The Layers of Matthew - X

אבינו יתקדש שמך ויתברך מלכותך רצונך יהיה עשוי בשמים ובארץ ׃

ותתן לחמנו תמידית ׃

ומחול לנו חטאתינו כאשר אנחנו מוחלים לחוטאים לנו

ואל תביאנו לידי נסיון ושמרינו מכל רע אמן ׃

Avinu yitkadash shmekha v'yitbarak malkhutekha ritzonkha yihyeh osuy bashamayim uvaaretz.

V'titen lechmenu tamidit.

Umachol lanu cheteteynu kaasher anachnu mochlim lachoteyim lanu.

V'al t'viyenu liydey nisayon v'shamreynu mekol ra ameyn.


Our Father, may your name be sanctified,

and may your kingdom be blessed.

May your will be done

in the heavens and on earth.

Give us our daily bread.

Forgive us our sins,

as we forgive

those who sin against us.

And do not lead us into

the power of temptation,

but keep us from all evil.

Amen.



The above is from Hebrew Matthew, as preserved for us by Shem-tob ben-Isaac ben-Shaprut. It is arguably the oldest form of the Our Father, or Avinu, that has come down to us. I also think it is the most beautiful. May it be a blessing to us all.

I'm pleased to announce that this blog has now passed the milestone of 49,000 visits. Of course, it's no longer all poetry, as I've been concentrating lately on expository writing. The prime example of this is my series "The Layers of Matthew," currently in nine parts.

I like to take material that is inherently complex and technical, and make it comprehensible to non-specialists. Hopefully, some specialists will still be able to relate. What I really like, though, is to publish content, no matter what the genre, that reminds us where we have come from, and that we are all sisters and brothers. May this series, and other writings to come, do just that.

Thank you all for your interest and encouragement.

The Layers of Matthew - IX

We go next to Matthew VI:9, which is parallel to Luke XI:2, The Our Father/Pater Noster/Avinu. This is not the first time I've written about this prayer. Here's what I wrote four years ago, before I had come to my "Layered Matthew Hypothesis," and therefore also before I really understood the textual relationship between Matthew and Luke:

Some claim that the Pater Noster is taken from the third, fifth, sixth, ninth, and fifteenth blessings of the Amidah, or Shemoneh Esrei, the central prayer of the synagogue liturgy, which is recited by observant Jews three times a day. Certainly there are similarities. I have seen it claimed that Rabbi Yeshua was not the only itinerant Rabbi who taught a "boiled-down" version of the Amidah at that time. I'll take no position on these claims, since I haven't had time to research them. What I will say is that the Pater Noster (let's start calling it the Avinu) is very, very striking in Hebrew.

Avinu shebashamayim yitkadash shmecha

"Yitkadash shmecha." Let Your name be made holy. Because from this blessing all the others will flow. A world in which the Name is revered and respected, will be a world in which all Life is revered and respected, and in which we respect each other. It is a path to a better world.

Tavo malchutecha

May your kingdom come. (Replacing the rule of unethical imposters and usurpers who poison our existence because of their greed and lust for power.)

Yeaseh ritzoncha kmo bashamayim ken baaretz

May your will be done as in the heavens, so also on the earth.

Et-lechem chuqenu ten-lanu hayom

Give us this day our daily bread

Us'lach-lanu et-chovotenu kaasher salachnu gam-anachnu l'chayavenu

Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors

V'al-t'viyenu liydey nisayon kiy im-chaltzenu min-hara'

And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil,

[Kiy l'cha hamamlakhah v'hag'vurah v'hatipheret l'ol'mey olamiym] amen

[for Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.] Amen.

That is well and good, but we are now in a position to determine the original form of the prayer, as taught by Rabbi Yeshua.

As George Howard points out on p. 202 of Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, the Shaprut Hebrew Matthew and the oldest and best manuscripts of Luke agree that "who art in heaven" was not originally part of the prayer, According to my hypothesis, Luke used an early form of Matthew (Matthew I), which was probably written in Hebrew, for the sayings portion of his Gospel. Thus, although Matthew I has not survived, it is reflected in Luke. The Shaprut Hebrew Matthew reflects Matthew II, an intermediate form of Matthew. So, if we want to see the original form of the Lord's Prayer, or Avinu, the best that we can do is to go to Luke XI:2. In the RSV, it goes like this:

Father, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come.

Give us each day our daily bread;

and forgive us our sins,

for we ourselves forgive everyone

who is indebted to us.

and lead us not into temptation.

Here is how it sounds in Hebrew, in the Salkinson translation:

avinu yitkadash shmecha

tavo malchutecha

ten-lanu lechem chukenu yom b'yomo.

us'lach lanu et-ashmoteynu 

ki gam-anachnu solchim l'kol-asher

asham lanu

v'al-t'viyenu liy'dey nisayon.

And here's how it looks in Hebrew, in the form given in the Shaprut Hebrew Matthew, reflecting Matthew II, which is still older than canonical Matthew (Matthew III): 

אבינו יתקדש שמך ויתברך מלכותך רצונך יהיה עשוי בשמיםובארץ ׃

ותתן לחמנו תמידית ׃

ומחול לנו חטאתינו כאשר אנחנו מוחלים לחוטאים לנו

ואל תביאנו לידי נסיון ושמרינו מכל רע אמן ׃

The best texts of Luke just say "Father," but here we are back to "Our Father," which is also how Salkinson translated the Luke. Other than that, the main difference between this and Luke is that it says "may your name be sanctified; may your kingdom be blessed." This makes for a more beautiful parallelism. I prefer it for this reason, and also because, as we are told in the Gospel of Thomas, the kingdom of heaven is already among us.

(to be continued)

The Layers of Matthew - VIII

Now we are getting into dangerous territory. I can proceed, with trepidation, or I can let the matter drop. I could go either way, but earlier I described myself as a lover of truth, which lays a certain burden on me. I elect to proceed, but with caution.

We have just seen how, in Matthew VII:6, the manuscripts of the Greek textual tradition read "that which is holy," where the newfound Hebrew textual tradition has "holy flesh." This was explained as being either a translation variant (Hebrew "asher kodesh" instead of the similar-appearing "bashar kodesh"), or a copyists error in transmission. There is no support that I know of in the Greek textual tradition for the reading "holy flesh." George Howard only included seven manuscripts in his apparatus, having examined nine, and we now know that the Shaprut Hebrew Matthew has survived in at least twenty-eight manuscripts. There is a lot more work to be done, but based only on Howard's apparatus, I can say that there is no support in the Hebrew textual tradition for the reading "that which." Since those seven manuscripts are not very closely allied, I would have to venture that "bashar" (flesh) is original and not a copyist's error. There is also a principle in textual criticism by which the "more difficult" reading is likely to be the correct one. I would say that "flesh" is the more difficult reading of the two. Also, dogs/pigs forms a parallelism, so important in Semitic literature, and the parallelism is more balanced and more perfect if both members reference something concrete rather than an abstraction such as "that which."

Does it matter? I think it does, and greatly. What could "do not give holy flesh to the dogs" mean? To a Jew of Rabbi Yeshua's time, it could easily be a statement against mixed marriage. We already know, from the episode of the Canaanite Woman" (Mt. XV:22-28) that at that time it was a commonplace to call the Gentiles "dogs," and it was a usage that even the Canaanite woman understood, and she replied in kind.

But wouldn't it be racism for the Jews of that time to consider themselves "holy flesh?" Not necessarily. They would have considered themselves holy if they kept the religious law, the Torah, and honored the Covenant they had made with God.

Similarly the pearls/swine part could be a warning against efforts to convert the Gentiles, because they might "turn against you and rend you." Is this not, in fact, what actually happened? Rabbi Yeshua was prescient.

The deeper we go into our study of Hebrew Matthew, the more we realize that the Gospel of Matthew was originally written for the Jews. But Paul, who had other ambitions, needed to make it more palatable to the Gentiles, which is where Luke came in.

In light of the foregoing, the claim that the Gospels were originally written in Greek and that there was no Hebrew substratum seems disingenuous, to say the least.

(to be continued)

The Layers of Matthew - VII

B. H. Streeter's book, The Four Gospels, first published in 1925, was so influential that it had, by 1964, gone through one revision and eleven impressions. Its influence, though, began to wane after 1960, as people increasingly saw the weaknesses of its hypothesis, which involved Markan priority and a hypothetical "Q" (Quelle) document. It could not, for example, explain what Streeter called the Minor Agreements (those places in the Triple Tradition where Matthew and Luke agreed with each other, sometimes to the exact wording, against Mark). Although Streeter tried to minimize their importance, the "Minor Agreements" were not minor at all.

It is, however, a fascinating book. On this lazy, Sunday morning I picked it up and looked for index references to Aramaic substratum, Hebrew substratum, or Semitic substratum. Not finding them, I looked for C. C. Torrey, who had believed i an Aramaic substratum in the Gospels, and the name index led me to p. 266, where I found this: "Professor C. C. Torrey argues on linguistic grounds the Lk. i.-ii. must have been translated, not merely from a Semitic language, but from Hebrew as distinct from Aramaic." This is quite a statement from Torrey, who believed the substratum was Aramaic, but it fits in perfectly with my "Layered Matthew" hypothesis, and in fact with any Hebrew substratum theory. I've looked at many examples of Semitic puns and other wordplay in Matthew. Most would have worked in either Aramaic or Hebrew, but in the cases where only one of those languages worked, it was usually Hebrew. Scholarly opinion, though, represented by such as Torrey and Matthew Black, favored Aramaic.

The Hebrew/Aramaic question is an example of how academic orthodoxy becomes dogma. Most Christian scholars believed that Hebrew had already become a "dead language" by the first century. So they thought that the substratum, if there was one, HAD to be in Aramaic.  But any writing destined to take its place alongside the other "holy books" would have to be first written in "the holy language." Nor had Hebrew completely died. Texts were still being written in both Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew, a situation that lasted into the Medieval period, and also in a mixture of Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew, as in the case of the Shaprut Hebrew Matthew. What is Mishnaic Hebrew? It is a rabbinical form of Hebrew, the language of the Mishnah, and the ancestor of Modern Hebrew. Nevertheless, it became academic dogma that Aramaic was the more likely language. I've noticed a shift of position on this in recent years, and my own small research has also led me to favor Hebrew.

While we're on the subject of academic dogma, I'd like to mention another one: the idea that the Gospels were originally written in Greek. This position is the dominant one, in spite of a mountain of contrary evidence, and it is commonly stated without even offering any evidence. Or perhaps the "Peter/rock" pun (Mt. XVI:18), which works in Greek, will be mentioned. But that verse contains a different pun in Hebrew, that between "even" ("stone") and "evneh" (I will build),  as George Howard points out on p. 185. So much for academic dogma.

But I am not going to write about dogmatic positions, or the first chapters of either Matthew or Luke right now. I need to maintain a tight focus, specifically on the "Sermon on the Mount." With that in mind, I'll go to the case of Matthew VII:6. This was mentioned by George Howard on page 184.

Canonical Matthew: "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn again and rend you." The play on words is between "swine" (חזיר) and "turn" (יחזר). You would not see this wordplay in either the Hebrew of Delitzsch or that of Salkinson, because they used different words. You do see it, though in the Shaprut Hebrew Matthew, which is presumably closer to the original language. Clearly, one cannot just go through and mechanically check everything in a modern translation, even if written in Biblical Hebrew. We must check everything against Shaprut, too.

This passage also contains a translation variant or scribal error, as mentioned by Howard on p. 226. Canonical Mt. says "that which is holy," while the Shaprut Hebrew Matthew has "holy flesh." "That which"  = "אשר" while "flesh" = "בשר" and the two Hebrew words can be easily confused either when translating a text or when copying a manuscript. So which is it? We just don't know.

(to be continued)

The Layers of Matthew - VI

A review of the evidence so far suggests that Luke got his sayings material from an early form of Matthew (Matthew I), in which the list of Beatitudes was minimal and individual sayings and parables had not yet been "sermonized."

We know that an intermediate form of Matthew (Matthew II), in which the "sermonizing" had already taken place (leaving, however, telltale introductory formulas indicating that the sayings and parables had once been separate), and containing a somewhat fuller but still far from complete list of the Beatitudes, once existed. We know this because such a text underlies the Hebrew Matthew given by Shem-Tob ben-Isaac ben-Shaprut in his fourteenth-century polemical work Even Bohan.

In the latest version of Matthew (canonical Matthew, which I call Matthew III), The "sermonizing" has been done and the telltale introductory formulas edited out. The list of the Beatitudes is complete,

Our evidence for Matthew I is the Gospel of Luke.

Our evidence for Matthew II is the Shem-Tob Hebrew Matthew, which survives in at least twenty-eight manuscripts.

The existence of Matthew III is self-evident.

There are, thus, no hypothetical sources required in this solution of the "Synoptic Problem."

The above evidence does, however, require that we make a slight change to our diagrammatic representation of this hypothesis. Here is the new diagram:

(to be continued)

The Layers of Matthew - V

We have seen evidence suggesting that the Hebrew Matthew contained in Shem-Tob ben-Isaac ben-Shaprut's fourteenth-century polemical work Even Bohan is likely to be based on a very old Hebrew Matthew, older than the canonical Matthew of the Greek textual tradition. This is astounding news, since it had long been assumed that no such text had survived, if indeed it had ever existed.

Much work remains to be done, and I am sure that many, in addition to Professor George Howard, have begun the work already, although I am not yet in contact with any of them. I will focus my own study on the "Sermon on the Mount," contained in canonical Matthew, chapters V-VII. I will look at canonical Matthew, canonical Luke, the Shaprut Hebrew Matthew, and probably also the Gospel of Thomas. So far as possible, I will follow the Deuteronomic principle that two witnesses are required to establish a truth, only departing from this when suggested by internal linguistic evidence or known socio-political factors. I will not be guided by any preconceived theology, or any religious or institutional loyalties.

We can say at the outset that the "Sermon on the Mount" is a creation of Matthew, on the basis of sayings and parables that he had earlier collected. The evidence of this is plain to see in the Shaprut Hebrew Matthew, where introductory phrases such as "At that time Jesus said to his disciples" (e.g. Mt. V:13) are often still present, though by the time of canonical Matthew (Matthew III in my scenario) they had been edited out in order to present a smoother, continuous "sermon." This extraordinary evidence for the antiquity of the Shaprut Hebrew Matthew was dealt with by George Howard on pages 200 and 201 of Hebrew Gospel of Matthew.

Howard found sixteen of these introductory phrases in chapters V-VII of the Shaprut Hebrew Matthew, at these locations:

V:13-16

V:17-19

V:20-24

V:25-26

V:27-30

V:31-42

V:43-VI:1

VI:2-4

VI:5-15

VI:16-18

VI:19-23

VI:24-VII:5

VII:6-12

VII:13-14

VII:15-23

7:24-29

Howard says, on p. 200, "When the sayings in Luke are placed alongside their parallels in the Hebrew text of Matthew 5-7, a pattern emerges. Every time the Hebrew is interrupted by the words "Jesus said to his disciples" or "He said to them," Luke, without exception, jumps to a different place in his Gospel, or has a void." In the Shaprut Hebrew Matthew we actually get a glimpse of Matthew's redaction process.

Luke used a version of Matthew in which these sayings and parables had not yet been collected into "the Sermon on the Mount," and the list of Beatitudes was minimal (possibly what I have labelled as Matthew I). But the Shaprut Hebrew Matthew is based on a version of Matthew in which this material HAD been collected into a continuous sermon, and the telltale introductory formulas are still there. Furthermore, the list of Beatitudes in the text on which the Shaprut Hebrew Matthew was based is only slightly fuller than the list reflected in Luke, but still far from the complete list in canonical Matthew, so possibly fits my label "Matthew II." The text of Matthew used by Luke and the one on which the Shaprut Hebrew Matthew is based were not the same, but both of these forms of Matthew were older than canonical Matthew.

(to be continued)