An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts

[John Reece]

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Continuation of "The Distribution of Asyndeton in the Gospels and Acts" section of the out-of-print third edition of An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 1967), by Matthew Black:

Individual cases may be defended as Greek; the asyndeton in Paul's speech at Miletus (Acts xx. 17 f.), where there is no possibility of Semitic sources (though Semitic influence is not thereby excluded), is rhetorically effective. But when all allowances have been made for Greek uses of the construction, there remains in both the Gospels and Acts a very substantial number of non-Greek asyndeta.

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[John Reece]

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Continuation of "The Distribution of Asyndeton in the Gospels and Acts" section of the out-of-print third edition of An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 1967), by Matthew Black:

A comparison of the instances in Mark with the parallels in Matthew and Luke shows that 'the smoother and more connected forms of the sentences in Matthew and Luke were altered from the rough and crude forms in Mark'. In view of the preponderance of asyndeton in Aramaic, it seems likely that, as in John, the explanation of the 'rough and crude' Marcan asyndeton is either that Mark wrote Jewish Greek as deeply influenced in this respect as the Greek of the Shepherd of Hermas, or else that he is translating Aramaic sources or employing such translations. It is probable that he did both: where Mark is reporting the words of Jesus, not as single isolated sayings but in a group of collected saying, he is most probably incorporating in his Gospel the translation Greek of a sayings-tradition: Mark xiii. 6-9, where asyndeton occurs no less than 4 times in 7 connected sentences, is an instance of translation Greek.

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[John Reece]

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Continuation of "The Distribution of Asyndeton in the Gospels and Acts" section of the out-of-print third edition of An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 1967), by Matthew Black:

Asyndeton in Matthew and Luke, with the exception of Matthew's λέγει, λέγουσι, ἔθη in narrative, occurs almost exclusively in the sayings and parables of Jesus. With the exception of the two examples in the Magnificat (which is generally believed to have been modeled on a Semitic poem or to be a rendering of a Semitic original), it is not without significance that three or four longer passages from Luke, containing a number of asyndeta together, come from Q (in chapters vi, xi, xvii); the fourth (chapter xviii) is in a parable from Luke's special source. All the Lucan cases (the Magnificat excepted) are in sayings of Jesus. To appreciate the significance of the result, it must again be borne in mind that in the Synoptics narrative greatly outweighs the reported saying and parables of Jesus; the largest proportion of the latter is contained in Q, which in Matthew is about one-sixth of the whole Gospel and in Luke is even less.

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[John Reece]

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Continuation of "The Distribution of Asyndeton in the Gospels and Acts" section of the out-of-print third edition of An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 1967), by Matthew Black:

That asyndeton should so preponderate in the Words of Jesus and be virtually absent in the longer narrative portions of the Synoptics, except in Mark's Gospel and in certain Jewish Greek formulae chiefly in Matthew, points to the conclusion that a sayings-tradition, cast in translation Greek and reflecting faithfully the Aramaic construction, has been utilized by the Evangelists. The examples outside the Words of Jesus do not necessarily imply Aramaic sources: they are no more numerous than are found in the Shepherd of Hermas and for the most part of the same type. Their greater frequency in Mark, however, as compared with the other two Synoptic Gospels, may point to an Aramaic narrative tradition about Jesus.

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[John Reece]

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Continuation of "The Distribution of Asyndeton in the Gospels and Acts" section of the out-of-print third edition of An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 1967), by Matthew Black:

In the Fourth Gospel, where the construction has been examined by Burney, it again predominates in the sayings and speeches of Jesus, which form, however, the greater part of the work. A modification of Burney's hypothesis may be the best explanation of the excessive use of asyndeton in John: John may not be as a whole a translation of an Aramaic original, but, in the sayings and speeches of Jesus, as in the Synoptics, may contain translations of an Aramaic tradition, edited and rewritten by the author of the Gospel of Mark.

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[John Reece]

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Final paragraph of "The Distribution of Asyndeton in the Gospels and Acts" section of the out-of-print third edition of An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 1967), by Matthew Black:

Except in Mark, the construction is most frequent in the Bezan text. The latter in Mark has, in this respect, been harmonized with Matthew and Luke, the 'rough and crude' asyndeton construction being removed by the insertion of the connecting particles in the parallels in the first and third Gospels.

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[John Reece]

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The following is the beginning paragraph of "The Paratactic Construction" section of the out-of-print third edition of An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 1967), by Matthew Black:

The Paratactic Construction

Parataxis [the linking of clauses or phrases together without utilizing conjunctions that mark subordinate relationships] is much more frequent in Aramaic than it is in Greek. In less literary Greek and in the papyri the construction is not uncommon, and this alone has been regarded as a sufficient justification for its frequency in the Gospels. In the first edition of his Einleitung Wellhausen attributed the over-use of simple parataxis in the Gospels to the influence of Aramaic; but in the second edition it is stated, 'the predominance of parataxis, not only in the sayings of Jesus, but also in the Marcan narrative, is in general no sure sign of Semitic conception'. This agrees in the main with Deissmann and Moulton; the latter states more positively, '. . . in itself the phenomenon proves nothing more than would a string of "ands" in an English rustic's story―elementary culture, and not the hampering presence of a foreign idiom that is being perpetually translated into its most literal equivalent'. C. F. Burney took a different view, especially with regard to the excessive use of the construction in the Fourth Gospel; he argued against Deissmann and Moulton that unliterary works or business documents and letters from Egyptian papyri are not in pari materia with St. John's Gospel, and he assigned Johannine parataxis, along with the related asyndeton construction, to the influence of an Aramaic original.

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[John Reece]

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Continuation of "The Paratactic Construction" section of the out-of-print third edition of An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 1967), by Matthew Black:

So far as the Fourth Gospel is concerned, the perpetually recurring paratactic καί ["and"] is certainly an overstraining of Greek literary usage. Milligan thought it 'impossible to deny that the use of καί in the LXX for the Hebrew וְ influenced the Johannine usage'. Lagrange, who was very cautious in questions of Aramaic influence in the Gospels, was of the opinion that, in view of the slight trace of LXX influence in John, the source of the Johannine paratactic καί was Aramaic.

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[John Reece]

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Continuation of "The Paratactic Construction" section of the out-of-print third edition of An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 1967), by Matthew Black:

A detailed study of the relative frequency of καί and δέ co-ordinating independent clauses has been undertaken by R. A. Martin for the Book of Acts: 'Syntactical Evidence of Aramaic Sources in Acts i-xv' in New Testament Studies, xi, pp. 38-59. On the basis of this and similar evidence for Luke-Acts, Mr. Martin has concluded (p. 59):

'It is apparent from the above study that the style of Luke-Acts is not consistent with respect to the use of καί and δέ; the use of prepositions; and the separation of the article from its substantive. Further, in some of the subsections of Acts i-xv and Luke i and ii the usage, on the one hand, is strikingly parallel to that of the translation Greek of the Old Testament, and, on the other, differs significantly from the other subsections of Act i-xv, Luke i and ii, the subsections of Acts xvi-xxviii and of original Greek writings such as Plutarch, Polybius, Epictetus, Josephus and the papyri.

The most natural explanation for this phenomenon is that Semitic sources can be detected as lying behind those subsections of Luke i and ii and Acts i-xv which have the greatest preponderance of translation Greek frequencies for these three syntactical phenomena.'

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[John Reece]

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Conclusion of "The Paratactic Construction" section of the out-of-print third edition of An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 1967), by Matthew Black:

Black's study of the paratactic construction in the Gospels is more intensive, extensive, and exhaustive than I care to transcribe. I therefore will omit much if not most of it; likewise henceforth with regard to other sections.

....

Three important points emerge generally from this study of parataxis [the linking of clauses or phrases together without utilizing conjunctions that mark subordinate relationships] in the Gospels and Acts:

1. Considerable importance must be attached to the observation that, in the parables, where we have the best examples in the Words of Jesus of continuous narrative, parataxis, except in Mark, is the exception, the idiomatic Greek hypotactic construction almost the rule. We have not always literal translations of Aramaic therefore in the Words of Jesus as they have been translated from the Evangelists, but in this respect at any rate, literary compositions.

2. The high proportion, nevertheless, of instances of parataxis in the Gospels and Acts cannot be set down as unliterary Greek only; Aramaic influence must have been a contributory factor.

3. The less literary paratactic construction, regular in Aramaic, preponderates in the Bezan text. It cannot be explained away as 'Latinism', but must be recognized as a feature of the more primitive text. The unliterary paratactic construction is, however, by no means confined to D; in not a few instance it occurs in WH were D has hypotaxis [the subordinate relationship of clauses (ὑποτάσσω, "place under") ― the opposite of parataxis]. No single manuscript has a complete monopoly on the construction.

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[John Reece]

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Beginning of Chapter V, "The Aramaic Subordinate Clause" section of the out-of-print third edition of An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 1967), by Matthew Black:

CHAPTER V

THE ARAMAIC SUBORDINATE CLAUSE

THE ד CLAUSE

The translation and mistranslation of the ambiguous Aramaic particle dᵉ is one of the best known of Gospel Aramaisms. Burney has given an account of the meaning of the participle: it is a relative, the sign of the genitive, and a conjunction; it may be equivalent to ὅτι, 'because', or ὅτι recitativum, or ἵνα; it may also have the force of ὅτε or ὥστε, the latter use not noted by Burney. In view of so wide an ambiguity, the particle was almost bound to give rise to misunderstanding or to different interpretations in any rendering into Greek.

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[John Reece]

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Continuation of Chapter V, "The Aramaic Subordinate Clause" section of the out-of-print third edition of An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 1967), by Matthew Black:

An examination of the instances which have been adduced for the mistranslation of this ambiguous Aramaic particle in the Gospels leads to the observation of three classes: (1) there are a few instances where, along with one translation of the dᵉ, there is an alternative translation or interpretation in the form of a Synoptic variant; (2) in a number of other examples an alternative rendering or interpretation of the underlying Aramaic exists in the form of a textual variant, either in Greek manuscripts or in one or more ancient versions; (3) the third class consists of the remainder of examples which have neither Synoptic nor textual attestation for the alternative rendering which consideration of the Aramaic dᵉ suggests. Examples are discussed under the usual headings, the first two classes, to which naturally more weight is to be attached, being given first..

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[John Reece]

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Continuation of THE ד CLAUSE section of the out-of-print third edition of An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 1967), by Matthew Black:

I. Relative dᵉ rendered by ὅτι

(i) With Synoptic Variants

Burney pointed out that an ambiguous Aramaic dᵉ could account for the Synoptic variants ὅτι βλέπουσιν and οἱ βλέποντες in Matthew xiii. 16 and Luke x. 23 respectively. The Lucan version gives the more natural and probably original meaning of the saying in Aramaic. But Matthew need not be regarded as 'mistranslation'. It may represent a deliberate interpretation of the Aramaic designed to emphasize that it was because the disciples' eyes were open to see, as contrasted with the blindness of the crowds, that they merited the Lord's blessing.

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[John Reece]

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Continuation of THE ד CLAUSE section of the out-of-print third edition of An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 1967), by Matthew Black:

I. Relative dᵉ rendered by ὅτι

(i) With Synoptic Variants

In Mark ix. 38 (dialogue) a clause ὃς οὐκ ἀκολουγεῖ ἡμῖν (μεθʾ ἡμῶν), omitted by Bא, is inserted by D (after δαιμόνια) along with A and a few other Uncials of the Byzantine text; the relative has also the support of the Old Latin. The Bא text has the clause in the form ὅτι οὐκ ἠκολούθει ἡμῖν, which differs only slightly from the parallel in Luke ix. 49, ὅτι οὐκ ἀκολουθεῖ μεθ᾿ ἡμῶν. The Synoptic variants, the Marcan relative and the Lucan conjunction, go back to the same Aramaic, dᵉla ʾathe bathrenan. Not only is the dᵉ ambiguous and capable of being rendered by either relative or conjunction, but the tense of the Aramaic verb may be represented by either a present or an imperfect. The observation supports the authenticity of the relative clause in Mark, and indeed it is difficult to account for that clause unless it is Marcan. It may be the true Marcan clause, representing the Greek rendering of the Aramaic of Mark's source; the clause in the Bא text of Mark may be a harmonization with Luke, this form of the clause being Luke's received translation of the ambiguous Aramaic. There is, however, no reason why both clauses should not be Marcan, and Luke's clause derive from no other source than a Greek Mark.

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[John Reece]

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Continuation of THE ד CLAUSE section of the out-of-print third edition of An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 1967), by Matthew Black:

I. Relative dᵉ rendered by ὅτι

(ii) With Textual Variants

Moulton accepted Wellhausen's explanation of Mark iv. 41 (dialogue), τίς ἄρα οὗτός ἐστιν ὅτι καὶ ὁ ἄνεμος καὶ ἡ θάλασσα ὑπακούει αὐτῷ; (cf. Mt. viii. 27; Lk. viii. 25). Wellhausen had suggested that ὅτι had been employed as a translation of dᵉ to avoid an un-Greek ῷ . . . αὐτῷ. Both scholars failed to note the important variant reading of the Old Latin (ff², i. q), 'cui et ventus et mare obaudiunt'. The Old Latin assumes that the Latin translator is himself here correcting and altering.

To be continued...