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To: Jeremiah Jr; Salvation

Sorry, but there is no extant Hebrew text for the NT, so whatever that is at your website has to be a later invention. All the pretenders to such a text that I know of are very late and the arguments for an original Hebrew text are 100% speculation.

Furthermore, given the juxtaposition of First Century Israel with the Greek-speaking world, the odds are outstanding that the original texts, especially Luke and the Pauline epistles, were written in Greek, directly inspired by the Holy Spirit in Greek.

As for which language is richer, I am a student of both, and find they are each rich in their own way. Hebrew has a greater tendency to concrete imagery. Greek facilitates a higher degree of abstract thought, and has unique features that tend to preserve the precision, among many other fine virtues. If the Holy Spirit chose one or the other or both on various occasions, that is His prerogative.

As for a Hebrew proto-text, we have challenged the Hebrew Roots crowd here repeatedly to come up with even one verifiable Hebrew proto-text, and all we ever get is crickets.

BTW, a number of links at your website don’t work. Is it under construction? I’m curious to know what sort of fellowship it is because there are plenty of Messianic fellowships that have no problem with the Greek NT. And it has been that way for a very long time. I was a Jewish Studies major at Moody Bible Institute some 40 years ago. That’s where I had my first contact with Hebrew. But this Hebrew Roots nonsense hadn’t cropped up back then, and people were still doing just fine finding Jesus in the pages of Scripture.

Peace,

SR


54 posted on 08/19/2015 4:25:00 PM PDT by Springfield Reformer (Winston Churchill: No Peace Till Victory!)
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To: Springfield Reformer; Jeremiah Jr; Salvation
Sorry, but there is no extant Hebrew text for the NT, so whatever that is at your website has to be a later invention. All the pretenders to such a text that I know of are very late and the arguments for an original Hebrew text are 100% speculation.

I agree that there is no evidence of the entire NT having been originally written in Hebrew/ Aramaic there is some evidence that the Gospel of Matthew was.

Irenaeus of Lyons wrote: Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching in Rome and laying the foundation of the Church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon his breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia. (Against Heresies 3:1:1)

Fifty years earlier Papias, bishop of Hieropolis in Asia Minor, wrote, "Matthew compiled the sayings [of the Lord] in the Aramaic language, and everyone translated them as well as he could" (Explanation of the Sayings of the Lord [cited by Eusebius in History of the Church 3:39]).

Sometime after 244 the Scripture scholar Origen wrote, "Among the four Gospels, which are the only indisputable ones in the Church of God under heaven, I have learned by tradition that the first was written by Matthew, who was once a publican, but afterwards an apostle of Jesus Christ, and it was prepared for the converts from Judaism and published in the Hebrew language" (Commentaries on Matthew [cited by Eusebius in History of the Church 6:25]).

Eusebius himself declared that "Matthew had begun by preaching to the Hebrews, and when he made up his mind to go to others too, he committed his own Gospel to writing in his native tongue [Aramaic], so that for those with whom he was no longer present the gap left by his departure was filled by what he wrote" (History of the Church 3:24 [inter 300-325]).

There are those that argue that the Greek came first, other argue that the Hebrew came first and yet another group that claim that it was written in both at the same time.

I don't have a horse in this race but I think it is a fascinating idea/ discussion point.

55 posted on 08/19/2015 5:10:50 PM PDT by verga (I might as well be playng chess with pigeons.)
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