The Aramaic New Testament exists in two forms: (1) the classical Aramaic, or Syriac, New Testament, part of the Peshitta Bible, or "Peshitta;" (2) the "Assyrian Modern" New Testament and Psalms, published by the Bible Society in Lebanon (1997) and newly translated from Greek. The official Assyrian Church of the East (known by some as the Nestorian Church) does not recognise the new "Assyrian Modern" edition, and traditionally considers the New Testament of the Peshitta to be the original New Testament, and Aramaic to be its original language. This view was popularised in the West by the Assyrian Church of the East scholar George Lamsa, but is not supported by the majority of scholars, either of the Peshitta or the Greek New Testament.

The traditional New Testament of the Peshitta has 22 books, lacking 2 John, 3 John, 2 Peter, Jude and Revelation, which are books of the Antilegomena. The text of Gospels also lacks the Pericope Adulterae (John 7:53–8:11) and Luke 22:17–18.^[1] These missing books were reconstructed by the Syriacist John Gwynn in 1893 and 1897 from alternative manuscripts, and included them in the United Bible Societies edition of 1905. The 1997 modern Aramaic New Testament has all 27 books.

Aramaic original New Testament hypothesis

The hypothesis of an Aramaic original for the New Testament holds that the original text of the New Testament was not written in Greek, as held by the majority of scholars, but in the Aramaic language, which was the primary language of Jesus and his Twelve Apostles.

The position of the Assyrian Church of the East is that the Syriac Peshitta (a Bible version which is written in a vernacular form of Aramaic), used in that church, is the original of the New Testament.^[2] Variants of this view are held by some individuals who may argue for a lost Aramaic text preceding the Peshitta as the basis for the New Testament.

This view is to be distinguished from the view held by most historical critics, that the Greek New Testament (particularly the gospels of Matthew and Mark) may have had Aramaic source texts which are no longer extant.^[3]

The most noteworthy advocate of the "Peshitta-original" hypothesis in the West was George Lamsa of the Aramaic Bible Center. A tiny minority of more recent scholars are backers of the Peshitta-original theory today,^[4] whereas the overwhelming majority of scholars consider the Peshitta New Testament to be a translation from a Greek original. For instance the noted Assyriologist Sebastian Brock wrote:

The only complete English translation of the Peshitta is by G. Lamsa. This is unfortunately not always very accurate, and his claims that the Peshitta Gospels represent the Aramaic original underlying the Greek Gospels are entirely without foundation; such views, which are not infrequently found in more popular literature, are rejected by all serious scholars.^[5]

Some advocates of the "Peshitta-original" theory also use the term "Aramaic primacy", though this is not used in academic sources, and appears to be a recent neologism, as is the phrase "Greek primacy", used to characterize the consensus view. ^[6] These terms are not used by textual critics, since the evidence is overwhelming that the New Testament was written originally in Greek.^[7][8]

Brief history

George Lamsa's translation of the Peshitta New Testament from Syriac into English brought the claims for primacy of the Aramaic New Testament to the West. However, his translation is poorly regarded by most scholars in the field.^[9] The Old Syriac Texts, the Sinai palimpsest and the Curetonian Gospels, have also influenced scholars concerning original Aramaic passages. Diatessaronic texts such as the Liege Dutch Harmony, the Pepysian Gospel Harmony, Codex Fuldensis, The Persian Harmony, The Arabic Diatessaron, and the Commentary on the Diatessaron by Ephrem the Syrian have provided recent insights into Aramaic origins. The Coptic Gospel of Thomas and the various versions of the medieval Hebrew Gospel of Matthew also have provided clues to Aramaic foundations in the New Testament especially the gospels.^{[citation needed]} Many 19th Century scholars (H. Holtzmann, Wendt, Jülicher, Wernle, von Soden, Wellhausen, Harnack, B. Weiss, Nicolardot, W. Allen, Montefiore, Plummer, and Stanton)^{[10][failed verification]} theorized that portions of the gospels, especially Matthew, were derived from an Aramaic source normally referred to as Q.^{[dubious – discuss][citation needed]}

Historical Criticism

The best evidence for at least one of the Greek books of the New Testament to have been translated out of the Aramaic, comes from a textual analysis of those attributed to the Apostle John. Their variation in writing style is so considerable, that it would preclude them having been written in Greek by the same author. St Dionysius of Alexandria lent support to this argument, when pointing out how John's style of writing differs so markedly between his Gospel and Revelation. He concluded that the sophisticated writer of the former could not have written the clumsy Greek of the latter. Thus, the only way for John to have been the author of Revelation is for it to have been penned by a translator. However, Dionysius himself left open the possibility that it was written in Greek "by a holy and inspired writer" other than John.^[11]

Methods of argument

Advocates of the hypothesis of an Aramaic original for the New Testament often invoke the following arguments.

No knowledge of Greek in the Jesus community

The 1st century AD historian Josephus states that his nation did not encourage the learning of Greek, which implies that a Jew who spoke Greek would have been rare in the first century.

For instance Josephus wrote:

"I have also taken a great deal of pains to obtain the learning of the Greeks, and understand the elements of the Greek language, although I have so long accustomed myself to speak our own tongue, that I cannot pronounce Greek with sufficient exactness; for our nation does not encourage those that learn the languages of many nations, and so adorn their discourses with the smoothness of their periods; because they look upon this sort of accomplishment as common, not only to all sorts of free-men, but to as many of the servants as please to learn them. But they give him the testimony of being a wise man who is fully acquainted with our laws, and is able to interpret their meaning; on which account, as there have been many who have done their endeavors with great patience to obtain this learning, there have yet hardly been so many as two or three that have succeeded therein, who were immediately well rewarded for their pains." ^[12]

"Now I have undertaken the present work, as thinking it will appear to all the Greeks worthy of their study; for it will contain all our antiquities, and the constitution of our government, as interpreted out of the Hebrew Scriptures. And indeed I did formerly intend, when I wrote of the war, to explain who the Jews originally were, - what fortunes they had been subject to, - and by what legislature they had been instructed in piety, and the exercise of other virtues, - what wars also they had made in remote ages, till they were unwillingly engaged in this last with the Romans: but because this work would take up a great compass, I separated it into a set treatise by itself, with a beginning of its own, and its own conclusion; but in process of time, as usually happens to such as undertake great things, I grew weary and went on slowly, it being a large subject, and a difficult thing to translate our history into a foreign, and to us unaccustomed language.^[13]"

But in the Greek New Testament, several anecdotes feature "Greeks" who communicate with Jesus Christ or the Apostle Paul. If these people are understood literally as Greek-speakers, these anecdotes would contradict the testimony of Josephus. But the Peshitta supports the testimony of Josephus by offering variant readings of these passages in which the interlocutors in question are either "Aramaean" or "Pagan". Below are some examples.

1. Mark 7:26 (NIV Translation) - "The woman was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter."

Mark 7:26 (Peshitta) ^[14] - "But she was a pagan woman from Phoenicia of Syria, and she was begging him to cast out the demon from her daughter."

2. John 7:35 (NIV) - "The Jews said to one another, "Where does this man intend to go that we cannot find him? Will he go where our people live scattered among the Greeks, and teach the Greeks."

John 7:35 (Peshitta) ^[15] - "The Judeans were saying among themselves, "Where is This Man prepared to go that we cannot be? Is He prepared to go teach the pagans?"".

3. Acts 16:1 (NIV) - "Paul came to Derbe and then to Lystra, where a disciple named Timothy lived, whose mother was Jewish and a believer but whose father was a Greek."

Acts 16:1 (Peshitta) ^[16] - "And he arrived at the city Derby and at Lystra, but a disciple was there whose name was Timotheus, son of a certain Jewess believer, and his father was an Aramaean."

4. Romans 1:16 (KJV) - "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek."

Romans 1:16 (Peshitta) ^[17] - "For I am not ashamed of The Gospel, because it is the power of God for the life of all who believe in it, whether of The Judeans first, or of the Aramaeans."

5. Acts 20:21 (NIV) - "I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus."

Acts 20:21 (Peshitta) ^[18] - "While I was testifying to the Jews and to the Aramaeans about returning to God and the faith in Our Lord Yeshua The Messiah."

6. 1 Corinthians 1:24(NIV) - "but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God."

1 Corinthians 1:24 (Peshitta) ^[19] - "But to those who are called, Jews and Aramaeans, The Messiah is the power of God and the wisdom of God."

7. Galatians 2:3 (KJV) - "But neither Titus, who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised:"

Galatians 2:3 (Peshitta) ^[20] - "Even Titus, an Aramaean who was with me, was not compelled to be circumcised."

8. Acts 19:17 (KJV) - "And this was known to all the Jews and Greeks also dwelling at Ephesus; and fear fell on them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified."

Acts 19:17 (Peshitta) ^[21] - "And this became known to all the Jews and Aramaeans dwelling in Ephesaus and great fear fell upon all of them, and the name of Our Lord Yeshua The Messiah was exalted."

Perceived logical improbabilities in Greek

One passage that it is argued contains a logical improbability in Greek is Matthew 4:8. There isn't a mountain high enough to view "all of the kingdoms of the earth" since the earth is round. The Hebrew word found in Ibn Shaprut's medieval translation of the Greek Gospel of Matthew in the appendix to The Touchstone (c.1380) uses "eretz"^[22] which can be translated as earth or land.^[23] By substituting the Hebrew word "eretz" into the passage makes it possible that "all the kingdoms of the land of Israel" were viewed from a high mountain such as Mount Tabor in Israel. However the same is true for Greek ge which can mean land or earth depending on context. Also since "all the kingdoms of the land of Israel" is seen as an unlikely meaning most commentators on Matthew have seen "all the kingdoms of the land of earth" as being either hyperbole or a vision.^[24]

Another proposed example concerns Matthew 24:51 and Luke 12:46. Agnes Smith Lewis (1910) noted that the verb used in all of the Syriac versions "palleg" has the primary meaning of "cut in pieces" and the secondary one of "appoint to some one his portion." The primary sense leads to the possible problem of how someone cut to pieces could then be assigned to something else. But, Smith argues, if we take the secondary meaning then we are may suggest that the Greek translator misunderstood a Syriac idiom by taking it too literally. The translation would be "and shall allot his portion and shall place him with the unfaithful" instead of the Greek "shall cut him in pieces and shall place him with the unfaithful."^[25] Hugh J. Schonfield (1927) notes that the Hebrew verb "bahkag" means literally to "break forth, cleave asunder" and concludes that the Greek translator has failed to grasp the sense in which the Hebrew word is here used.^[26]

Another proposed example involves the genealogy in Matthew. Schonfield (1927) argues that the text of Matthew indicates three genealogical groups of 14 each. However, the Greek texts of Matthew have two groups of 14 and a final group of 13. The Syriac Curetonian and Syriac Sinaitic add the following to Matthew 1:13, "Abiud begat Abiur, Abiur begat Eliakim. Dutillet's Hebrew version of Matthew adds Abihud begat Abner; Abner begat Eliakim.^[27] In both Syriac and Hebrew the spellings between Abiud and Abiur are so close that during translation into Greek the second name could have been dropped mistakenly. In any case, all Greek texts contain only 13 names while possibly indicating 14 should be in the final portion of the list. The two Syriac texts and one Hebrew text have 14 names and indicate 14 should be in the final portion of the list.

Polysemy

Some^[who?] treat "split words" as a distinctive subsection of mistranslations.^{[citation needed]} Sometimes it appears that a word in Aramaic with two (or more) distinct and different meanings appears to have been interpreted in the wrong sense, or even translated both ways in different documents.^{[original research?]}

Perhaps the most well known example cited by advocates of an Aramaic urtext for the Gospels is the parable of the "camel (καμηλος) through the eye of a needle." (Mark 10:25, Matthew 19:24, Luke 18:25) In Aramaic, the word for "camel" (גמלא) is spelled identically to the word for "rope" (גמלא), as published in the works of Lamsa, a native speaker of Aramaic, whereby the correct phrase becomes "rope through the eye of a needle," making the hyperbole more symmetrical. The Aramaic word might also be translated as "beam",^{[citation needed]} making a connection between this passage and the passage on removing a beam from your eye—Matthew 7:5; Luke 6:41–42.

Puns

Aramaic is one of the Semitic languages, a family where many words come from three-letter roots. As a result, speakers of the language employ puns that play on roots with similar sounding consonants, or with the same consonants re-arranged. In applying this principle, scholars^[who?] have studied the dialogues of the New Testament and in some cases claim that how a choice of words that apparently seem completely unrelated or awkward in Greek may originate from an original Aramaic source that employed puns, or vice versa. Agnes Smith Lewis^[28] discusses how the Aramaic words for "slave" and "sin" are similar. "He who sins is a slave to sin" John 8:34. She uses this to point out Jesus used puns in Aramaic that were lost in the translations.

For example, in the True Children of Abraham debate within the Gospel of John, some^[who?] consider the conversation took place in Aramaic, note possible examples of punning between the words "father" (אבא, abba), "Abraham" (אברהם, abraham) and the verb "to do" (עבד, `abad):

John 8

39

They retorted and said to him:

"Our abba (father) is Abraham!"

Jesus says to them:

"If you are Abraham's children, `abad (do) as Abraham would `abad (do)!"^[29]

An alternate possibility is that the above conversation was actually conducted in Aramaic, but translated into Greek by the gospel writer. Portions of the oral sayings in Matthew contain vocabulary that may indicate Hebrew or Aramaic linguistic techniques involving puns, alliterations, and word connections. Hebrew/Aramaic vocabulary choices possibly underlie the text in Matthew 1:21, 3:9, 4:12, 4:21–23, 5:9–10, 5:23, 5:47–48, 7:6, 8:28–31, 9:8, 10:35–39, 11:6, 11:8–10, 11:17, 11:29, 12:13–15, 12:39, 14:32, 14:35–36, 15:34–37, 16:18, 17:05, 18:9, 18:16, 18:23–35, 19:9–13, 19:24, 21:19, 21:37–46, 21:42, 23:25–29, 24:32, 26:28–36, 26:52.^[30][31][32]

Absence or presence of Aramaic quotations and translations

In the Greek New Testament, a number of verses include Aramaic phrases or words which are then translated into Greek. In the Peshitta, sometimes the word or phrase is quoted twice in Aramaic, indicating that the words needed to be translated from one Aramaic dialect to another.

For example, Matthew 27.46 reads:

Peshitta — And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice and said: "Ēl, Ēl, why have you forsaken me?"^[33]

Greek — And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying: "Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani?" that is, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"^[34]

However, the parallel verse in Mark 15:34 reads in both in the quotation/translation form it has in the Greek:

Peshitta — And in the ninth hour, Jesus cried out in a loud voice and said: "Ēl, Ēl lmānā shvaqtāni" that is "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"^[35]

Greek — And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying: "Eloi, Eloi, lamma sabacthani?" Which is, being interpreted, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"^[36]

The evidence of these verses, some claim, tend to support the claims of St. Papias and Irenaeus that the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Aramaic presumably for Aramaic speakers in Syria-Palestine, while the Gospel of Mark was written for the Greek speaking Christians of Rome, who would not have known Aramaic fluently; but, who might have become familiar with certain phrases from the preaching of the Apostles or the liturgy. This is in similar fashion to how the words "Alleluia", "Amen", "Abba", "Hosanna" and "Sabaoth" are still in common usage in the western liturgy.

On the other hand, while Mark 3:17 ("Boanerges") and Mark 15:22 ("Golgatha") is repeated and also slightly changed in the double quotation in the Peshitta, the verses Mark 5:41 ("Talitha koumi"), Mark 7.34 ("Ephphatha") do not include any doubling.

Although the aforementioned is a discussion concerning the inclusion of quotation marks, it should be added that the Lamsa translated Peshitta for Matthew 27:46 reads: "And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice and said, Eli, Eli, lamana shabakthani! which means, My God, My God, for this I was spared (or this was my destiny)."

Internal disagreements

Advocates of an Aramaic original New Testament are divided into several distinct camps in terms of their methods of researching and reconstructing the Aramaic layer of the New Testament.

Advocates of the primacy of the Peshitta

According to mainstream textual scholars, the Peshitta New Testament is translated from The Greek New Testament.^[37] However, some writers believe that the Aramaic Peshitta is the closest text to the original New Testament. Among those who side with this view were William Norton of North Devon (1880),^{[citation needed]} the late Assyrian author George Lamsa, and the owners of several websites: Paul Younan (Peshitta.org), Andrew Gabriel Roth (Aramaic NT Truth), David Bauscher (aramaicnt.com) and Raphael Lataster (Aramaic Peshitta Bible Repository). In modern day, this movement is primarily based on the internet, although some historical advocates of the priority of the Peshitta include several Aramaic-speaking churches.

For example, Mar Eshai Shimun, Catholicos Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East was quoted:

With reference to....the originality of the Peshitta text, as the Patriarch and Head of the Holy Apostolic and Catholic Church of the East, we wish to state, that the Church of the East received the scriptures from the hands of the blessed Apostles themselves in the Aramaic original, the language spoken by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and that the Peshitta is the text of the Church of the East which has come down from the Biblical times without any change or revision.^[38]

Primacy of Aramaic oral tradition

The fact that the Gospel of Mark in the Greek also has Jesus quoting Psalms 22:1 in Aramaic as shown above, is confirmation that an Aramaic rendering of the Old Testament already had established itself in popular oral tradition as documented by Zeev ben-Hayyim and others.^[39] Accordingly, other instances of Greek New Testament manuscripts not following the Hebrew text when they quote the Old Testament, indicate that further evidence exists to support Aramaic primacy in the spoken Word, if not the written. For example, not only do they not follow the Hebrew in all such instances, but they supply Greek readings that faithfully represent the Aramaic text even to the extent of contradicting the Hebrew. While such evidence is nonetheless inconclusive for any Gospel to have been written first in Aramaic, it is as impossible for oral accounts in Aramaic of Gospel events not to have been known to Gospel authors so as not to have influenced Greek readings, as it is impossible for oral accounts of official acts of war or terror to be unknown to the target audience, let alone non-existent, in their native tongue before they document it in a foreign one, as exemplified by Josephus in his Wars of the Jews, which was written first in Aramaic.

Peshitta-critical approach

Peshitta-critical advocates of an alternative Aramaic original take both the Peshitta and the Syriac manuscripts and critically compare them, similar to how some scholars who hold the majority view that the language of the New Testament is Greek take a critical approach to determining which Greek text better represents the original. Notables who side with this view are James Trimm (S.A.N.J.), and Joe Viel. This movement is also primarily based on the internet.

Aramaic source criticism

Source-critical advocates of an Aramaic original research first-century Aramaic, culture, and psychology to reconstruct the New Testament sources in dialects contemporary to its authors. Prominent figures that side with this view are Matthew Black, Bruce Chilton, Maurice Casey, Geza Vermes, Frank Zimmermann, and Steven Caruso (AramaicNT.org).

Majority view

Mainstream and modern scholars have generally had a strong agreement that the New Testament was written in Greek and that an Aramaic source text was used for portions of the New Testament, especially the gospels. They acknowledge that many individual sayings of Jesus as found in the Greek Gospels may be translations from an Aramaic source referred to as "Q", but hold that the Gospels' text in its current form was composed in Greek, and so were the other New Testament writings. Scholars of all stripes have acknowledged the presence of scattered Aramaic expressions, transliterated and then translated, in the Greek New Testament.

An example of how mainstream scholars have dealt with Aramaic influences within an overall view of the Gospels' original Greek-language development may be found in Martin Hengel's recent synthesis of studies of the linguistic situation in Palestine during the time of Jesus and the Gospels:

Since non-literary, simple Greek knowledge or competency in multiple languages was relatively widespread in Jewish Palestine including Galilee, and a Greek-speaking community had already developed in Jerusalem shortly after Easter, one can assume that this linguistic transformation [from "the Aramaic native language of Jesus" to "the Greek Gospels"] began very early. ... [M]issionaries, above all 'Hellenists' driven out of Jerusalem, soon preached their message in the Greek language. We find them in Damascus as early as AD 32 or 33. A certain percentage of Jesus' earliest followers were presumably bilingual and could therefore report, at least in simple Greek, what had been heard and seen. This probably applies to Cephas/Peter, Andrew, Philip or John. Mark, too, who was better educated in Jerusalem than the Galilean fishermen, belonged to this milieu. The great number of phonetically correct Aramaisms and his knowledge of the conditions in Jewish Palestine compel us to assume a Palestinian Jewish-Christian author. Also, the author's Aramaic native language is still discernible in the Marcan style.^[40]

Response to Papias

Papias provides a very early source for the idea that the canonical Gospels were either based on some non-Greek written sources, or (in the case of Matthew) possibly "composed" in a non-Greek language. The relevant fragments of Papias' lost work An Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord (Logiōn kuriakōn exēgēsis, c. 110–140) are preserved in quotations by Eusebius. In one fragment, Papias cites an older source who says, "When Mark was the interpreter [hermēneutēs, possibly "translator"] of Peter, he wrote down accurately everything that he recalled of the Lord's words and deeds." Papias' surviving comment about Matthew is more tantalizing, but equally cryptic: "And so Matthew composed [or collected] the sayings [or record] in the Hebrew tongue, and each one interpreted [hērmēneusen, possibly "translated"] them to the best of his ability."^[41] A similar claim comes out more clearly in a text by Irenaeus, but this testimony is later than (and probably based on) Papias.

Even if they do imply non-Greek originals, these accounts have been doubted, in part with an argument that the literary quality of the Greek of these books indicates that the Greek would be the original. This argument extends to the other books where the Church Fathers accepted Greek as the original without debate. The Greek New Testament's general agreement with the Septuagint is also counted as evidence by majority view scholars. Aramaic primacists point to quotations from the Hebrew (Masoretic) Old Testament in the Alexandrian text type that indicate at one point a non-Greek speaking audience was addressed (See Matthew 2:15, 2:18, 11:10; Mark 1:2; Luke 7:27; John 19:37; Acts 13:18; Romans 9:33, 11:35; 1 Corinthians 3:19; 1Peter 2:8).^[42] Aramaic primacists question why the New Testament would quote from the Hebrew Old Testament and not from the Septuagint if it was written in Greek originally. Quotes from the Hebrew Old Testament are present in Alexandrian texts that are thought to predate Jerome's use of the Hebrew Old Testament for the Vulgate.

Response to specific verses

There are also alternative explanations for the cases where Aramaic Primacists claim that the Aramaic seems to read better. One example (as stated above) is in the case of the "camel through the eye of a needle." In Jewish and Christian literature we see the following:

"...who can make an elephant pass through the eye of a needle."

- Babylonian Talmud, Baba Mezi'a, 38b

"They do not show a man a palm tree of gold, nor an elephant going through the eye of a needle."

- Babylonian Talmud, Berakoth, 55b

"13 There was a rich man named Onesiphorus who said: If I believe, shall I be able to do wonders? Andrew said: Yes, if you forsake your wife and all your possessions. He was angry and put his garment about Andrew's neck and began to beat him, saying: You are a wizard, why should I do so? 14 Peter saw it and told him to leave off. He said: I see you are wiser than he. What do you say? Peter said: I tell you this: it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

- Apocryphal Acts of Peter and Andrew.

Aramaic Primacists, most notably Lamsa, generally respond that these sources are late compared to the account in Q, as the Mishnah, the base document of the Babylonian Talmud was compiled in 200, where the Acts of Peter and Andrew is a 3rd-century work and therefore the original mistranslation of גמלא (gamlâ) predates and is potentially the source of these subsequent paraphrases. The Aramaic word for camel can also mean "rope" thus saying "it easier for a rope to go through the eye of a needle".

Multiple versions

Josephus' The Jewish War was originally written in Aramaic and later translated into Greek, probably under the supervision of Josephus himself. While it might be possible that Koine (or even Latin) versions of the books of the New Testament were likewise circulating contemporaneously, it is unlikely due to the small degree of literacy among working-class fishermen of that era, even in their native language, Aramaic, let alone in foreign languages. This is in distinct contrast to the situation in present day Orthodox Jewish communities, where popular, newly written, religious works in Rabbinical Hebrew are promptly translated into English and Yiddish.^{[original research?]} Therefore, the possibility that the Twelve Apostles were anywhere near as polyglot is discounted by both Aramaic-supporting and Koine-supporting scholars.

Footnotes

Bibliography

• Ben-Hayyim, Z. (1957–77), The Literary and Oral Tradition of Hebrew and Aramaic amongst the Samaritans, Jerusalem Academy of the Hebrew Language{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date format (link)
• Black, M. (1967), An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts. 3rd Ed., Hendrickson Publishers
• Burney, C. F. (1922), The Aramaic Origin of the Fourth Gospel, Oxford at the Clarendon Press
• Casey, M. (1998), The Aramaic Sources of Marks' Gospel, Cambridge University Press
• Casey, M. (2002), An Aramaic Approach to Q, Cambridge University Press
• Fitzmyer, J. (1997), The Semitic Background of the New Testament, Eerdmans Publishing
• Lamsa, G. (1976), New Testament Origin, Aramaic Bible Center
• Torrey, C. (1941), Documents of the Primitive Church, Harper & Brothers
• Zimmermann, F. (1979), The Aramaic Origin of the Four Gospels, Ktav Publishing House

External links

• AramaicNT.org — collection of articles on Aramaic source criticism
• Dukhrana.com — site contains the transcription of the Khaboris Codex
• AramaicNT.com – research articles and twelve published books on the Peshitta Bible, including N.T. interlinear translation and plain English N.T. translation plus Peshitta interlinear Psalms, Proverbs & Ecclesiastes.