dhosek@euler.claremont.edu (Don Hosek) (05/17/91)
In article <May.13.04.16.27.1991.14809@athos.rutgers.edu>, hudson@athena.cs.uga.edu (Paul Hudson Jr) writes: >>What books of the NT do you think were originally written in Aramaic? >>All I know of is a theory, based on one of the writers of the early >>church's quote of another writer that Matthew was written in Aramaic. > I think it is reasonable to assume that Paul's writings were written > in Greek. Luke's, John's, and Mark's should also be in Greek. > Weren't they writing to Gentiles? I am not sure of this. > It would make a lot of sense fot he writings to the diaspertia to be > in Greek. After all, Hebrew had almost died as a spoken language > before and Greek Jews (and ex-prostelytes) should have spoken Greek. Mark and Matthew, in my understanding, are frequently believed to have had a Semitic original as their source(s). Whether this means that they are translations of now-lost Aramaic originals or share a common Aramaic source (the hypothetical "Q") is unknown. Another interesting observation is that there does seem to be some evidence for an evolutionary process for all four Gospel texts. Some scholars view the Letters of John as being "trial Gospels" where the message was presented to the people and revised to make it clearer for the final product. There also exists a very small fragment, labelled "unknown Gospel" which has striking parallels with John and the synoptics and is believed to predate the writing of the canonical four (sounds like a political movement, doesn't it). If you're interested in reading the "unknown Gospel" fragments, they appear in Appendix I of _The Apocryphal New Testament_ edited by M.R. James (Clarendon Press, Oxford:1924). I picked up my copy second-hand (although I don't remember where) and it has a note on the flyleaf indicating that it's still in print. It's an important enough volume that most large University libraries should have a copy. As long as I'm continuing this digression about the volume, I'd like to add that for those interested in pseudopigraphica, this is definitely a must-buy. It's rather comprehensive and well-balanced (as opposed to the sensationalist volumes published by Bell). -dh -- Don Hosek dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu Quixote Digital Typography 714-625-0147 [A more recent reference, which has a large number of fragments of sayings, as well as better-known apocryphal works, is Edgar Hennecke, ed, "New Testament Apocrypha", Westminster, 1963. It is in 2 volumes. The first has all the gospel type material. --clh]
dhosek@hmcvax.claremont.edu (Don Hosek) (05/23/91)
OFM said: > [A more recent reference, which has a large number of fragments > of sayings, as well as better-known apocryphal works, is Edgar > Hennecke, ed, "New Testament Apocrypha", Westminster, 1963. > It is in 2 volumes. The first has all the gospel type material. > --clh] Actually, Hennecke's work is older than the M.R. James volume I referred to (the original edition was published in 1904 in German). I was, however, unaware of the English translation of Hennecke which is mentioned favorably by James. -dh -- Don Hosek dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu Quixote Digital Typography 714-625-0147