Reading Matthew in Hebrew - VIII

We have seen evidence (and there is more) that the sayings portion of Matthew was originally written in a Semitic language (Hebrew or Aramaic). The evidence that we looked at suggests that this earliest layer of Matthew (Matthew I) was written in Hebrew, and probably Biblical Hebrew. Literary devices such as alliteration are more easily observable in Delitzsch's Hebrew translation of the New Testament than they are in the mixed Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew of Shaprut's Hebrew Matthew.

So what, then is Shaprut's Hebrew Matthew? It is not some kind of original Matthew or Ur Matthew. It is a translation into Hebrew from either the Old Syriac or the Old Latin. We can say this with near-certainty because it omits the same verses as some of the texts in these two (closely allied) textual streams. In other words, Shaprut's Hebrew Matthew is based on a text of the Western type. Within this textual type, it seems to be closest to the oldest Old Latin texts, such as Bobiensis (k). This much we can say, but we don't know when it was translated, or how much modification it may have undergone for polemical purposes. Readings that have no support in any modern critical apparatus must be viewed with suspicion, but it would be a mistake to reject them all out-of-hand without considering whether they commend themselves for some inherent reason.

As to the other translation I've used, that of Salkinson, it has the advantage of being based on a great Greek text, that of Codex Sinaiticus (א), but its more periphrastic style often obscures literary devices that were probably part of the original Matthew I.

In general, I find Delitzsch's Hebrew translation to be of the most use, and it is the one I always start with.

ᎩᎦᎨ ᎠᎵᏍᏇᏓᏬ

ᎩᎦᎨ ᎠᎵᏍᏇᏓᏬ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎤᏁᎬ ᏗᎬᎯᏓ. Ꮭ ᎠᏄᏬᏍᏚ ᎾᏍᎩᏁ, ᎠᎴ Ꮭ ᎠᏍᏓᏩᏛᏍᏚ ᎾᏍᎩᏁ.

The Layers of Matthew - I

There is no separate "Q Document."

The only sources we need to solve the "Synoptic Problem" are Matthew and Mark.

The substratum of the sayings portion of Matthew was in Hebrew (Matthew I).

At some point it became necessary to translate Matthew I into Greek (Matthew II).

This Mathew II, although in Greek, was still too "Jewish" for Paul's purposes, so editorial changes were made, giving us Luke I, still essentially a sayings gospel, but more acceptable to the Gentiles.

Peter's public speeches were recorded by Mark. They were probably not intended to be a separate gospel, but they provided the narrative portions of Matthew and Luke.

Along with the Markan narrative, further sayings material (e.g. the Beatitudes not included in the  Lukan list) was added to Matthew II, giving us Matthew III. The evangelist of the Gospel of Luke may never have seen this expanded Matthew.

The Markan narrative was also added to Luke I, giving us Luke II.

At this point, there was no longer a need for a separate Gospel of Mark, but it was included in the Canon because Peter was the leader of the apostles and an eyewitness.

This theory can explain everything that we observe, including the Minor Agreements.

Reading Matthew in Hebrew - VII

On a warm night in early 2015 I was trying to put myself to sleep by reading the Gospel of Matthew in Hebrew. as I read, I suddenly realized that the passage I had reached, Mt. 5:25, 26, was full of alliteration. This was very exciting, and made sleep even more impossible.

I was reading Franz Delitzsch's translation of the New Testament into Hebrew, which is written in pure and impeccable Biblical Hebrew. Here is the passage I was reading:

מַהֵר הִתְרַצֵּה לְאִישׁ רִיבְךָ בּעוֹדְךָ בַדֶּרֶךְ אִתּוֹ פֶּן־יַסְגִיר אֹתְךָ אִישׁ רִיבְךָ אֶל־הַשֹׁפֵט וְהַשֹׁפֵט יַסְגִּירְךָ לַשׁוֹטֵר וְהָשְׁלַכְתָּ אֶל־בֵּית הַכֶּלֶא ׃  אָמֵן אֹמֵר אֲנִי לָךְ לֹא תֵצֵא מִשָׁם עַד אֲשֶׁר שִׁלַּמְתָּ אֶת־הַפְּרוּטָה הָאַחֲרוֹנָה ׃

Here is an ad hoc phonetic version, so that those who do not read Hebrew may appreciate the alliteration:

maher hitratzeh l'ish riv'chaw b'od'chaw baderek ito pen-yasgir ot'chaw ish riv'chaw el-hashofet v'hashofet yasgir'chaw lashoter v'hawshlachtaw el-beyt hakele. awmen omer ani lawch lo tetze mishawm ad asher shilamtaw et-ha p'rutaw hawacharonaw. 

English:

Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.

The alliteration in v.25: shofet/shofet/shoter. It is also visible in Salkinson.

The alliteration in v. 26: the common Matthaean formula "awmen omer ani" (amen I say to you). Salkinson expresses this somewhat differently, losing the alliteration.

In the Shaprut Hebrew Matthew we have the following:

אז אמר יש“ו לתלמידיו ראה שתמהר לרצות שונאך בלכתך עמו בדרך פנ ימסור אותך לשופט וזה השופט ימסורך לעבד לתת אותך לבית הסוהר ׃

באמת אני אומר לך לא תצא משם עד תנתן פרוטה אחרונה ׃

v. 25: shofet/shofet only (because Shaprut has "servant" instead of "officer")

v. 26: The alliteration of the common Matthaean formula is lost, because the Shaprut text reads "in truth" in place of "amen."

The implications of all this are many. Alliteration is a common feature of Semitic literature, but it is generally lost in translation. I am convinced that the alliteration in v. 25 is integral to the composition of the verse. This implies that the verse was originally written in a Semitic language. The alternatives are Hebrew and Aramaic. But I have checked Syr-s, Syr-c, and the Peshitta, and the alliteration is not visible in those texts. So we are left with Hebrew, but what type of Hebrew? The alliteration is only partial in the Shaprut Hebrew Matthew, but it is fully visible in Delitzsch's strict Biblical Hebrew.

When I first read Delitzsch's translation, I felt that the use of Biblical Hebrew was an anachronism. So it may have been, but there would have been no better way to give dignity and gravitas to the text. My vote, therefore, now goes to Biblical Hebrew as the substratum language in Matthew.

The alliteration of the common Matthaean formula is also interesting. It is no doubt original in the text of Matthew, and we find it in all the best Greek and Latin manuscripts. It disappears in Luke, where it is customarily replaced by "verily," or some such word. Even the KJV and the RSV say "verily," "truly," or some such, instead of the original (and alliterative in Hebrew) "amen."

This also has implications for the Synoptic problem. For years I was a partisan of Markan priority, the hypothesized "Q Document," and the Two-Source Theory. It falls apart, though, when one looks at the many Minor Agreements (more on this in a later blog post), and forces us to ignore the statements of the early Church historians. If we resort to a Two-Gospel Theory, as did Augustine, Griesbach (the father of New Testament textual criticism), and, more recently Farrar did, we are consistent with nearly eighteen centuries of Church opinion. Still, though, there is the question of  Matthaean or Lukan priority. The evidence of the Hebrew substratum in Matthew, with all its literary devices, argues for Matthaean priority. We have, then, a Gospel of Matthew in Hebrew, written for the Jews, and a little later a Gospel of Luke, written for the Gentiles. Thus we see the alliterative "amen I say to you" changed by Luke to "truly," "verily," or simply "I say to you," to make the Gospel sound less Jewish, and for the same reason less insistence upon the Law.

Rabbi Yeshua, called by us Jesus, was a Jew, and his original audience was made up of Jews. To argue that the more Gentile gospel of Luke was the first and the "Jewish" features of Matthew were added later would be to stand history on its head.

(to be continued)

ᏡᎬᏗ (translation)

ᏡᎬᏗ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎠᎦᏘᏯᎯ ᎠᏓᏅᏙᏗ
ᎡᏆ-ᎡᎶᎯ ᎥᎿᎢ.
ᎢᏳᏃ ᎢᏧᎳ ᎠᏓᏍᏕᎸᏙᏎ ᏡᎬᏗᏁ,
ᏡᎬᏗ ᎠᏓᏍᏕᎸᏙᏎ ᎢᏧᎸ.


Trees are the guardian spirits of the world.
If we will protect trees,
trees will protect us.

Reading Matthew in Hebrew - VI

For many years I have been interested in the "synoptic problem" and in the Semitic substratum for which there is evidence (mostly in the form of wordplay and translation variants). For a long time I believed that this substratum was probably Aramaic, but I am now favoring Hebrew. This note is intended to explain this shift in my thinking.

A good example is Matthew 5:46-48. When one reads these verses in the Delitzsch translation into Biblical Hebrew, one is impressed by the amount of wordplay present, of a kind that is typical of Semitic texts, but not of translations of any sort. For example, "ahava" (love) is echoed by "achim" (brothers), and "shalom" (peace, health) is echoed in "shalem" (perfect, complete). This last example works in Hebrew, but not in Aramaic, where the word used for "perfect" is "gamir."

Burt these verses are interesting for another reason. Verse 47 has come down to us in a form that either says "Do not the publicans (tax collectors) also do this?" (the so-called Received, or Byzantine Text) or says "Do not the ethnikoi (gentiles, goyim) also do this?" (the best and most ancient Greek texts). This verse 47 is absolutely central to the wordplay, so it clearly is original. But should the reference be to tax collectors (who have already been mentioned in verse 46), or to the gentiles? The latter is suggested by the better texts. The clincher, though, comes from the omission of verse 47 in the oldest Old Syriac that we have (the Sinaitic Syriac) and in our oldest Old Latin (Bobiensis, known as "k").

This omission of verse 47 cannot have been an accident, occurring as it does in both the Syriac and the Old Latin textual traditions. It is likely that it was at some time felt that the verse would be offensive to the gentiles, who had become the major audience for Christianity. But later texts, such as the Peshitta and the Byzantine Greek texts, found an easier solution: they simply changed "gentiles" to "publicans," who had already been mentioned in the preceding verse. St. Jerome, to his credit, kept the word "ethnici" in the Vulgate.

The verse, in its original form, shows that the original audience for the Sermon on the Mount was the Jews. Its omission at a certain point in time, in two different manuscript streams, shows that that situation had changed.

The omission of verse 47 in Syr-s and in k also interests me for another reason. I have a Hebrew translation of Matthew that also omits the verse. It was published in the late fourteenth century, but is clearly older. It is the Hebrew Matthew of Shem Tob ibn Saprut. Other evidence makes it likely that it was translated either from the Old Syriac or from the Old Latin.

The wordplay in verse 48, dependent on the choice of the word "shalem" for "perfect," fortunately came out in Delitzsch's Hebrew translation (ca. 1877, with many later editions), but it did not come out in that of Salkinson (ca. 1885), who used the other common Hebrew word for "perfect," which is "tamim." It did not come out in Syriac (late, eastern Aramaic), either.

The three translations I've mentioned of Matthew back into the language in which the Sayings were probably written are all somewhat different, and they are all interesting. That of Shem Tob was made by Jews for polemical purposes and supports a theology that is different, to be sure, from that of Pauline Christianity. Salkinson's translation (completed for Acts after his death, by C. D. Ginsburg) is intentionally periphrastic, so may sound more natural in places. It was based on the great Codex Sinaiticus, one of the best available. I also love the fact that he used the word "goyim" for "ethnikoi." But Delitzsch's translation is, by far, my favorite. It is written in impeccable Biblical Hebrew which, although it may be an anachronism, is reassuring and makes it quite clear and easy to understand. It's greatest weakness is that, after the first edition, the British and Foreign Bible Society forced him to modify it to agree with the so-called Received Text if he wanted them to publish and distribute it. Reading Matthew in any of these translations is highly rewarding, revealing things about the Sayings (which for me are the teachings of Rabbi Yeshua) that would not be apparent in any other language.

Shem Tob's Hebrew MatthewSalkinson & Ginsburg Hebrew New TestamentDelitzsch Hebrew New Testament

ᏡᎬᏗ

ᏡᎬᏗ ᎨᏒᎠᏎ ᎠᎦᏘᏯᎯ ᎠᏓᏅᏙᏗ
ᎡᏆ-ᎡᎶᎯ ᎥᎿᎢ.
ᎢᏳᏃ ᎢᏧᎳ ᎠᏓᏍᏕᎸᏙᏎ ᏡᎬᏗᏁ,
ᏡᎬᏗ ᎠᏓᏍᏕᎸᏙᏎ ᎢᏧᎸ.