“But the group has greater long-term ambitions that include uniting Maronite Christian communities throughout the region as a cohesive ethnic group separate from the greater Arab societies with which they have long been intertwined.”
I have wanted that for years!
Interesting. I was under the impression that after Jerusalem fell the surviving Pharisees removed books from what we call the OT, books Christians found very effective in converting Jews to Christ, because they weren't originally written in Hebrew. Now this says that one of the two major books wasn't in Hebrew either.
If Aramaic is as acceptable as Hebrew, there's no real good logic behind not accepting something written in Greek. Particularly since there have been earlier versions of some of those OT books that actually were written in Hebrew rather than Greek.
Anyone know why Aramaic would be acceptable and not Greek?
After they literally gave up Lebanon to the Sand Monkeys what do they Know..?
What the Maronites know is how to loose... when they could have become Military allies with the Israelis THEY DIDn’t..
Maybe they HATED the JEWS like the Sand Monkeys did..
The Maronites are an example of WHAT NOT TO DO..
Much like the Copts in Egypt.. except the Copts where just a hair smarter.. ONLY a hair..
They both allowed the muslims to take over.. hoping the Crocodile would eat THEM LAST..
It is closer to the Imperial Aramaic dialect of Edessa, not the Western Aramaic of 1st century Israel.
The Aramaic of the Gemara is a similar Aramaic to the the Aramaic of the Maronites, which is because the original Amoraim of the Gemara were from the center of the Imperial dialect, the area around Babylon.
While I know I will get pushback from those who are invested in the incorrect thesis that the Aramaic of the Maronites is the Aramaic of 1st century Israel, it simply is not and the most blindingly clear proof of this is the Maronite text of the Bible, the Peshitta.
The Peshitta is written in Syriac - a dialect of Aramaic that is closely related to the Imperial Aramaic of the Sassanids.
The same goes for the Maronite liturgy.
This is well-established.
It is important to emphasize this because of the claims of George Lamsa, a Nestorian heretic who later converted to Unity Church sect and whose views are currently popularized by Rocco Errico.
The promote the view that the Aramaic/Syriac of the Peshitta predates the Greek of the New Testament, which it does not.
They claim that the Peshitta text preserves the words of the Lord in their exact spoken form and pronunciation, which they cannot.
They further claim that Lamsa's translation of the Bible is the most accurate possible and that Lamsa's nonsense commentary (for example the highly popular and completely fictitious notion of the "Eye of the Needle" being a gate into Jerusalem) is reliable exegesis.
I understand the romantic notion of claiming to speak the "language of Jesus" - but the truth is the truth.
The Aramaic dialect of Galilee is not a living language and it has not been for well over a thousand years.
ping
I dunno...
Some of us have a hard enough time reading left-to-right...