The Age of the Peshitta

[SteveCaruso]

You are contradicting history altogether, Caruso.

The idea that Syriac didn't exist in first century AD doesn't make any sense.

Book "Targum and Testament Revisited: Aramaic Paraphrases of the Hebrew Bible" by Martin McNamara, Page 96 - In Septuagint manuscripts (Manuscripts- Aleph, A, B, and C), there is an epilogue in Book of Job which is introduced with the words: "houtos hermeneutai ek tes syriakes bibliou."

Translation - "this was translated from the Syriac book".

On the top of that, Jesus Christ was preaching to everyone who came to him from Syria, Tyre & Sidon in Lebanon, Galilee, Judea, Idumea, Jordan, and beyond Jordan (Matthew 4:24-25, Luke 6:17, Mark 3:7-8).

Your logical fallacy is: Ambiguity. Specifically Equivocation, and this is a serious case.

I never said that Syriac did not exist in the 1st century.

There is Syriac, and then there is "Syriac." Both are distinct and have very specific definitions. You are conflating the two, which is a mistake.

Syriac in the academic sense means the family of dialects ranging from Old Syriac, Classical Syriac, Post-Classical Syriac, and all the way up to things like Kthobonoyo and influences within Neo-Aramaic languages. It's a distinct lineage and cluster of dialects.

Many Aramaic dialects that are NOT Syriac in the academic sense go by the autonym "Syriac." As I said in my prior post, Galilean calls itself "Suriston" ("Syriac") but it is not Syriac.

The manuscript of The Jewish Wars that is in Syriac is in Post-Classical Syriac (language later than the 8th century). It is a dialect that did not exist at Josephus' time, nor would it for 1,000 years after him.

For example, you *can* say that 12th century Post-Classical Syriac and Galilean are both "Syriac." One calls itself Suryaya/Suryoyo where the other calls itself Suriston (both from the Greek for "Syriac"). However, they are not the same language. They are a thousand years apart and many miles geographically away from one another.

That manuscript is not what you insist it "possibly" could be. There is no way on earth.

So, with all due and proper respect: Please, stop equivocating. :-)