We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2009
Christian Orientalists have always been fascinated by the fact that the Greek text of the canonical Gospels is in some way secondary to a Semitic tradition. Indeed, even if we accept that all four Gospels were written in Greek, we must allow, somewhere in the chain of tradition from the teaching of Jesus to the Gospel-writers, for a transition from Aramaic to Greek. Consequently, a fruitful exegetical approach to the Gospel text has been the attempt to go beyond the Greek text-form to the more original Aramaic wording and to understand this wording in its proper setting in Palestinian Judaism of the 1st century AD. Several methods have been applied within this approach. G. Dalman championed the retroversion of significant New Testament terms into Palestinian Jewish Aramaic (and Hebrew), and investigated the use of the retroverted terms in Jewish texts of the first centuries. J. Wellhausen, and others, searched for anomalies in the Greek Gospel-text which might be explained as mistaken translations of Aramaic expressions. The history of research on this question up to 1946 is discussed and evaluated by M. Black in his Aramaic Approach to the Gospels.
1 For a recent defence of Aramaic (as opposed to Hebrew) as the language of Jesus and his followers see Beyer, K., Die aramäischen Texts vom Toten Meer (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984) 55–8.Google Scholar
2 See especially Dalman, G., Die Worte Jesu (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrich, 1898).Google Scholar
3 See Wellhausen, J., Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1905; 2nd edition 1911)Google Scholar, and his commentaries on the Gospels. For earlier publications in this field see Dalman, , Worte Jesu, 49–57.Google Scholar
4 Black, M., An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (Oxford: Clarendon, 1946; 3rd edition, 1967)Google Scholar. An extensive recent study is Zimmermann, F., The Aramaic Origin of the Four Gospels (New York: Ktav, 1979).Google Scholar
5 The Old Syriac version is represented by two fragmentary manuscripts which quite often diverge from one another: the Curetonian manuscript, for which I have used Burkitt, F. C., Evangelion da-Mepharreshe, I Text and Translation, II Introduction and Notes (Cambridge: University, 1904)Google Scholar; and the Sinaitic palimpsest, for which I have used Lewis, A. S., The Old Syriac Gospels or Evangelion da-Mepharreshê (London: Williams and Norgate, 1910).Google Scholar
6 Black, M., An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts 3rd edition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967) 286Google Scholar. See also Vööbus, A., Studies in the History of the Gospel Text in Syriac, CSCO vol. 128, Subsidia t. 3 (Louvain, 1951) 18.Google Scholar
7 I have adduced other arguments in an article on ‘West Aramaic Elements in the Old Syriac and Peshitta Gospels’ which will appear in JBL.
8 Some very recent translations propose an alternative way of translating, e.g. NEB ‘But as it strikes no root in him’ (TEV similar). I do not think this rendering is defensible on the basis of the Greek (it certainly is not in Mark 4. 17!). If we should not accept their solution, at least the translators of NEB and TEV have identified the problem presented by the Greek.
9 In a note on Mark 4. 17a, F. C. Burkitt (Evangelion II 280) remarks the following: ‘The shallow folk receive the Word but have no root in it – a curious inversion of the figure of the parable, because the Word is what is sown, not the soil.’ Burkitt probably considered this to be an interpretation of the Greek; in any case, he does not draw any text-critical conclusion.
10 The Greek text quoted is that of Nestle-Aland, , Novum Testamentum graece, 26th edition (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1979).Google Scholar
11 For the Peshitta I have used the edition of Pusey, Ph. and Gwilliam, G. H., Tetraevangelium Sanctum iuxta simplicem Syrorum versionem (Oxford: Clarendon, 1901).Google Scholar
12 Different vocalizations are found in the manuscripts of the Peshitta for the prepositional phrases $$$ and $$$, and in fact the vocalization adopted here, leh-bāh is offered by a minority of manuscripts. Several manuscripts read lāh-beh leading to the meaning: ‘it has no root in him’ (compare the rendering of the NEB quoted in note 8); lāh-bāh ‘it – in it’ and leh-beh ‘he – in him’ are also attested. Since the reading ‘he has/they have no root in it’ is attested for the Old Syriac it is probable that this is the original interpretation in Matt 13. 21P as well, and that the other vocalizations are later inner-Peshitta developments.
13 The phenomenon of the same variant interpretation being found in several parallel passages is very typical of the Old Syriac version (and to a lesser extent of the Peshitta). It is due to the fact that this version was made partly on the basis of the Diatessaron: the variant occurred in the harmonistic version of the Diatessaron, and from there it was taken over in several parallel passages in the ‘separated’ Gospels. Compare section 4 note 23.
14 The Syriac variant reading has been interpreted correctly by several modern translators of the Old Syriac and Peshitta Gospels (e.g. Cureton, W., Remains of a Very Antient Version of the Gospels [London: J. Murray, 1858]Google Scholar [Luke 8. 13C only]; Gwilliam, Tetraevangelion [Matt 13:21P]; Burkitt, Evangelion II [Mark 4. 17S; Luke 8. 13CS]). Others have let themselves be influenced by the meaning of the Greek text-form (e.g. Lewis, A. Smith, Some Pages of the Four Gospels Retranscribed from the Sinaitic Palimpsest with a Translation of the Whole Text (London: C. J. Clay and Sons, 1896)Google Scholar [Mark 4. 17S ‘And they have no root in themselves’]; Merx, A., Die vier kanonischen Evangelien nach ihrem ältesten bekannten Texte. Übersetzung der syrischen im Sinaikloster gefundenen Palimpsest-handschrift (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1897)CrossRefGoogle Scholar [Mark 4. 17S ‘Und haben keine Wurzel in ihrer Seele’]). The only critical edition of the Greek text of the Gospels which records the Syriac variant at all is The New Testament in Greek III. The Gospel according to Luke. Part One: Chapters 1–12, edited by the American and British Committees of the International Greek New Testament Project (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984): Luke 8. 13 εχουσιv: + [εν αυτη] Ss Sc. Since in the Syriac bāh refers to ‘the word’ (hardly to ‘joy’), which is masculine in Greek, a correct retroversion would have been εν αυτω.
15 
ίζα TDNT 6 (1968) 988Google Scholar. If Luke did indeed leave the element out, as Maurer suggests, then this is another indication that the Greek as it stands in Matt and Mark is problematic.
16 A consistent explanation of the parable of the sower would make the seed equivalent to the word throughout (compare F. C. Burkitt in note 9). However, in Matt 13. 23 par. the seed is again equivalent to the hearer, who bears abundant fruit. Note also that in the following parable in Matt 13. 24–30 and 36–43 the same image of the seed sown in a field is interpreted quite differently.
17 In Ps 1. 3 there is no explicit reference to the root, it is simply stated that the tree is ‘planted’; in the parallel text Jer 17. 8, however, the roots are mentioned explicitly.
18 It is not necessary to determine which lexeme was used in the Aramaic version for ‘the word’, i.e. whether it was 
, 
or still another word: הנ would certainly be unvocalized and therefore could be either masculine (beh) or feminine (bāh).
19 If the Greek is not the result of wrong translation, then we must look further afield for an explanation. Maybe we must take into account the Johannine expression ‘he has – (life, love, joy) in himself’ (see John 5. 26, 42; 17. 13; 1 John 3. 15) and Suppose the author of the Greek expression in Matt 13. 21a par. was influenced by it? However, even if this were the case, it would probably be better to argue for priority of the Syriac(-Aramaic) reading to the Greek one.
20 A possible problem with this hypothesis is that it supposes the Aramaic expression was in the singular (it would be more difficult to misunderstand 
, as in the Greek of Matthew. According to the two source hypothesis one would expect Mark to be the closest to an original Aramaic version.
21 The views put forth in this section were developed in the course of the research for my doctoral dissertation: The Syriac Language of the Peshitta and Old Syriac Versions of Matthew. Syntactic Structure, Translation Technique and Inner Syriac Developments, which was submitted to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in November 1988.
22 It is not possible in the framework of this paper to deal with the question which type of manuscripts (‘Western’ text? Syrian text? etc.) lie at the basis of the Old Syriac and Peshitta versions.
23 Elsewhere (see note 7) I have argued that this Gospel tradition was used by Tatian when he composed his Diatessaron, and that it is from the Diatessaron that the Old Syriac and Peshitta Gospels have adopted the primitive Aramaic readings which we find in them. It is today widely accepted that the Old Syriac and Peshitta Gospels were strongly influenced by the Diatessaron, see Vööbus, A., Studies in the History of the Gospel Text in Syriac, CSCO vol. 128, Subsidia t. 3 (Louvain: Peeters, 1951) 16Google Scholar; Black, M., ‘The Syriac Versional Tradition’ in Die alten Übersetzungen des Neuen Testaments, die Kirchenväterzitate und Lektionare, ed. Aland, K. (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 1972) 120–59, 124–8Google Scholar; Nestle-Aland, , Novum Testamentum graece, 26th edition (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1979) 54*.Google Scholar
