Posted on 01/17/2015 9:07:56 AM PST by Salvation
This week we leave the Culture Wars behind and return to some basic apologetics…well, some interesting information about the Scriptures that informs our apologetics.
I once had a discussion with a person who insisted that Our Divine Lord spoke only Hebrew. The conversation had begun centered around the word “rock” in St Matthew’s Gospel (Mt 16:18), but quickly devolved into a debate about ancient languages. My friend held that the word “rock” couldn’t possibly refer to St. Peter because the Gospel was written in Greek, and the Greek words used in that passage are “petros” and “petra,” which mean “rock” and “small rock,” respectively. I pointed out that Jesus didn’t speak Greek, He spoke Aramaic, and the Aramaic word for rock is “kepha,” which means “big rock” or “boulder.”
My friend was thunderstruck, he had never considered that a Jew in that time would speak any other language but Hebrew.
By the time Christ arrived on the scene, the Jewish people had been through a series of calamities that fundamentally altered their society. The Jewish state, Judah, was a rump of Israel’s former glory under King David, having been invaded and imprisoned a number of times by the Persians, the Greeks, the Assyrians, and the Romans. During the Babylonian Exile and the subsequent occupation by the Assyrians (700-330 BC), the Imperial Language of Aramaic became the common language of the Jews. In fact, the books of Ezra and Daniel were written in Aramaic. Similar to the way that the Church’s official language is Latin even today, the Rabbis and Temple officials maintained the Hebrew language of worship and the Scriptures, but the people spoke Aramaic in their daily lives.
The linguistic patchwork of first century Judea was complicated by two more civilizations…Greek and Roman. Greek was the common language used by the Roman elites in the conduct of business in the Empire. Latin, of course, was the official language of the Empire spoken by Roman officials and military forces, as well as the Roman citizens.
History aside, how do we know from the Scriptures that Christ spoke Aramaic? Simple. In several places He is quoted speaking Aramaic. In St. Matthew’s and St. Mark’s Gospels, some of Christ’s words are rendered in the language the people spoke. “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” (Mt 27:46, Mk 15:34), “Talitha cuom” (Mk 8:41), and “Ephphatha” (Mk 7:34) are all Aramaic phrases. Even the word “Abba” which Christ uses often to refer to the Father is the Aramaic word roughly translated as “Daddy.” Incidentally, the Arabic word “Abu” has the same meaning… so “Abu Sulieman” means “Father of Solomon.”
Why is all this language study important to defense of the Faith? Just this: properly translating the Scriptures leads to proper interpretations. For example, when the “brothers of Jesus” are referred to in Scripture, it’s important to know that they are cousins, not children of Mary. We know this because Aramaic has no word for “cousin” and Semitic cultures usually consider all male relatives as “brother” or “uncle.” In fact, not to refer to a male relative as “brother” or “father” or “uncle” is a way of distancing oneself from them. If we try to go with the English word, or even the Greek one, then we run the risk of drawing the wrong conclusion from the word “brother” or “rock,” and that weakens our personal understanding of the faith.
The Church recognizes the need for linguistic variety in her worship. It’s also a reason the Latin Rite uses Aramaic (Amen), Greek (Kyrie), Latin (Sanctus, Gloria, Angus Dei), and the vernacular (mostly English or Spanish in the USA) during Holy Mass. Words have power and real meaning…how else could we believe what someone tells us if words do not mean real ideas?
So the language Jesus Christ spoke on earth is important, both for our heads and our hearts. If words were not important, then the Father wouldn’t have spoken the Eternal Word. We are thankful He did.
The Catholic church says the New Testament was written in Koine Greek. Are you saying the RCC is wrong? The RCC also says the apocryphal books are almost entirely written in Greek.
Jesus would have spoken 3 languages for sure and possibly 4 or 5 languages.
More important than what language Jesus used when he said this or that, is are we obeying what he said?
The word “cousin” is used in the NT. Brothers and or sisters are not words for cousin. To claim such is make the Lord the author of the word of God an incompetent.
Where the word of God says cousin we can be sure it means cousin. Where the word of God says brother we can be sure it means brother. Where the word of God says sister we can be sure it means sister. Part of the faith is trusting the Holy Spirit, not trying to make him out to be incompetent.
You seem more interested in defending the Catholic church than honoring God for who he is. He is faithful and his word is faithful.
Was “Kepha” ever used as someone’s name in Aramaic?
Did Peter understand Aramaic?
He spoke any and all languages necessary to accomplish His mission. If you went back in a time machine, He could break off a discussion in Greek in which He was translating Hebrew that Romans misunderstood in Latin, in order to wink at you and say something in Ebonics to correct your HTML code without breaking a sweat.
What part of “infinity” is not clear? LOL!
Unless you have a manuscript of an earlier Matthew , you are walking on shaky ground.. By the time of Jesus most jews were using Aramaic and greek for their daily dealings
Then we have this.
an independent examination of our present Greek Gospel by Matthew, and especially of the independent form of his quotations from the Old Testament as compared with the Septuagint, leaves the impression of an original work, whether it was written by Matthew himself, or by some other person clothed with apostolic authority. Papias relates that this Gospel was repeatedly interpreted, and the apostolic Church undoubtedly retained its most trustworthy rendering. This translation was preserved in its purity, and obtained canonical authority; while the Hebrew original was afterwards corrupted and interpolated by the Jewish-Christian sects, and in this heretical form called the Gospel of the Hebrews, which lost or rather never enjoyed canonical authority (p.42) [ John Peter Lange and Philip Schaff, A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures: Matthew, 1879 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2008)]
So what you are left with is simply speculation as to an original Hebrew text relying on a questionable statement by Papias which by all accounts was "difficult to translate". And the fact that even your church has only considered the Greek version to be canonical.
Now maybe you should get together with the Hebrew roots people and hope something turns up and your church approves it as canonical. Until then you are stuck with the Greek only.
With no warrant either. Did M&J take them with to Egypt? "Out of Egypt I have called my Son, and his bros and sis's."
Unfortunately that hasn't stopped Catholics in the past. They can even make things up if it doesn't say it didn't happen in scripture.
That is one of the reasons they quickly deny greek as the original language.. it does not suit their purposes
The truth is Romes "teaching arm " the magisteium had NEVER produced an "infallible " commentary on the scriptures". In fact they have only interpreted a handful of verses (to bolster the their doctrine of course ) So in truth Catholics make their own personal interpretation when they "interpret" scripture ..and they are as fallible as anyone else when they do it
I was born on thirty- third and third in da bronx!
That is a rather curious truth isn't it. Claim to be the only one that can interpret yet they have never done it. Interesting that.
A better argument is that any grown children of Joseph would maintain some contact with their father’s wife, and there would not be a need to hand her over to John.
From a human nature standpoint, I would think God would engineer no other children for Mary in order for her to focus on Jesus, the same way Elizabeth was barren until John the Baptist.
How many comedians have joked about how bad it would be for a younger sibling to Jesus? “Why could you not be more like your older brother?”
Also, since God is the fulfillment of all desires, all attention would be to Jesus, and not to be split with siblings. No proof, but it seems more rational than Joseph being told the child just born is the Son of God, who is God, and BTW now you go and sleep with His mother and have other children. I do not know many men who could do that.
I agree with you that salvation doesn't require belief in Peter as Pope nor a belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary. However, Roman Catholics wouldn't agree, at least in my understanding. Can a Roman Catholic tell us for sure: is denial of the belief in Mary's perpetual virginity a mortal sin?
I have no idea if the name was used.
I am certain Peter understood Aramaic. But “Kepha” does not seem to morph into “Peter” in any case. If it does, the person making the argument needs to explain it, because it is certainly unclear and in being unclear, a poor argument.
Dr. Thomas McCall, the Senior Theologian of our ministry, has written many articles for the Levitt Letter. He holds a Th.M. in Old Testament studies and a Th.D. in Semitic languages and Old Testament. He has served as Zola’s co-author, mentor, pastor, and friend for nearly 30 years.
This leaves the Gospel of Matthew. Of the four Gospel writers, Matthew is the only one who was both an eyewitness to almost all of the events in Galilee and Jerusalem, and also wrote his Gospel near the beginning of the Christian movement. Matthew is an interesting personality who is often overlooked. Dr. Carsten Peter Thiede, in his recent book Eyewitness to Jesus: Amazing New Manuscript Evidence about the Origin of the Gospels, observes that Matthew, as a tax collector (probably a supervisor of the Capernaum office), undoubtedly had important writing skills. It has been discovered that the ancients who were skilled in writing had developed a form of shorthand so that they could take dictation. It is not outside the realm of possibility that Matthew could have written down entire messages, such as the Sermon on the Mount and the Olivet Discourse, just as Jesus delivered them, verbatim, in shorthand.
Later, the faithful tax collector could have assembled his notes and written his narrative with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. As stated above, Jesus probably delivered most of His messages in Aramaic, and therefore Matthew would have necessarily taken his shorthand dictation in Aramaic. Would he, then, have written his Gospel in Aramaic? We truly do not know. All we know for certain is that, perhaps as early as 66 A.D. (as Thiede suggests), the Gospel of Matthew was distributed in the Greek language as far as Egypt. If Matthew was still in Israel when he wrote his Gospel, it would seem appropriate that he would have used Israel’s common language: Aramaic. In that case, his Gospel would have been translated into Greek quite early, before 66 A.D. It should be noted that Matthew’s Gospel has more “Hebraisms” than any of the others. This suggests an earlier Aramaic version, although, as indicated above, no early Aramaic version of Matthew has been found.
Maybe they weren't Christians.
Mary and Joseph were Jews, once married, having sex would be the natural and law keeping way to go.
Aramaic was the language in normal use.
My first question: >>In your opinion, is the Bible infallible only in its original autographs? Or in perhaps a particular translation or chain of translations? Or in all translations?<< Could you please answer that?
You said, " Go to the Greek as we have it today and show me where there is an error. It's what I use to verify every translation."
"The Greek as we have it today" does not answer the question, because it does not specify which Greek version. The first known translation of the Bible into Greek is the Septuagint (LXX) (3rd–1st centuries BC). It's the oldest existing translation of Holy Scripture into any language. It contains the Tanakh translated from Hebrew and Aramaic as well as the Deuterocanonicals, and it was widely used by ancient Hellenistic Jews as well as the Greek-speaking Christians for their Old Testament. That's why the LXX is the source of the majority (~80-85%) of OT quotations found in the NT.
The NT was originally written in Koine Greek, but the Greek language has changed significantly over the millennia, with Koine Greek standing in relation to modern Greek as, perhaps, early Anglo-Saxon stands to English. So translations have been developed to enable modern Greek speakers to understand Holy Scripture.
Maximos of Gallipoli translated a vernacular New Testament approved by Patriarch Cyril Lucaris of Constantinople in 1629 which was printed at Geneva in 1638.
Neofytos Vamvas did a Bible translation (Old and New Testaments) in literary Greek, starting with a Renaissance English translation as his main source. It was not sourced directly from the earliest Greek manuscripts.
In the 1960's scholars from the University of Athens led by Vasilios Vellas translated the New Testament based on the Textus Receptus. The Textus Receptus was the translation done by by Dutch Catholic scholar and humanist Desiderius Erasmus, based mainly on late manuscripts of the Byzantine text-type, all 12th century AD or later.
Which of these, if any, would you use? And- -- your reasons?
He could speak any language He chose. Since none of us were there, and different sources indicate different languages, does it really matter?
I would say “no.” Interpretation of the Scriptures, like any other word or text, requires not just vocabulary, but context.
Whether some books were in Hebrew, Aramaic, or like the Septuagint, Hebrew translated into Greek, we rely on translations into English, or hope the instruction we receive on the other languages is accurate.
In my opinion, and the opinion of Catholics, several English translations of the Bible are not only accurate, but appropriate. Others may disagree, and do, however, St. Jerome was the foremost linguist, and expert of his time, and thus he gave us the Jerusalem Bible.
I don’t know who the recognized master of ancient languages is today, or most recently, but I rely on the Church to accurate transmit the teachings of Jesus, the Apostles, and the Bible, faithfully.
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