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AN article Summarizing Aramaic Primacy?
#1
Shlama,

Is there an article or list out there which summarizes the major points for Aramaic Primacy and their significance (either linguistically, historically, or theologically)? Something that touches on all the double word meanings (leper/potter, camel/rope, eunuch/faithful one, generation/tribe, sin/debt, bed/coffin, bondage being mistook for slavery, etc.) and things like prophet VS Jeremiah in Matthew 27:9, the generations in Matthew 1, etc.

I'm looking for something I can bring the broader scholarly community in an effort to get the Peshitta and it's weightier arguments for primacy noticed. If the Aramaic is truly the original then it deserves to be looked at and accepted as such, and if it's not, then we need to see primacy proofs refuted to establish this fact. But it seems as if there has been very little dialogue between experts on these subjects in their respective fields, and I'd like to try to put an end to that. I want the textual proofs pointing to an Aramaic original that I had been taught as a relatively new Christian without any Biblical language proficiency to be examined by experts on the other side who are fluent in Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew.

As a last resort if time permits I could come up with my own list, but I know there has to be at least SOMETHING already.
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#2
As conceited as it might be, here is an article I wrote on Aramaic primacy. It might not be as detailed as you would like, and much of it is pulled from various sources, but maybe you'll find it helpful:

http://theoscholar.blogspot.com/2013/10/...imacy.html
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#3
Actually yeah, that's a very good one! Thanks D!
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#4
i believe this will be of interest to you:
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090206163407/http://aramaicpeshitta.com/Was%20the%20New%20Testament%20Really%20Written%20in%20Greek%20-%20Edition%201b.pdf">https://web.archive.org/web/20090206163 ... n%201b.pdf</a><!-- m -->

Also, Roth's Book may have more to say concerning Aramaic poetry:
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.amazon.com/Ruach-Qadim-Aramaic-Origins-Testament/dp/9993282030">http://www.amazon.com/Ruach-Qadim-Arama ... 9993282030</a><!-- m -->
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#5
There's a lot of really good stuff in Lataster's book, so that comes highly recommended.
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#6
Ah yes, Lataster's book was another one I've searched for. Thanks so much for the link!
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#7
Quote:I'm looking for something I can bring the broader scholarly community in an effort to get the Peshitta and it's weightier arguments for primacy noticed.

I am afraid there is too much in Lataster et al. that fail fact-check. Just to name one example, on page 218 the book presumes that "And lead us not into temptation" in the English translations KJV and NIV would correctly represent the Greek sense, while it cites Younan "and do not lead us into trial" for the Aramaic sense. However, Etheridge, Murdock and Lamsa read "temptation" with KJV, which probably got temptation from the Latin Vulgate's "tentationem/temptationem", rather than from the Greek. And it seems to me the Greek word peirasmon means trial and not temptation.

If we want to get scholars' attention, we need to argue from the Greek and Aramaic texts directly and not from English translations. Later when Lataster et al. try to tell us this passage in Greek requires us to consider God a tempter, the English has the verb "lead" in imperative (because subjunctive is rare in English nowadays) where the Greek verb is in subjunctive mood, expressing a wish. Scholars will probably know what subjunctive mood is, so at this point the book has lost all its credibility and so have we, if we were to use the same arguments.

By the way, which book in the NT is it easiest to show Aramaic primacy for, with academic opposition?
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#8
I read Paul state somewhere that Lamsa's translation "do not let us enter into temptation" is actually not a faithful representative of what is stated in the Aramaic text. Lamsa, Magiera, and Errico are the only ones that translate it that way. I think either way, the better translation of the Aramaic word here than "temptation" is "trial", as Younan translated. I think just about every other Book in the New Testament that isn't written to congregations in Greece is very easy to show to have been written in Aramaic. This would include the Gospels, Acts, Hebrews, the Catholic Epistles, and Revelation (despite it being absent from the Peshitta). II Peter, II John, III John, and Jude aren't big enough to find a lot of phenomena pointing to an Aramaic or Greek original.
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