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An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts

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  • #76
    Continued from last post above ↑

    Continuation of excerpts from "The Textual Approach" chapter 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:
    Westcott and Hort's views of the primitive Greek text of the Gospels did not exercise so great an influence on continental scholarship as they did on that of England and America. This recent statement of Kenyon's confirms the critical judgment of scholars such as, most notably, Julius Wellhausen. Unlike Westcott and Hort, who stood at the one extreme in their valuation of D and Lagarde at the other (the latter would have made Codex Bezae the basis of a critical edition of the Gospels and Acts), Wellhausen recognized the claims of both texts, Bא and D, to be representative of the primitive text, wherever either had preserved unrevised and uncorrected the textual tradition of the earliest period. Each text was the result of an independent recension or of different recensions of earlier texts: each could therefore supplement the other; D's text had frequently escaped revision where the text of Bא had not, and vice versa. But the claims of the Bezan text to represent, and not infrequently, the primitive Apostolic text, in its purity, or more correctly in its impurity, were in every way as respectable as those of Bא.

    To be continued...

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    • #77
      Continued from last post above ↑

      Continuation of excerpts from "The Textual Approach" chapter 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:
      Next to the Chester Beatty discoveries, the work of A. C. Clark has done most to establish the claims of Codex Bezae to represent the primitive text. Attempts have been made by various scholars to account for the longer and more circumstantial text of D as a deliberate expansion of the 'true' text, and to study the methods of the 'paraphrast'. An entirely opposite estimate of the longer text of D has been proposed by Clark, who found in the Bezan Uncial, not only a text which is the better representative on the whole of the primitive text of both Gospels and Acts, but a fuller and more circumstantial text of which the Vatican recension represents a shorter edition and a deliberate scholarly abridgment.

      To be continued...

      Comment


      • #78
        Continued from last post above ↑

        Continuation of excerpts from "The Textual Approach" chapter 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:
        Clark's thesis has been more successfully maintained for the Bezan text of Acts than for the Gospels, and it is perhaps significant that, in recent consideration of it, Sir Frederick Kenyon, so far as the evidence for Acts is concerned, does not seem to be prepared to give any clear or final verdict: it is when the evidence for the Gospels is considered that the balance is felt to tilt against D in favour of the Vatican authority, and that Clark's view of the relations of the two texts is held to be untenable.

        To be continued...

        Comment


        • #79
          Continued from last post above ↑

          Continuation of excerpts from "The Textual Approach" chapter 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:
          It is in this latter connexion that the textual results of Wensinck's study of the Aramaisms in Western and non-Western texts of Luke are important. The Bezan Codex 'represents the Aramaic background of the Gospel tradition as utilized by St. Luke more faithfully than the non-Western manuscripts do. . . . D and the non-Western group represent two different stages of the influence of Aramaic tradition in the transmission of Lucan writings. D seems, from this point of view, to have a claim of precedence.' The results of Wensinck's inquiry for Luke's Gospel appear to run parallel to Blass's two-edition theory for Acts: Luke''s first primitive 'Aramaized' text, found predominantly in D, was later corrected by him and issued in a form such as we find in non-Western tradition. Whether this theory of two drafts of the Gospel made by Luke himself is the true explanation of the phenomena, the fact that D stands rearer the underlying Aramaic tradition is of the greatest importance; in Luke it is the more primitive type of text.

          To be continued...

          Comment


          • #80
            Continued from the last post above ↑

            Continuation of excerpts from "The Textual Approach" chapter 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 view therefore of the orientation which the Chester Beatty Papyri have obligated in textual theory, and the importance of Clark's hypothesis, together with Wensinck's investigations in Luke, it is no longer possible to approach the study of the Gospels and Acts, from whatever point of view, on the assumptions of the Westcott and Hort hypothesis, with its almost total rejection of the evidence of D.

            To be continued...

            Comment


            • #81
              Continued from the last post above ↑

              Continuation of excerpts from "The Textual Approach" chapter 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:
              Yet this is what has been done, not only in recent as in former work on the Aramaic of the Gospels (Blass, Wellhausen, and Nestle excepted), but in the field of New Testament Criticism generally: the critical apparatus to St. Matthew's Gospel, prepared by S. C. E. Legg (for the Committee for the new Oxford edition of the Greek New Testament), still assumes the undisputed primacy of the Bא text. In the Aramaic approach, the textual problem is not even considered by Burney or Torrey, if reference is occasionally made to the 'Western' text. The basic text quoted by Dalman is that of Bא, and that of D is cited usually in brackets as a secondary authority.

              To be continued...

              Comment


              • #82
                Continued from the last post above ↑

                Continuation of excerpts from "The Textual Approach" chapter 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:
                This still prevailing view in textual scholarship not only explains the neglect of Codex Bezae in the Aramaic approach to the Gospels, but it can also account for the failure to recognize what has for long been known to be a special feature of the text of D, namely its Semitisms, as in any way relevant to the problem of Aramaic sources behind the Gospels or Acts. Many of these Semitisms of D have been attributed to Aramaic influence, only they are described as 'Syriacisms', the result of the reaction of the Syriac allies of D on the Greek text; D is a 'syriacized' Greek text.

                To be continued...

                Comment


                • #83
                  Continued from the last post above ↑

                  Continuation of excerpts from "The Textual Approach" chapter 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 hypothesis of Syriac influence on Codex Bezae was worked out in detail by F. H. Chase, who, assuming the Westcott and Hort view of D, regarded it as a 'syriacized' descendant of the 'true' text: it was a type of Greek text current in a Syrian or Syro-Greek environment, such as Syrian Antioch, which had been assimilated in language and idiom as well as in text to an Old Syriac Gospel.

                  To be continued...

                  Comment


                  • #84
                    Continued from the last post above ↑

                    Continuation of excerpts from "The Textual Approach" chapter 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:
                    Within the evidence which he adduces for his theory, Chase makes no distinction between textual affinity and linguistic influence. In the case of the former, there is no need to assume 'assimilation' to a Syriac version or Gospel to account for common variants in D and the Old Syriac; such variants prove nothing more than the employment by the Syriac translator of a 'Western' type of Greek text similar to that used by the Old Latin. But neither does evidence of a Syriac idiom or construction in D necessarily mean that its source was a Syriac version or Gospel, even where the same construction or idiom is found in the corresponding place in the version. The Syriacism may be centuries earlier; it may in fact come from the pen of the Evangelist himself. The fact that it is not found in non-Western manuscripts need not imply that the more respectable Greek, where the Syriacism in not present, was the work of the Evangelist; on the contrary, the Evangelist may himself have been guilty of the solecism, and the Syriac construction have been removed by later editors in the interests of a more polished Greek.

                    To be continued...

                    Comment


                    • #85
                      Continued from the last post above ↑

                      Continuation of excerpts from "The Textual Approach" chapter 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:
                      Moreover―and this is the crux of the matter―many of the alleged 'Syriacisms' in D may not have been the result of Syriac influence at all. They may be Aramaisms and come from the Aramaic sources and background of the Gospels. Syriac and West Aramaic can be clearly distinguished as different dialects of Aramaic, but they have so much in common (the language is, after all, Aramaic) that what may be explained in Greek texts, where dialectical distinctions of Aramaic cannot always be detected, as a Syriacism may in fact prove to be an Aramaism.

                      To be continued...

                      Comment


                      • #86
                        Continued from the last post above ↑

                        Continuation of excerpts from "The Textual Approach" chapter 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:
                        If the text of Codex Bezae has equal claims with WH to be investigated for Aramaisms, without any presuppositions being entertained about the best single manuscript source for the earliest text, its Aramaisms must likewise be first approached impartially and without any prejudice as to their source, whether Syriac or Jewish Palestinian.

                        To be continued...

                        Comment


                        • #87
                          Continued from the last post above ↑

                          Continuation of excerpts from "The Textual Approach" chapter 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:
                          If it is not always possible to distinguish the source of an Aramaism, Syriac or Jewish, it is even more difficult at times to decide the source of a Semitism, which may be explained as either a Hebraism or an Aramaism; Wensinck, for instance, has recently challenged what has been hitherto regarded as one of the best established cases of Hebraism, Luke's καὶ ἐγέντο, claiming that it may also be Aramaic. Obviously it is impossible to exclude the evidence of such Semitisms in an Aramaic approach to the Gospels: their source in the majority of ambiguous cases will be Aramaic rather than Hebrew, if the preponderating Semitic influence in the Gospels is found to be Aramaic. The only Semitisms, therefore, which are excluded from consideration in this study are those which have been shown to be genuine and characteristic Hebraisms.

                          To be continued...

                          Comment


                          • #88
                            Continued from the last post above ↑

                            Excerpts from the "Recent Discoveries and Developments in Palestinian Aramaic" chapter 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 III
                            RECENT DISCOVERIES AND DEVELOPMENTS IN PALESTINIAN ARAMAIC

                            Since the conclusions were reached which are set out in the foregoing chapters, there have been a number of new Aramaic discoveries, most notably in Qumrân, which are of great importance for the study of first-century Palestinian Aramaic. There have also been some significant developments in the study of the history of the Targums, which bear directly on the problem of first-century Aramaic. And this problem too has been further discussed in other connexions by several scholars.

                            To be continued...

                            Comment


                            • #89
                              Continued from the last post above ↑

                              Continuation of excerpts from the "Recent Discoveries and Developments in Palestinian Aramaic" chapter 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:
                              Apart from the immensely important new finds at Qumrân and the publication of other Aramaic texts, none of this new material necessitates any far-reaching modification in the views presented in Chapter II. The Qumrân Aramaic texts are naturally first-class evidence for the language of Jesus, since they are certainly mostly pre-Christian documents and possess a literary and linguistic value not less than that of the old Reichsaramäisch, with which they have their closest affinities. Any new discoveries or developments in the Überlieferungs-geschichte of the Targums require at the most some modification or supplementation of the conclusions of Chapter II. These modifications however, are so slight that I have left this chapter as it stands, supplementing it only by this new chapter on the subject of the linguistic approach.

                              To be continued...

                              Comment


                              • #90
                                Continued from the last post above ↑

                                Continuation of excerpts from the "Recent Discoveries and Developments in Palestinian Aramaic" chapter 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 New Discoveries

                                The most significant new discovery in recent years in the field of Palestinian Aramaic is Codex Neofiti I to which attention was first drawn by Professor Alejandros Díaz Macho of Barcelona in Estudios Biblicos, XV (1956), pp. 446-7. Dr. Díaz Macho wrote:

                                'I am happy to be able to say that a copy of the Jerusalem or Palestinian Targum of the whole Pentateuch has been identified. This Targum used to be called the Fragment Targum, for until now we only knew it in fragment form as contained in Cod. 110 of the National Library in Paris (published Ginsburger, Berlin, 1899) cod. 440 of the Vatican collection, or in some other manuscripts, as well as the fragments represented in the Rabbinical Bibles. Some new fragments have been published by Paul Kahle in his 'Masoreten des Westens' and by myself in Sefarad, XV (1955). Another two fragments of the Palestinian Targum which I came upon in New York will appear in the memorial publication in honour of Renée Bloch. The fragments seem to have their source in the 'Geniza' of Cairo. Such fragments of the 'Geniza' are valuable because their language is largely free of the distortion of the Targumic or Eastern (Oriental) Aramaic such as is found in all the manuscripts of Aramaic from Palestine which were copied by European scribes, themselves ignorant of Aramaic. Unfortunately such old fragments of the Palestinian Targum from Eastern sources is very scarce. And yet the fragments of such a Targum gathered together in European manuscripts preserve to some slight extent the said Aramaic paraphrase.

                                To be continued...

                                Comment

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