Do you disagree with any of this?:
"The Original Language of the Gospels" by Edgar J. Goodspeed (Oct 1934)
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...ls/652578/
Also in
_Contemporary Thinking About Jesus: An Anthology_, compiled by Thomas S. Kepler (1944), 429pp., on 58-63, 58-59
https://www.bookfinder.com/search/?st=sr...+jesus&
But the greatest difficulty with the method was that there seemed to be no historical occasion likely to have called forth the Aramaic Gospel it assumed, especially at so early a date as it claimed-- 50 or 52 A.D.
This is the core of the problem. How did such a Gospel come to be written? The Gospel is Christianity’s contribution to literature. It is the most potent type of religious literature ever devised. To credit such a creation to the most barren age of a never very productive tongue like Aramaic would seem the height of improbability.
For in the days of Jesus the Jews of Palestine were not engaged in writing books. It is not too much to say that a Jerusalem or Galilean Jew of the time of Christ would regard writing a book in his native tongue with positive horror. Even a century before, a Jew who wrote a book felt obliged to put it under the name of some ancient worthy like Enoch, the seventh from Adam, or to claim as its author some ancient Jew of what was called the Prophetic Period, which was understood to extend from Moses to Ezra, and from which it was believed all sound books on religion must come.
This aversion to writing books was not merely negative. It was positive. They had plenty of things to say and they said them, but they would not write them. Those were the days when the famous oral amplification of the Jewish Law was being developed by such masters as Hillel and Shammai. But the Jews would not write it; they memorized it. It seemed an act of impiety to write it, for then it might seem to rival the Scripture itself.
Those days also witnessed the translation of the Hebrew Law into the Aramaic vernacular. But this too remained unwritten for generations. Indeed, it is impossible to realize the fantastic unreality of the first-century Jewish attitude toward writing books.
There is a rabbinical story that about 50 A.D. Gamaliel the First, the grandson of Hillel, saw a written copy of an Aramaic translation of Job, and immediately had it destroyed. The story may not be true, but its intention is obvious: if anyone was wicked enough to write down the Targum on Job, it must be destroyed. This was the orthodox Jewish attitude toward writing books in Aramaic, in Jerusalem about the middle of the first century. If anything could heighten the picture, it is the behavior of Jews of that very period who escaped from these narrowing walls into the great Greek world of the day. Such men wrote books freely, but they wrote them principally in Greek. There is a peculiar irony in this, that gifted Jews should have to turn to Greek as a medium of literary expression. But Philo, Paul, and Josephus tell the story. They wrote, but they wrote in Greek.
Of the Jewish Apocrypha written within a century of the life of Jesus, the great majority were composed in Greek, not Aramaic, and it seems abundantly clear that in the times of Jesus the Jews were not writing books in Aramaic; indeed, they were actually resorting to the strangest devices to avoid doing so.
Even if the Jews had been given to Aramaic composition, and contemporary Aramaic literature had been a garden instead of a desert, the early Christians could hardly have contributed to it. They were constantly overshadowed by the sense of imminent catastrophe. The Messianic Advent overhung them like a huge wave of fate, threatening-- or promising-- to break at any moment. It was their urgent task to hasten about the ancient world warning men of what was at hand. Clearly it was no time for writing books.
II ....
=======================================
Searching the Scriptures - Society of Biblical Literature, on 34-35
PDF: https://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/Sea...ptures.pdf
The 1934 meeting (seventieth) was a lively affair. Attention was focused on the well-known views of the Aramaic scholar Charles Cutler Torrey, remembered by a member as one who had "a Zeus-like appearance and spoke like an oracle." Torrey had recently published his book _The Four Gospels, A New Translation_ (1933), which James A. Montgomery had made the subject of a sympathetic review essay.^8 [8: "Torrey's Aramaic Gospels," 53 (1934) 79-99.] Montgomery noted that the essay accompanying the "chaste and charming" rendition was the fruition of a number of scattered monographs and notes the Yale professor had produced over twenty years. He concluded that Torrey had proven his case for him.
Torrey's arguments, linked with a combative style, forced NT scholars to deal seriously and competently with this revolutionary contribution to NT studies. And deal they did. At that meeting E. J. Goodspeed, H. J. Cadbury, and D. W. Riddle took up the challenge. For several years Torrey continued to enliven, if not polarize, the meetings: Hellenists and Hebraists of the primitive church _redivivi_. Some of the older members of the Society today can recall the supreme self-confidence of Torrey in debate:
"If there is any one here who is competent to challenge these conclusions, let him speak. But I am sure there are none such here."
Goodspeed charged that the maverick translation was in defiance of the scholarly ideal and "at variance with our whole New Testament science-- textual, grammatical, literary and historical." As with the Paulinist's treatment of the sects in the Pastorals, argumentation was often by denunciation, entertaining but not overly instructive. Montgomery's plea for an unprejudiced discussion for the most part went unheeded.
"The Original Language of the Gospels" by Edgar J. Goodspeed (Oct 1934)
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...ls/652578/
Also in
_Contemporary Thinking About Jesus: An Anthology_, compiled by Thomas S. Kepler (1944), 429pp., on 58-63, 58-59
https://www.bookfinder.com/search/?st=sr...+jesus&
But the greatest difficulty with the method was that there seemed to be no historical occasion likely to have called forth the Aramaic Gospel it assumed, especially at so early a date as it claimed-- 50 or 52 A.D.
This is the core of the problem. How did such a Gospel come to be written? The Gospel is Christianity’s contribution to literature. It is the most potent type of religious literature ever devised. To credit such a creation to the most barren age of a never very productive tongue like Aramaic would seem the height of improbability.
For in the days of Jesus the Jews of Palestine were not engaged in writing books. It is not too much to say that a Jerusalem or Galilean Jew of the time of Christ would regard writing a book in his native tongue with positive horror. Even a century before, a Jew who wrote a book felt obliged to put it under the name of some ancient worthy like Enoch, the seventh from Adam, or to claim as its author some ancient Jew of what was called the Prophetic Period, which was understood to extend from Moses to Ezra, and from which it was believed all sound books on religion must come.
This aversion to writing books was not merely negative. It was positive. They had plenty of things to say and they said them, but they would not write them. Those were the days when the famous oral amplification of the Jewish Law was being developed by such masters as Hillel and Shammai. But the Jews would not write it; they memorized it. It seemed an act of impiety to write it, for then it might seem to rival the Scripture itself.
Those days also witnessed the translation of the Hebrew Law into the Aramaic vernacular. But this too remained unwritten for generations. Indeed, it is impossible to realize the fantastic unreality of the first-century Jewish attitude toward writing books.
There is a rabbinical story that about 50 A.D. Gamaliel the First, the grandson of Hillel, saw a written copy of an Aramaic translation of Job, and immediately had it destroyed. The story may not be true, but its intention is obvious: if anyone was wicked enough to write down the Targum on Job, it must be destroyed. This was the orthodox Jewish attitude toward writing books in Aramaic, in Jerusalem about the middle of the first century. If anything could heighten the picture, it is the behavior of Jews of that very period who escaped from these narrowing walls into the great Greek world of the day. Such men wrote books freely, but they wrote them principally in Greek. There is a peculiar irony in this, that gifted Jews should have to turn to Greek as a medium of literary expression. But Philo, Paul, and Josephus tell the story. They wrote, but they wrote in Greek.
Of the Jewish Apocrypha written within a century of the life of Jesus, the great majority were composed in Greek, not Aramaic, and it seems abundantly clear that in the times of Jesus the Jews were not writing books in Aramaic; indeed, they were actually resorting to the strangest devices to avoid doing so.
Even if the Jews had been given to Aramaic composition, and contemporary Aramaic literature had been a garden instead of a desert, the early Christians could hardly have contributed to it. They were constantly overshadowed by the sense of imminent catastrophe. The Messianic Advent overhung them like a huge wave of fate, threatening-- or promising-- to break at any moment. It was their urgent task to hasten about the ancient world warning men of what was at hand. Clearly it was no time for writing books.
II ....
=======================================
Searching the Scriptures - Society of Biblical Literature, on 34-35
PDF: https://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/Sea...ptures.pdf
The 1934 meeting (seventieth) was a lively affair. Attention was focused on the well-known views of the Aramaic scholar Charles Cutler Torrey, remembered by a member as one who had "a Zeus-like appearance and spoke like an oracle." Torrey had recently published his book _The Four Gospels, A New Translation_ (1933), which James A. Montgomery had made the subject of a sympathetic review essay.^8 [8: "Torrey's Aramaic Gospels," 53 (1934) 79-99.] Montgomery noted that the essay accompanying the "chaste and charming" rendition was the fruition of a number of scattered monographs and notes the Yale professor had produced over twenty years. He concluded that Torrey had proven his case for him.
Torrey's arguments, linked with a combative style, forced NT scholars to deal seriously and competently with this revolutionary contribution to NT studies. And deal they did. At that meeting E. J. Goodspeed, H. J. Cadbury, and D. W. Riddle took up the challenge. For several years Torrey continued to enliven, if not polarize, the meetings: Hellenists and Hebraists of the primitive church _redivivi_. Some of the older members of the Society today can recall the supreme self-confidence of Torrey in debate:
"If there is any one here who is competent to challenge these conclusions, let him speak. But I am sure there are none such here."
Goodspeed charged that the maverick translation was in defiance of the scholarly ideal and "at variance with our whole New Testament science-- textual, grammatical, literary and historical." As with the Paulinist's treatment of the sects in the Pastorals, argumentation was often by denunciation, entertaining but not overly instructive. Montgomery's plea for an unprejudiced discussion for the most part went unheeded.