There are a number of very significant facts, some of which have really only become well-identified in recent decades after hundreds of years of mis-information, leading to unhelpful and wayward conjecture, promoted as God ordained truth.
One of these very significant facts is the true language of the New Testament.
It was argued and popularly believed for a great many years that the original autographs[1] of the NT were predominantly, if not totally written in Greek.
Certainly, if the apostles and authors of the books of the NT spoke and wrote in Greek, it would make reasonable sense that they may well have used a Greek version of the Tanach (that is, the Septuagint).
When scholars over the last few hundred years have looked for the earliest copies of the NT that still remain in some reasonable form, they have only found Greek and some Aramaic versions or portions. Without further interrogation and investigation it would seem fairly natural and reasonable to assume that these Greek versions are all that remain simply because they are all that was ever in circulation. i.e. If they were no or very few Hebrew versions or translations of the NT written in the first few decades after the time of Yeshua, we would clearly not expect to find any portions of them remaining today.
Also, if we had no reason to assume any deceit or vested interests were involved in the publication of NT copies and translations then we would probably not delve any deeper into the non-existence of Hebrew or even Aramaic versions.
However, the evidence is now quite strong that Hebrew and Aramaic were languages of Jews living in Israel in the first century, and it appears for a number of very significant reasons that the New Testament was first written in these languages.
What are these facts and reasons for this more recent understanding:
Firstly, a number of noted scholars have argued that at least portions of the New Testament were originally penned in a Semitic tongue. This argument has especially been asserted of the four Gospels, Acts, and Revelation.
For example: “When we turn to the New Testament we find that there are reasons for suspecting a Hebrew or Aramaic original for the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, John and for the apocalypse.”
- Hugh J. Schonfield; An Old Hebrew Text of St. Matthew's Gospel; 1927; p. vii
It also appears that the evidence is very strong that the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Hebrew. All of the "Church Fathers", both East and West, testified to the Semitic origin of at least the Book of Matthew, as the following quotes demonstrate:
Papias (150-170 C.E.)
“Matthew composed the words in the Hebrew dialect, and each translated as he was able.”
Ireneus (170 C.E.)
“Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect.”
Origen (c. 210 C.E.)
“The first [Gospel] is written according to Matthew, the same that was once a tax collector, but afterwards an emissary of Yeshua the Messiah, who having published it for the Jewish believers, wrote it in Hebrew.”
Eusebius (c. 315 C.E.)
Matthew also, having first proclaimed the Gospel in Hebrew, when on the point of going also to the other nations, committed it to writing in his native tongue, and thus supplied the want of his presence to them by his writings. Pantaenus... penetrated as far as India, where it is reported that he found the Gospel according to Matthew, which had been delivered before his arrival to some who had the knowledge of Messiah, to whom Bartholomew, one of the emissaries, as it is said, had proclaimed, and left them the writing of Matthew in Hebrew letters.
Epiphanius (370 C.E.)
“They [the Nazarenes] have the Gospel according to Matthew quite complete in Hebrew, for this Gospel is certainly still preserved among them as it was first written, in Hebrew letters.”
Isho'dad (850 C.E.)
“His [Matthew's] book was in existence in Caesarea of Palestine, and everyone acknowledges that he wrote it with his hands in Hebrew...
”
It has only been in recent times since the discovery and translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, that the evidence for the priority of Hebrew has really become convincing. We now know that Israel in the first century of the Common Era was a land where Hebrew, Aramaic & Greek were commonly spoken (along with Latin due to the Roman occupation). Hebrew though remained the language of the Temple & synagogues and the primary language of all religious writings of that era.
To further detail this finding, following is part of an article by Davin Bivin of the “Jerusalem School of Synoptic Research”:
“Indeed, now over three decades since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, it is becoming increasingly evident that the spoken and written language of the Jews of the Holy Land at the time of Jesus was Hebrew.
Even apocryphal books (1 Maccabees, Ben Sira, Judith, Tobit) and other Jewish literature of the period (Jubilees, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs) which have come down to us in Greek versions have been found to be translations from Hebrew into Greek for the Greek-speaking jews of the Diaspora.
Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus), for example, was known only in Greek until less than 90 years ago. Fragments of the Hebrew text of this book then began to come to light, and today we have almost two-thirds of the book in the original Hebrew, the most recent discovery in 1964 occurring at the Masada excavations in the Judean desert.
As more and more discoveries come to light and scholarly research into ancient sources continues, we are learning that at least to the end of the first century A.D., and even later, the principal language of the Jews in the Holy Land was Hebrew.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are almost entirely in Hebrew; the Mishnah (the so-called "Oral Law") is in Hebrew; the later rabbinic commentary on Scripture, the Midrash, is also mostly Hebrew.
Of the thousands of parables in the rabbinic literature, so consonant with the style of Jesus' teaching, only two are in Aramaic, all the other being Hebrew.
All Jewish coins minted between 103 B.C. and A.D. 135 have Hebrew inscriptions, except for one coin of Alexander Jannaeus….
On the basis of his study of Matthew's Gospel and other literature contemporary with the Gospels, an Israeli scholar, Yehoshua M. Grintz, in a monograph entitled "Hebrew as the Spoken and Written Language in the Last Days of the Second Temple,"[2] has asserted that "Hebrew was the only literary language of that time; and to this alone we can attribute the fact that the new (Christian) sect of 'unlearned and ignorant men' (Acts 4:13) set out to write its main book, intended for its Jewish members, in this language."
Grintz further pointed out that Hebrew was a vehicle for communication with Jews who lived outside the Land of Israel. Already at the beginning of the Christian era Hebrew was a kind of lingua franca for the many-tongued Jewish Diaspora. Recall, for example, the scene (described in the Book of Acts) of the Jewish pilgrims in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost: "... we hear, each of us in his own native language" (Acts 2:8).
… Hebrew remained the language of Jewish Palestine and its masses of people throughout the New Testament period and until the final revolt against Rome in A.D. 135.”[3]
So if most, if not all of the NT was originally written in Hebrew, why does it appear today that where the NT quotes from the Pentateuch (The Five Books of Moses), it appears almost exclusively to quite from a Greek version, that is from the Septuagint?
It is plausible that to reach the Gentile world at some point these books of the NT were translated in Greek. To those in the Gentile world (who mostly were not Hebrew readers or speakers) who would read these NT books in Greek it would seem sensible to use the Septuagint as the OT version (which they most likely had access to) and thus the direct quotes would also be copied on translation from this version for consistency sake.
This scenario may be plausible, although it is fraught with a great many issues and inconsistencies.
When, the late Professor David Flusser (Hebrew University) introduced the realization that the normal language of the teaching of Jesus, and especially of his parables, was not Aramaic (or Greek) but Hebrew, he enabled a reconstruction of parts of that teaching through careful comparisons of the text of Luke and Matthew with Jewish sources.
In doing so, Flusser[4] has shown that the use of the Septuagint in quoting from the Tanach, appears to be an adaptation of the original autographs some time after their translation into Greek.
While the introduction of the Septuagint may appear then to have been a valid and appropriate editorial ‘enhancement’ with the translations into Greek, this change has brought about a great many deliberate and devious distortions leading to doctrines that are incompatible with the teachings of the Tanach; that is with the divine instructions of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Next: Semitic Idiomatic Expressions
[2] Yehoshua M. Grintz, “Hebrew as a Written and Spoken Language in the Last Days of the Second Temple” JBL 79/1 [1960], 32-47.
[3] From ‘DO GENTILES NEED HEBREW?’http://webbpage.bravehost.com/Yavo/1_3_Bivin_GentilesNeedHebrew.html – well worth reading in its entirety.
[4] Flusser: “Although the Synoptic Gospels also quote the Septuagint version of the text (the usual way of quoting the Bible in the N.T.), it may be shown that the traditional Hebrew interpretation of the text suits the context as well as the Greek.” - p10 of ‘Judaism and the Origins of Christianity’
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