Our Translated Gospels

[John Reece]

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Continuation of excerpts from the Introduction to Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey ― regarding "Biblical Greek":

The supposition that men whose mother tongue was Aramaic, and who were only half acquainted with Greek, undertook to compose these records in the latter language instead of giving the work into the hands of men who had a right to it, would be extremely improbable even if only one of our documents were believed to give evidence of the queer proceeding; but when it is applied to several of them, it is simply absurd. Even Streeter (The Four Gospels, p. 401) queries whether this might not have been the case in the Fourth Gospel; and he thinks of the speech of "a Highlander or Welshman." But neither Streeter nor any other scholar can produce a parallel case, in any period of history: a great literary work (and Matthew and John were such works) written throughout with the vocabulary of a highly literary language, but with the idiom of a border dialect. In this case, moreover, the idiom is not a border dialect, but a foreign literary tongue.

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[John Reece]

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Continuation of excerpts from the Introduction to Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey ― regarding "Biblical Greek":

As I showed, with some illustration, in my Four Gospels, pp. 240-243, each of the evangelists exhibits a large vocabulary, alway accurately employed and generally fitted with admirable skill to the corresponding Semitic, which is easily recognized; in every case the vocabulary of a learned man. And it is always true, in gaining a writing knowledge of a foreign language, that its idiom is learned before its vocabulary can be faultlessly used throughout an extensive work.

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[John Reece]

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Continuation of excerpts from the Introduction to Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey ― regarding "Biblical Greek":

Furthermore, as to the existence of the supposed "jargon," the late professor Thackeray, in his Grammar of the O.T. in Greekunscientific

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[John Reece]

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Continuation of excerpts from the Introduction to Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey ― regarding "Biblical Greek":

The Third Gospel is generally given special treatment in this discussion, for probably no one supposes that Luke's mother tongue was Semitic. Any student of either Aramaic or Hebrew can recognize the foreign idiom constantly appearing in the Greek of this Gospel; how account for it? It is not often that attempt is made to explain it. Certainly this evangelist knew the language in which he wrote, and it is taken for granted that in this regard he was better equipped than the "imperfectly educated" writers Mark and Matthew; consequently, what he wrote must, somehow, be good Greek. Wellhausen, as will be seen, recognizes a considerable part of the Semitic element here, but avoids any discussion of it.

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[John Reece]

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Continuation of excerpts from the Introduction to Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey ― regarding "Biblical Greek":

The favorite way of attempting to account for the strange-sounding dialect of the Third Gospel is to suppose that Luke devised a sacred idiom of his own, a sort of "Biblical Greek" derived from the LXX. This very superficial explanation is even farther from the mark than the jargon theory. It is true that Luke very often avoids the abrupt beginning of a new paragraph with a bare "and," or with no conjunction at all (in the Aramaic manner), by adopting the "And it came to pass" of the Greek O.T.; but here the "imitation" ceases. All the Semitic idioms, "Biblical" only in the sense that they are translation Greek, are Luke's faithful and skillful reproduction of the text which lay before him. The examples which Wellhausen (Einleitung, 1911, pp. 7 f.) produces are all of this character; no faithful rendering of either Aramaic or Hebrew could avoid them, and they are precisely as characteristic of the one language as of the other. The sanctity of solecisms is a delusion.

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[John Reece]

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Continuation of excerpts from the Introduction to Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey ― regarding "Biblical Greek":

The manner in which the author of this Gospel is commonly supposed to "revise" the Greek of his predecessors is curiously set forth in the commentaries which give special attention to the diction of the Synoptists. Why does he make such an immense number of petty alterations in texts which are comprehensible as they stand? The ordinary way of incorporating an important text, Greek or Semitic, was to reproduce it unchanged, though obvious errors might be corrected. Luke's changes almost never illuminate what had been obscure, but throughout make the impression of a play with words which is not always easy to explain. He "omits as needless" a phrase of Mark or Matthew; wished to gain variety; "prefers a more dignified word"; improves the order, or "the style" (!); would avoid repetition; makes "a strange alteration of the idiom [of Mark or Matthew] to a less literary use" (why?); transposes paragraphs "in order to avoid monotony"; "objects" to this or that noun or verb, and substitutes another; etc.

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[John Reece]

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Continuation of excerpts from the Introduction to Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey ― regarding "Biblical Greek":

Yet, after this amount of meticulous tinkering, what is brought forth is frequently awkward, uncouth, unidiomatic. Any high school boy fairly well trained in Greek composition would be ashamed of such sentences as 10:38a or 22:54a. As Greek, they are not merely miserable, they are inexcusable. As translation, they are admirable, for they give exactly what was aimed at, and is now most welcome, the wording of the original text; any expert can restore the underlying Aramaic. As in the LXX, the style of the rendering is of no consequence, and was not considered. The reason why Luke substitutes "a less literary use" (see above), or "objects" to words used by Mark or Matthew, is because in these places he prefers an exact rendering of the original.

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[John Reece]

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Continuation of excerpts from the Introduction to Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey ― regarding "Biblical Greek":

Similarly Matthew, in his supposed revising of the language of Mark, seems to be guilty of a large amount of aimless and fruitless manipulation; but in reality he emerges as a very competent translator, rather than an editor of low mentality.

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[John Reece]

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Continuation of excerpts from the Introduction to Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey ― regarding "Biblical Greek":

Wellhausen's treatment (or rather, lack of treatment) of the language of Luke resulted from his false theory of Gospel origins (see above). Convinced that we are dealing with documents of late date, originally composed in Greek, though an Aramaic "Urmarkus" was supposed, his eyes were closed to the meaning of the evidence before him. In his Evang. Lucaewritten "Grundlage" is present in every part of the Gospel. In his Einleitung

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[John Reece]

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Continuation of excerpts from the Introduction to Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey ― regarding "Biblical Greek":

In regard to Luke it remains to be said, that of all the Four Gospels it is the one which gives by for the plainest and most constant evidence of being a translation. His habit as a translator resembles that of Aquila.

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[John Reece]

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Final excerpt from the Introduction to Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey ― regarding "Biblical Greek":

What Wellhausen says on pp. 28 ff. in regard to the Aramaic of Palestine in the first century gives in part a false impression. We know the literary Aramaic of the time (and the language of the Gospels was, throughout, the literary idiom) much better than we know the classical Hebrew. The Greek renderings are so literal that the expert reader can usually see not merely the idiom, but the precise words. And we see that we can trust the translators, though they make their inevitable slips; and that the texts which they rendered had suffered very little corruption; that is evident. The language which they produced, recognized in its true character, has a dignity which it did not before possess. It is not the result of awkward attempts at writing made by half-trained men, but the very skillful rendering of precise documents in the way that could preserve them most perfectly.

End of Torrey's "Introduction" to Our Translated Gospels.

[John Reece]

Our Translated Gospels

Beginning of Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey:

OUR TRANSLATED GOSPELS

Chapter I

AMBIGUITY OF THE ARAMAIC TEXT

The manner in which these Semitic texts were written provided snares and pitfalls in plenty for any interpreter but the most careful. The difficulty caused by the absence of vowel signs is well known, and a subsequent chapter will treat of cases in which mistranslation resulted from a false vocalization. The consonant text has some ambiguities of its own, though they are rarely serious if the writing is clear. The fact that daleth and resh are written exactly alike occasionally makes trouble, as in Mark 7:3 (Exhibit XVI, A) and Luke 13:33 (Exhibit XXI, C). In some forms of Aramaic script waw and yodh resemble each other very closely; and there are other cases of the kind, see for example the curious mistake in John 5:34 (Exhibit XXII, C).

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[John Reece]

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Continuation of Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey:

An illustration may be taken from the O.T., where such little difficulties with the consonant text are not only to be seen on every page, but also are easily demonstrated. Amos 3:11 originally contained the prediction: "An enemy will encompass the land," צר יסבב הארץ; and this text was rendered by the Peshitta. The Masoretic text reads: "An enemy, and round about (the land)," צר וסבב; the result of mistaking yodh for waw. The Greek has: "A Tyrian round about," Τύρος κυκόθεν, צרי סבב; a curious division of the consonants, and a characteristically irresponsible translation. The treatment of the passage also illustrates the possibility of misunderstanding because of a lack of vowel letters (in the second word); the fact that in Jewish documents "the land" (otherwise "the earth, the world") means the land of Palestine, as in Luke 2:1 and Acts 11:28 (Exhibit XV, C); and the further fact that the translator is under no obligation to make good sense; this fact illustrated frequently in the Gospels, as it is constantly in the LXX.

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[John Reece]

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Continuation of Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey:

From the fact that the consonant text was written continuously, with no indication of single words, it might be expected that a false division would sometimes be made by the reader or translator. In the O.T. tradition there are numerous examples of this error, some in the Masoretic text and others attested by the LXX. In the Gospels, however, I have found only a single instance, namely in John 10:7; a clear case, and one of very great interest. See Exhibit XIX, B.

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[John Reece]

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Continuation of Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence, by Charles Cutler Torrey:

The examples of ambiguity which are to be given in the present chapter are not like those which thus far have been considered, difficulties caused by misreading consonants or confusing vowels. It more frequently happened that the words of the original text were correctly deciphered and pronounced, and yet were misunderstood. The range of possibility of such misunderstanding is so great as to surprise any one not long familiar with Semitic texts and translation Greek. This is a subject which has often been treated in the case of the Hebrew, and it will suffice here to name a few of the typical ways in which a false rendering was brought about in dealing with Aramaic texts.

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