one singular text family as the Peshitta is) one would think that at least one of them would have transliterated /rbwly/. Just *one.*

However, out of all of the permutations, not a single manuscript does.

We see /rabbouni/, /rabbounei/, /rabb?nei/, /rabouni/, and /rabb?ni/ (which are all pretty much phonetically equivalent due to diphthongs in Koine) and some manuscripts even lack "in Hebrew" (like the Old Syriac) so even leaving Syriac as Syriac would have been perfectly fine: But not a single one of them has anything close to /rabbouli/. Thousands of them.

++++++++++

Paul Younan Wrote:This is a very insignificant error, all things considered.

Completely insignificant when it comes to theology and practical personal application.

Very significant when it comes to textual transmission, however, as it's an important marker.

++++++++++

Thirdwoe Wrote:Steve, you said they all show this, but how do you know that they all have it this way? Have you checked them all...and if so, tell me how please.

I have looked over all editions with variants that I have access to directly and have asked around. The only known example of the Peshitta purportedly having /rbwny/ can be found in Murdock's translation's footnotes; however, where this reading was supposedly taken from either the British and Foreign Bible Society of London's 1816 text or the subsequent 1824 revision, which were an early critical edition of the Western Syriac text type (Peshitto), the edition I'm able to get my hands on reads /rbwly/. (In other words, Murdock apparently tried to correct this as well, or used another source: see below)

I'm still waiting for a few more inquiries to come back, so we will see if anything changes.

Thirdwoe Wrote:"If both English translations of the Diatessaron are correct in their renderings, then both Manuscripts they come from have/had the "Rabboni" reading, not "Rabbuli". They both have the gloss as the Peshitta does, but also like the Peshitta, they don't have the added gloss as found in the Cureatonian & Sinaitic versions, which further states "and she ran towards him that she might touch him." John 20:16c

The Arabic Diatessaron has /r)bwny/ where the Latin Diatessaron has /rabboni/.

++++++++++

In any case, /rabbouli/ is a perfectly fine Syriac word, which many historians and lexicographers have simply equated with /rabboni/. It just does not occur anywhere in any contemporary Aramaic to Jesus or Mary (in any dialect) which is what makes it problematic here.

++++++++++

More forthcoming.
Reply


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 2 Guest(s)