A rabbinic classic known as the Mishnah, compiled about 200 A.D., also shows that Hebrew continued to be used as a literary medium. The many Hebrew documents among the Dead Sea Scrolls easily provide the evidence. One leading specialist, Joseph Fitzmyer of The Catholic University in Washington, D.C., has summarized the situation this way: Aramaic was the most commonly spoken language in first-century Palestine Greek was a second language to many Palestinian Jews, but “pockets of Palestinian Jews used Hebrew, even though its use was not widespread.” 11īut quite apart from whether Hebrew was widely used as a spoken language in first-century Palestine, it seems clear that it was used as a literary medium. A spate of studies soon appeared in which a number of prominent scholars concluded that Jesus indeed spoke Hebrew or that the sayings of Jesus and other traditional materials were preserved in Hebrew and that Hebrew served as a primitive base for the canonical Gospels. In 1954 the Scandinavian Semitist Harris Birkeland published his seminal book entitled The Language of Jesus, 9 which collected the evidence and reopened the debate as to what language Jesus spoke. Jesus, it is said, spoke Aramaic, not Hebrew. Support for this position is sometimes sought in the supposed fact that Hebrew was no longer in use as a vernacular in first-century Palestine, but had been replaced by Aramaic.
The argument that Matthew originally wrote in Aramaic, rather than Hebrew, was made as early as the 16th century. both languages, Hebrew and Aramaic, also used the same script, so that by that time they even looked alike. Both languages share many words, either in an exact or similar form, and have a similar grammar there are of course many differences as well, both in vocabulary and grammar, as one would expect in different though cognate languages. The two languages are related to each other roughly like Spanish and French. Some scholars have argued that when Papias said “Hebrew” he really meant “Aramaic.” 7 The difference between Aramaic and Hebrew is not great. Whether these ancient authors were referring to Hebrew or Aramaic, however, is not entirely clear. in Hierapolis in Asia Minor (he was bishop of Hierapolis), wrote that “Matthew arranged the oracles in the Hebrew language and each interpreted them as best he could.” 1 Many other early Christian writers-like Irenaeus, 2 Origen, 3 Eusebius, 4 Epiphanius 5 and Jerome 6-assert that Matthew wrote in Hebrew. One early Christian writer named Papias, who lived between about 60 and 130 A.D. But no original Hebrew or Aramaic manuscripts of the Gospels have ever been recovered. Still others have contended that the Gospels were written in Greek, but that their authors used collections of Aramaic or Hebrew sayings or traditions then extant but now lost.
Others have argued that one or more of the Gospels were written in Aramaic and then translated into Greek. Some indeed have suggested that one or more of the Gospels were originally written in Hebrew and then translated into Greek.
Were the canonical Gospels originally written in Greek? Over the centuries, scholars have argued various positions. By contrast, what Christians call the Old Testament-the Hebrew Bible-was written in Hebrew, with a few short sections in a sister language called Aramaic. The Gospels we use today-in English or in other 016languages-are translations from old Greek manuscripts. Until now, the four canonical Gospels-Matthew, Mark, Luke and John-have come down to us only in Greek. But before explaining how this can be done, let me set the stage with a little background. Indeed, it is now possible to recover much of this original Hebrew composition from an extant manuscript. New evidence indicates that the Gospel of Matthew was an original Hebrew composition.
0 kommentar(er)
