Our Translated Gospels

[John Reece]

Exhibit XX. Confusion of הוּא and הֲוָא

Exhibit XX. Confusion of הוּא and הֲוָא in Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey:

C. John 1:18 according to Greek: The only begotten Son of God, who is ( הוּא ) in the bosom of the Father, has declared him.

True rendering: The only begotten Son of God, who was ( הֲוָא ) in the bosom of the Father, has declared him.

Exhibit XX, C (John 1:18). Here again, the Greek has made serious trouble from the earliest times. Jesus was no longer "in the bosom of the Father," but on earth, and it was only in his human life that he could "declare" him. The Old Syriac (Curetonian) has: "who (came) from the bosom of the Father," but this is a purely arbitrary improvement. The Aramaic verb, "was," instead of the personal pronoun, gives the original reading, beyond question.

[John Reece]

Exhibit XX. Confusion of הוּא and הֲוָא

Exhibit XX. Confusion of הוּא and הֲוָא in Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey:

D. John 3:13 according to Greek: No one has ascended to heaven but he who came down from heaven, the Son of Man who is ( הוּא ) in heaven.

True rendering: No one has ascended to heaven but he who came down from heaven, the Son of Man who was ( הֲוָא ) in heaven.

Exhibit XX, D. (John 3:13). The last clause of this verse (omitted in Westcott and Hort's Greek text) is a capital example of the same error. Jesus says to Nicodemus that he can tell him of "heavenly things" (verse 12). No other being on earth can do this; only he who came down from heaven for the purpose, namely the Son of Man who is in heaven.(!) This is such a glaring absurdity, that many texts and versions, ancient and modern, including a few of the oldest and best manuscripts, refuse to accept the clause, and simply expunge it. Jerome's Latin renders faithfully; qui est in caelo; and the English versions retain the difficult phrase. It is the original Greek reading, as any critical examination shows; Zahn (Comm.) puts the case concisely. The texts and versions which (instead of omitting the offending line) read {who was in heaven" represent the natural attempt to make sense. As for the Greek translator of the Gospel, he simply rendered what he thought he saw before him, without raising any questions―just as the LXX translators did in thousands of similar cases.

[John Reece]

Exhibit XX. Confusion of הוּא and הֲוָא

Exhibit XX. Confusion of הוּא and הֲוָא in Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey:

E. John 14:22 according to Greek: Master, what has happened ( מָה הֲוָה), that you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world? [YLT]

True rendering: Master, how is it ( מָה הוּה ) that you will, etc.?

Exhibit XX, E. (John 14:22). Jude's senseless question gives another very obvious illustration of confusion of the two little Aramaic words. Of course nothing, hitherto unknown, had "happened"(!), to cause Jesus to reveal himself to his nearest disciples rather than to the world. The Aramaic words of the question were precisely those which the translator renders in 16:17: "What is this (that you say}"? What does it mean? There could be no clearer example of false rendering of a written Semitic text than this which the present passage affords.

[John Reece]

Exhibit XX. Confusion of הוּא and הֲוָא

Exhibit XX. Confusion of הוּא and הֲוָא in Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey:

F. John 18:25 according to Greek: Now Simon Peter was ( הֲוָה) standing and warming himself. They therefore said to him, etc.

True rendering: While he ( הוּה ), Simon Peter, was standing . . . they said, etc.

Exhibit XX, F. (John 18:25). Here, the mistake made by the Greek translator is the same which was made in Mark 5:21; see above, the note on this passage. By reading the verb instead of the pronoun, at the beginning of the verse, the translator lost the important circumstantial clause, making of it a declarative sentence. As a result, the Greek narrative implies an interval of time between verse 18b and verse 25, while in fact no interval was intended. The repetition in the Greek has led to conjectures of conflicting accounts, misplaced sections of narratives, etc.; the impression of confusion naturally increased by the copyist's blunder which removed the verse which now is numbered 24 from its original position between verse 13 and 14 (see the explanation of this transfer, in The Four Gospels, pp. 328 f.). When the two obvious mistakes have been corrected, the whole chapter is in its original form.

[John Reece]

Chapter VIII, Slight Corruption of the Aramaic Text

Chapter VIII, "SLIGHT CORRUPTION OF THE ARAMAIC TEXT" in Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey:

The evidence of actual corruption of the Semitic text underlying our Gospels is indeed very slight. It is clear that from the time when these first Christian writings were compiled and put forth, they were transmitted with much care. Mark and Matthew, to be sure, were translated into Greek so promptly that their Semitic originals had had very little opportunity to receive verbal change. As for the Fourth Gospel: If, as there seems to be good reason to believe, it was not translated into Greek until nearly a generation after the time of its composition, the fact must be that the Aramaic text which was rendered had in the meantime lain in concealment somewhere. There is every reason to believe that its text differed very slightly, if at all, from the original. The numerous mistakes which we can observe may all be due to the Greek translator, rather than to any transcription of the Aramaic.

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[John Reece]

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Chapter VIII, "SLIGHT CORRUPTION OF THE ARAMAIC TEXT" in Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey:

The Jews had learned, from long and unpleasant experience, the difficulty of preserving a sacred text. The Christians were able to derive some profit from the lesson. They found themselves in a position, well described in the first chapters of the Book of Acts, which made them wish to use to the full every advantage which they possessed, and to lose nothing which they had gained. Very much depended on the impression which their own scriptures could make, and they had every reason to do the little that was possible for the preservation of the original text.

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[John Reece]

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Chapter VIII, "SLIGHT CORRUPTION OF THE ARAMAIC TEXT" in Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey:

The slight corruption shown in the following "exhibits" is a matter of single letters; errors―practically unavoidable―of a kind made familiar by the work of copyists in all ages and parts of the world. Where a consonant was repeated in the original text, one of the pair accidentally drops out. On the other hand, a scribe may be led by the context to write a consonant twice, connecting it in both directions. Certain letters are easily confused with one another, even when they are carefully written.

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[John Reece]

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Chapter VIII, "SLIGHT CORRUPTION OF THE ARAMAIC TEXT" in Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey:

Accidental omission of words or passages from the text may of course have occurred where it is no longer possible to recognize the fact. With the aid of parallels, or even without such help, from the context alone, it is possible in a very few instances to demonstrate the fact of a lacuna, or of a transposition, which must have taken place in the Aramaic. One word―a very important word―had disappeared from the text which is rendered in Luke 13:33. In this instance, indeed, the omission was not accidental; the scribe who was copying the Aramaic text believed himself to be correcting his predecessor's blunder. In the restored Aramaic this is immediately obvious; see Exhibit XXI, C. In Matthew 5:32 two words, wӗ-nāsēb ʾuchrāntā "and marries another," quite indispensable to the sense, had been lost by accident before the Greek translation was made; see the last paragraph of the note on Exhibit III, B. The true text will be shown in Chapter XI.

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[John Reece]

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Chapter VIII, "SLIGHT CORRUPTION OF THE ARAMAIC TEXT" in Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey:

One on the most frequently occurring accidents of this nature, in the transmission of manuscripts, is caused by the oversight of a copyist whose eye strays from one group of letters to a similar group below. Having arrived at the former, he goes on from the latter; and unless he happens to see his mistake at once, a portion of the text is omitted. In the Gospels there are three evident examples of such omission from the Aramaic text underlying the Greek. One of these, two words only, in Matthew 5:32, has just been mentioned. The others, more extensive losses, are in Matthew 14:32 f. and Mark 9:13, and in each case the cause of the accident is plain to see. Fortunately, the portion of text missing in Matthew can be restored from Mark, and vice versa, since the parallels happen to be very close. The Aramaic text thus restored by conjecture will be shown in Chapter XI; in the case of Matthew it was printed in the Journ. Bib. Lit.., vol. 54, p. 25, with brief explanation.

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[John Reece]

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Chapter VIII, "SLIGHT CORRUPTION OF THE ARAMAIC TEXT" in Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey:

The copyist's error of the kind just described may bring about transposition of a portion of the text, rather than actual loss. In such cases the copyist sees his mistake almost as soon as it is made, and proceeds to rectify it (as well as he can!) in the usual way: by introducing, at the first practical opportunity, the words, clauses, or sentences over which he had made his unfortunate leap. In our Biblical texts there are many examples of this very common proceeding. In the Gospels there are at least two transposition which seem to have taken place in the original Aramaic; to they are perfectly accounted for on this supposition, and have no other natural explanation. The first is Mark 4:31 f., a passage which in our Greek is sadly confused; see for example the comment of Klost.-Gressm. In my Four Gospels, p. 299, I had not seen the explanation. The original reading was very simple and straightforward: (It is) like a grain of mustard seed, which is less than all the seeds; but when it is sown upon the ground, it grows up and becomes greater than all the herbs. The Aramaic read [note: I am substituting color to represent a solid horizontal bar across the tops of letters so covered in Torrey's Aramaic -JR]:

כְּגַרְגַּר חַרְדְּלָא דִּי זְעַיר מִן כֹּל זַרְעַיָּא וּכְדִי זְרִיע עַל אַרְעָא סָלֵק וְהָוֵא רַב מִן כֹּל יֵרְקַיָּא

The eye of the copyist caught the latter group of letters, where he should have written the former. He immediately saw his mistake, went back to the former group, and patched up his error in the way that seemed best to him. The sentence was irretrievably spoiled, but every word of the original was saved. Indeed, "on the earth" was put in twice, for good measure [ὡς κόκκῳ σινάπεως, ὃς ὅταν σπαρῇ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, μικρότερον ὂν πάντων τῶν σπερμάτων τῶν ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ― Mark 4:31].

To be continued...

[John Reece]

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Chapter VIII, "SLIGHT CORRUPTION OF THE ARAMAIC TEXT" in Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey:

An instance in the O.T., exactly like the preceding, is the passage in Isa. 63:19―64:2. The eye of the scribe leaped from וירדת in verse 19 to ירדת in 64:2. After finishing the clause he went back to the former passage and filled the gap, incidentally repeating three words which he had written before. Another example from the O.T., illustrating a backward "jump," may be given for interest. The scribe who produced the Massoretic text of 2 Sam. 6:3 f. copied correctly until he came to the word העגלה at the end of verse 3. Here his eye caught the word עגלה two or three lines above, and he wrote it instead, proceeding then to write a second time six words which he had previously copied; the nature of his mistake shown not merely by the repetition, but also by a bit of impossible Hebrew―as in the Isaiah passage. Such slips occur in the copying of writings in any language, but they are especially easy in the unpointed text of the Semitic.

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[John Reece]

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Chapter VIII, "SLIGHT CORRUPTION OF THE ARAMAIC TEXT" in Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey:

The second example of accidental transposition in the Gospels is in Luke 8:27-29. In the original text, verse 29b, immediately followed verse 27, as in Mark 5:3 f. The Aramaic ran as follows, beginning with the last clause of verse 27:

וּבְבַיִת לָא יְתֵב אָלָּא בְקֵ בְרֵיָּא׃
וְזִמְנִין סַגִּאִן אֲחִד בֵּהּ וְאִתְאַסַּר בְּשַׁלְשְׁלָן וּבְכַבְלַיָּא נְטִיר וּתְרַע אִסּוּרַיא וְאִשְׁתַּלַּח מִן שֵׁדָא לְבְרֵיָּא׃
וּכְדִי חֲזָא לְיַשׁוּע קְרָא וּנְפַל

It is evident that when the eye of the scribe who had just written בריא at the end of verse 27 returned to the page, it fell upon the same group of consonants farther down, so that he went on with what is now verse 28. Seeing his mistake, he introduced the omitted portion at the next possible opportunity. This explains perfectly an evident error which had no other explanation.

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[John Reece]

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Chapter VIII, "SLIGHT CORRUPTION OF THE ARAMAIC TEXT" in Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey:

It is of course impossible to recognize conflation in the underlying Semitic, in distinction from the Greek. There are in the Synoptic Gospels numerous examples of secondary borrowing from one Gospel by another, and these, undoubtedly all took place in the Greek text. There are nevertheless a few passages in which it seems possible to recognize disturbing expansion which took place in the Aramaic before it was translated. As the first of these, I should name the curious phrase in Luke 4:33, especially curious because of the adjective; were there clean demons? "Spirit" alone would be quite sufficient, as in 10:20 and 13:11. I am convinced that Wellhausen (Comm.) was right in pronouncing the phrase conflate; but, as remarked in The Four Gospels, p. 307, the conflation must have taken place in the Aramaic. Between the words "spirit" and "unclean" the variant, "demon" (shēdh) was inserted. Luke rendered in the only possible way.

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[John Reece]

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Chapter VIII, "SLIGHT CORRUPTION OF THE ARAMAIC TEXT" in Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey:

Another passage is the last clause of Mark 4:12, already mentioned, as a probable conflation of the original text, at the end of the comment on Exhibit I, D. The phrase "lest they repent and be forgiven" is out of place in this context, and is significantly lacking in Matthew 13:13 and Luke 8:10, which agree with Mark up to this point. It is to be observed that the phrase is utterly unlike the LXX (Isa. 6:10), while it corresponds word for word with the Targum. It is the sort of pendant that would easily be attached to a document in popular circulation, but would hardly have been included by the evangelist. There seems very good reason to believe that it found its way into the Aramaic Mark before the Greek translation was made.

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[John Reece]

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Chapter VIII, "SLIGHT CORRUPTION OF THE ARAMAIC TEXT" in Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey:

Much more important is the conflation in Luke 22:17-20. The secondary element is verses 17 and 18. No evangelist mentions any of the regular features of the paschal supper; there would be no sense in doing so (the hymn after its close is mentioned, very naturally, by Mark and Luke). The Synoptists tell merely of a little special ceremony introduced by Jesus while he and the twelve were at table, a ceremony in which was symbolized the partaking of his body and blood. First the bread: "This is my body." Then the cup: "This is my blood of the new covenant, my blood shed for men." Each of the three evangelists gives these essential features, in this order.

Luke's account, which is more concise than the others, is in our Gospel preceded by a passage, verses 22:17-18, which supplies every portion of the text which is contained in Mark and Matthew but is wanting in in Luke's compact version; namely, in the ceremony of the cup. Not merely the very striking words relating to the fruit of the vine and the kingdom of God, but also the exhortation, "drink if it, all of you," and the item "giving thanks" are included in it. It contains only what is in the two earlier Gospels; partly in different phraseology, but mainly with such verbal agreement as the ensure the identity. Though containing no allusion to the symbolism of body and blood, it is expressly made a part of the little ceremony, with very disturbing results result.

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