03-03-2008, 02:08 AM
Shlama Albion,
I suppose if I???m going to contribute, I shall abstain from utter laziness though not get entirely exhaustive, as my limitations are broader than not any way. Firstly, I am always disheartened to see incredible trifles betwixt believers of any manner, though it be as natural as breathing, yet nevertheless sadder than watching a world war against itself. So, without taking sides or condemning anyone here, I shall remain as fidelis to the Peshitta as possible, and pray that the Text can speak all matters into order by itself. Though this is not to say that I shall be going that deep into it; rather that my limitedness when perusing it might be as precise as concise.
Following my first thought, I would like someone???s biographical testament to bear witness to something, before moving on:
???The answer was revealed to him when he found a small red copy of George Lamsa???s Aramaic New Testament translation. It was at that point that his life changed forever, and a quest was embarked upon to see if Aramaic might be the answer to his New Testament woes. The result was revolutionary, as Andrew threw himself wholeheartedly into studying various Aramaic dialects until he came to the one of the Eastern Peshitta, which was very close to that of Messiah Himself.???
(found on the last flyleaf page for both Ruach Qadim vol.???s 1 and 2)
I myself can certainly relate, taking therefore utter caution ??? rather than condemnation utterly ??? of Lamsa???s work. Yah forbid that our Andrew would not have had that otherwise unique resource available to him, at a time when the Peshitta was even less popular than today! As Paul, Andrew, Dave, Larry, Stephen, etc. all testify, the Greek however hoodwinking and corrupt, remains the Peshitta???s best ancient friend to its witness. Therefore, when Lamsa???s witness is correct, it is correct. His motives did not appear to be quite as maligned as some **other translators** out there, if you know what I mean <!-- s
--><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/wink1.gif" alt="" title="Wink" /><!-- s --> .
So, moving on to Dave???s Peshitt[o] translation; all personal feelings aside, please. Wherein Lamsa found New Age within his Peshitta, Glenn David finds Universalism within his. Andrew finds a 2-House Nazarene message, yet Paul finds an Assyrian orthodoxy that is anciently suitable to him. No one agrees with any one theologically, so the fuss has to end at some point. Yeah sometimes Dave is tripping over his own head as a haranguer, and sometimes we trip over our own hearts as the harung, but frankly it has all come to the point where I sit back and laugh now. We all suck! Either laugh, or cry. Wonder what Alaha does.
Now following this remark to the intended thoughts I???d like to pitch in, hopefully we can all strive more towards the lexical light of what Peshitta shines for us, desiring truly to search out just what Alaha does Himself think. After all, the Miltha did find it important enough to convey Abba???s thoughts through it to us, yes?
Hebrews 4:9:
So there remains a Sabbath rest (lemeshabato???????????????) for the people of Elohim.
Thus saith A. G. Roth.
(see his monograph ???The Path to Life???, p.87, <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://aramaicnttruth.org/downloads/ThePathtoLife.pdf">http://aramaicnttruth.org/downloads/ThePathtoLife.pdf</a><!-- m -->).
Hebrews 4:9:
So then, it remains for the people of God to keep the Sabbath.
Thus saith G. D. Bauscher.
(see his Plain English version, p.260). C.f. p. 695 of his Interlinear???s comment:
* For ???????????? ??? ???to keep the Sabbath???, Greek mss. have ?????????????????????????????; this word occurs nowhere else in Greek literature and is an obvious reworking of the Aramaic ???Lamshebatu??? - (to keep Sabbath) in Greek letters with grammatical noun ending.)
Looks awfully similar to Andrew???s translation, in the very least being that ???Dave???s??? Peshitt[o] matches ???Andrew???s??? Peshitt[a] word lemeshabato. We must wonder why a Universalist would possess fidelity towards this seemingly convicting word, and happen to translate the entire verse, and its surrounding pretexts and post-texts with the same character. I know it must feel egregious to look at this, but my hope is in Someone higher than man, and unfortunately not too many resources exist for English perusers.
So let???s look at the precedent Tanakh example Andrew gives us on p.87, then see if Dave doesn???t use this same noun on p.694 for Hebrews 4:4, for which on the next page he utilizes various scripts for textual commentary, and then see what The Way Intl.???s Concordance has to say about this noun, and then verse 9???s verb, yes?
Isaiah 66:22-23; p.87:
For as the new heavens and the new earth which I shall make shall endure by My will, declares YHWH, so shall your seed and your name endure, and new moon after new moon, Sabbath after Sabbath (??????), all flesh some [sic] come and worship me, says YHWH.
Hebrews 4:4; p.694:
according to / what He said / about / ???????? The Sabbath
???Sabbath: n 3100 ???????? ??? (estrangela script of course) from p.45, ???English Dictionary Supplement to the Concordance to the Peshitta Version of the Aramaic New Testament???, spelled precisely as Dave???s succeeding pictographic example in Estrangela font on p.695 (Interlinear) / (p.125 Jegar) demonstrates.
Index p.487 ???The Concordance to the Peshitta Version of the Aramaic New Testament??? indicates to us shabta can be found on p.349b, and in so turning we discover that Aramaic Shabta lexically refers to English Sabbath. Dave has struck one for Hebrews 4:4; as we flip to p.350 we find ???HEB 4:4??? lastly listed. So Dave???s Peshitt[o] reads the same as The Way???s Peshitt[a], and he translates no more or less aberrantly.
On to Hebrews verse 9???s usage, directly beneath that last entry in the Concordance here, is #3099. Remember, my intent is not to scamper across every linguistic resource available, but rather to demonstrate as concisely as possible, Dave???s fidelity in at least Hebrews 4:9, trailing firstly from Hebrews 4:4 and doing all of this actually from The Way???s resources, since it is their translation that your question is based on. This way, as an uncredentialed fellow novice, I needn???t defer to Payne Smith, SEDRA, Arayathinal and so on to try and gather whether or not Dave or Lamsa struck correct enough translations in the vicinity of your inquiry, to defend their fallibilities from absolute excommunication. As I mentioned, right now our English resources are very sparse, and so I figure I might as well defer to those you already have, for credibility???s sake.
As we see, #3099 is a verb with the active Aphel inflection, in the infinitive form and exclusive to Hebrews 4:9. The ever so brief lexical definition is ???rest??? which is a word not found in Bauscher???s or Lamsa???s verse, but indeed found in Roth???s. Yet we then must ask ourselves whether Andrew???s translation is not redundant, along with George and Dave???s being wrong since they seem to ignore an apparent morphology from ???Sabbath??? to ???rest???, no?
But this is where all of them are actually found to be correct! The Aphel inflection is active, not passive. So without getting into the prefix for a truly complete study, just remember now that we???re talking about a verb here, whereas the lexical form in Hebrews 4:4 was a NOUN. I listed Andrew???s Isaiah 66 example to demonstrate from the horse of credibility???s own mouth, precisely how this noun is used in the OT and throughout Scripture. It seamlessly exegetes straight into the NT, where even a New Ager and Universalist can faithfully get it right!
See, if we say ???Sabbath rest??? that is not to say ???rest rest???, but ???Sabbath- (indicator of the verb???s noun-root???.important for linguistic and theological signification) -rest (truly given definition, but not as a noun or a passive verb)???. Dave has further information about why Shabta also does not refer to ???seven / seventh??? ambiguously in 4:4, intimating that lamshebatu mustn???t either, since even a mere glance at Hebrews 4:4 can testify that all 3 words Sabbath, Rested, Seventh are clumped categorically in one verse, but surely AGR must have something to say (p.87, immediately following Heb. 4:9 translation):
???Can that be the same word/root meaning both "seven" and "rest"? The evidence would seem to suggest that Shabbat is still going to be around for a while, at least from the perspective of both the apostle Paul and the fact that the new heavens and new earth have not arrived just yet.???
Theological interpretations still withholding, because of this usage of ???rest??? having an active verb tense, the author of Hebrews must say that there remains a ???resting??? to be actively accomplished by the people of God, which surrounding context testifies. How to capture this in English, however, is the dilemma. I stand to be corrected if wrong, but I believe it essentially enamors the Jewish way of asking ???are you going to shabbat this Shabbat???? Perchance I even conjecture that this is why preeminent Jewish scholar Everett Fox chose to render it as ???Sabbath-ceasing??? rather than ???Sabbath-resting??? in his outstanding translation of the Torah.
At first it doesn???t make any sense, until it is realized that an active verb is being used here, requiring participation, and nonetheless unambiguous about its direct and inseparable association to its parent-root. [e.g. Leviticus 23:24 ???Speak to the Children of Israel, saying: On the seventh New-Moon, on (day) one of the New-Moon, you are to have Sabbath-ceasing, a reminder by (horn-)blasting, a proclamation of holiness??? and 23:32 ???It is Sabbath, a Sabbath-ceasing for you, you are to ...???].
Wherein this case, 4:9 ???so then it remains for the people of God to shabbat??? or ???so there remains a shabbating for the people of Elohim???. Is this not the strictest philological rendition, since the Alep is dropped from the end (though replaced by the waw)?
The term is absolutely inseparable from its root word Shabta/Shabbat. I believe that this explains a lot. But of course the word???s prefix (lm) in the Text of 4:9 itself does the job. With all this in mind, I believe the Lamsa / Bauscher rendering of ???keep the Sabbath??? accurately brackets what Aramaic #3099 word entails of itself, no different than Andrew???s rendition, engraving it justifiably within an otherwise superbly accurate translation. At least more proficience than I possess! So, Dave strikes twice, viz-a-viz Lamsa, AGR, The Way Intl. - but most importantly the Peshitt[a], and don???t we all wish it???d not go to his head?
-Ryan
P.S. ???Was the New Testament Really Written in Greek????, Edition 1e, March 2008, p.172 mentions ???Paul Younan: An excellent version, by an honest translator. Perhaps the only translator who admits that his version may have errors, and who translates honestly, despite possible contradictions with his beliefs or his Church. For example, though he does not believe that Jesus is ???God the Father???, he honestly translates Isaiah 9:6 as ???eternal Father???. Though his Church does not teach the honouring of the Sabbath, he honestly translates Hebrews 4:9, which clearly teaches that the Sabbath is still important to the people of God.??? Nowadays that's all you can ask for.
I suppose if I???m going to contribute, I shall abstain from utter laziness though not get entirely exhaustive, as my limitations are broader than not any way. Firstly, I am always disheartened to see incredible trifles betwixt believers of any manner, though it be as natural as breathing, yet nevertheless sadder than watching a world war against itself. So, without taking sides or condemning anyone here, I shall remain as fidelis to the Peshitta as possible, and pray that the Text can speak all matters into order by itself. Though this is not to say that I shall be going that deep into it; rather that my limitedness when perusing it might be as precise as concise.
Following my first thought, I would like someone???s biographical testament to bear witness to something, before moving on:
???The answer was revealed to him when he found a small red copy of George Lamsa???s Aramaic New Testament translation. It was at that point that his life changed forever, and a quest was embarked upon to see if Aramaic might be the answer to his New Testament woes. The result was revolutionary, as Andrew threw himself wholeheartedly into studying various Aramaic dialects until he came to the one of the Eastern Peshitta, which was very close to that of Messiah Himself.???
(found on the last flyleaf page for both Ruach Qadim vol.???s 1 and 2)
I myself can certainly relate, taking therefore utter caution ??? rather than condemnation utterly ??? of Lamsa???s work. Yah forbid that our Andrew would not have had that otherwise unique resource available to him, at a time when the Peshitta was even less popular than today! As Paul, Andrew, Dave, Larry, Stephen, etc. all testify, the Greek however hoodwinking and corrupt, remains the Peshitta???s best ancient friend to its witness. Therefore, when Lamsa???s witness is correct, it is correct. His motives did not appear to be quite as maligned as some **other translators** out there, if you know what I mean <!-- s
--><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/wink1.gif" alt="" title="Wink" /><!-- s --> . So, moving on to Dave???s Peshitt[o] translation; all personal feelings aside, please. Wherein Lamsa found New Age within his Peshitta, Glenn David finds Universalism within his. Andrew finds a 2-House Nazarene message, yet Paul finds an Assyrian orthodoxy that is anciently suitable to him. No one agrees with any one theologically, so the fuss has to end at some point. Yeah sometimes Dave is tripping over his own head as a haranguer, and sometimes we trip over our own hearts as the harung, but frankly it has all come to the point where I sit back and laugh now. We all suck! Either laugh, or cry. Wonder what Alaha does.
Now following this remark to the intended thoughts I???d like to pitch in, hopefully we can all strive more towards the lexical light of what Peshitta shines for us, desiring truly to search out just what Alaha does Himself think. After all, the Miltha did find it important enough to convey Abba???s thoughts through it to us, yes?
Hebrews 4:9:
So there remains a Sabbath rest (lemeshabato???????????????) for the people of Elohim.
Thus saith A. G. Roth.
(see his monograph ???The Path to Life???, p.87, <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://aramaicnttruth.org/downloads/ThePathtoLife.pdf">http://aramaicnttruth.org/downloads/ThePathtoLife.pdf</a><!-- m -->).
Hebrews 4:9:
So then, it remains for the people of God to keep the Sabbath.
Thus saith G. D. Bauscher.
(see his Plain English version, p.260). C.f. p. 695 of his Interlinear???s comment:
* For ???????????? ??? ???to keep the Sabbath???, Greek mss. have ?????????????????????????????; this word occurs nowhere else in Greek literature and is an obvious reworking of the Aramaic ???Lamshebatu??? - (to keep Sabbath) in Greek letters with grammatical noun ending.)
Looks awfully similar to Andrew???s translation, in the very least being that ???Dave???s??? Peshitt[o] matches ???Andrew???s??? Peshitt[a] word lemeshabato. We must wonder why a Universalist would possess fidelity towards this seemingly convicting word, and happen to translate the entire verse, and its surrounding pretexts and post-texts with the same character. I know it must feel egregious to look at this, but my hope is in Someone higher than man, and unfortunately not too many resources exist for English perusers.
So let???s look at the precedent Tanakh example Andrew gives us on p.87, then see if Dave doesn???t use this same noun on p.694 for Hebrews 4:4, for which on the next page he utilizes various scripts for textual commentary, and then see what The Way Intl.???s Concordance has to say about this noun, and then verse 9???s verb, yes?
Isaiah 66:22-23; p.87:
For as the new heavens and the new earth which I shall make shall endure by My will, declares YHWH, so shall your seed and your name endure, and new moon after new moon, Sabbath after Sabbath (??????), all flesh some [sic] come and worship me, says YHWH.
Hebrews 4:4; p.694:
according to / what He said / about / ???????? The Sabbath
???Sabbath: n 3100 ???????? ??? (estrangela script of course) from p.45, ???English Dictionary Supplement to the Concordance to the Peshitta Version of the Aramaic New Testament???, spelled precisely as Dave???s succeeding pictographic example in Estrangela font on p.695 (Interlinear) / (p.125 Jegar) demonstrates.
Index p.487 ???The Concordance to the Peshitta Version of the Aramaic New Testament??? indicates to us shabta can be found on p.349b, and in so turning we discover that Aramaic Shabta lexically refers to English Sabbath. Dave has struck one for Hebrews 4:4; as we flip to p.350 we find ???HEB 4:4??? lastly listed. So Dave???s Peshitt[o] reads the same as The Way???s Peshitt[a], and he translates no more or less aberrantly.
On to Hebrews verse 9???s usage, directly beneath that last entry in the Concordance here, is #3099. Remember, my intent is not to scamper across every linguistic resource available, but rather to demonstrate as concisely as possible, Dave???s fidelity in at least Hebrews 4:9, trailing firstly from Hebrews 4:4 and doing all of this actually from The Way???s resources, since it is their translation that your question is based on. This way, as an uncredentialed fellow novice, I needn???t defer to Payne Smith, SEDRA, Arayathinal and so on to try and gather whether or not Dave or Lamsa struck correct enough translations in the vicinity of your inquiry, to defend their fallibilities from absolute excommunication. As I mentioned, right now our English resources are very sparse, and so I figure I might as well defer to those you already have, for credibility???s sake.
As we see, #3099 is a verb with the active Aphel inflection, in the infinitive form and exclusive to Hebrews 4:9. The ever so brief lexical definition is ???rest??? which is a word not found in Bauscher???s or Lamsa???s verse, but indeed found in Roth???s. Yet we then must ask ourselves whether Andrew???s translation is not redundant, along with George and Dave???s being wrong since they seem to ignore an apparent morphology from ???Sabbath??? to ???rest???, no?
But this is where all of them are actually found to be correct! The Aphel inflection is active, not passive. So without getting into the prefix for a truly complete study, just remember now that we???re talking about a verb here, whereas the lexical form in Hebrews 4:4 was a NOUN. I listed Andrew???s Isaiah 66 example to demonstrate from the horse of credibility???s own mouth, precisely how this noun is used in the OT and throughout Scripture. It seamlessly exegetes straight into the NT, where even a New Ager and Universalist can faithfully get it right!
See, if we say ???Sabbath rest??? that is not to say ???rest rest???, but ???Sabbath- (indicator of the verb???s noun-root???.important for linguistic and theological signification) -rest (truly given definition, but not as a noun or a passive verb)???. Dave has further information about why Shabta also does not refer to ???seven / seventh??? ambiguously in 4:4, intimating that lamshebatu mustn???t either, since even a mere glance at Hebrews 4:4 can testify that all 3 words Sabbath, Rested, Seventh are clumped categorically in one verse, but surely AGR must have something to say (p.87, immediately following Heb. 4:9 translation):
???Can that be the same word/root meaning both "seven" and "rest"? The evidence would seem to suggest that Shabbat is still going to be around for a while, at least from the perspective of both the apostle Paul and the fact that the new heavens and new earth have not arrived just yet.???
Theological interpretations still withholding, because of this usage of ???rest??? having an active verb tense, the author of Hebrews must say that there remains a ???resting??? to be actively accomplished by the people of God, which surrounding context testifies. How to capture this in English, however, is the dilemma. I stand to be corrected if wrong, but I believe it essentially enamors the Jewish way of asking ???are you going to shabbat this Shabbat???? Perchance I even conjecture that this is why preeminent Jewish scholar Everett Fox chose to render it as ???Sabbath-ceasing??? rather than ???Sabbath-resting??? in his outstanding translation of the Torah.
At first it doesn???t make any sense, until it is realized that an active verb is being used here, requiring participation, and nonetheless unambiguous about its direct and inseparable association to its parent-root. [e.g. Leviticus 23:24 ???Speak to the Children of Israel, saying: On the seventh New-Moon, on (day) one of the New-Moon, you are to have Sabbath-ceasing, a reminder by (horn-)blasting, a proclamation of holiness??? and 23:32 ???It is Sabbath, a Sabbath-ceasing for you, you are to ...???].
Wherein this case, 4:9 ???so then it remains for the people of God to shabbat??? or ???so there remains a shabbating for the people of Elohim???. Is this not the strictest philological rendition, since the Alep is dropped from the end (though replaced by the waw)?
The term is absolutely inseparable from its root word Shabta/Shabbat. I believe that this explains a lot. But of course the word???s prefix (lm) in the Text of 4:9 itself does the job. With all this in mind, I believe the Lamsa / Bauscher rendering of ???keep the Sabbath??? accurately brackets what Aramaic #3099 word entails of itself, no different than Andrew???s rendition, engraving it justifiably within an otherwise superbly accurate translation. At least more proficience than I possess! So, Dave strikes twice, viz-a-viz Lamsa, AGR, The Way Intl. - but most importantly the Peshitt[a], and don???t we all wish it???d not go to his head?
-Ryan
P.S. ???Was the New Testament Really Written in Greek????, Edition 1e, March 2008, p.172 mentions ???Paul Younan: An excellent version, by an honest translator. Perhaps the only translator who admits that his version may have errors, and who translates honestly, despite possible contradictions with his beliefs or his Church. For example, though he does not believe that Jesus is ???God the Father???, he honestly translates Isaiah 9:6 as ???eternal Father???. Though his Church does not teach the honouring of the Sabbath, he honestly translates Hebrews 4:9, which clearly teaches that the Sabbath is still important to the people of God.??? Nowadays that's all you can ask for.