Wednesday, July 20, 2022

The "Our Father" and What It Can Tell Us about the Gospels - Part IV

While it is true that the retroversions into Hebrew by Salkinson and Delitzsch are very important, having brought to our attention a misreading in the Greek text (as is also the version in Jewish Aramaic), in many ways the key to this whole thing is the Hebrew Matthew published by Shem-Tob Ibn Shaprut in the fourteenth century. The Shem-Tob text is clearly older than canonical, Greek Matthew, and it has clarified the relationship between the texts of Matthew and Luke.

The "Our Father," in its trajectory through time, is like a microcosm of the whole "synoptic problem." By focusing on this beautiful and ancient prayer, we get a more manageable view of synoptic relationships.

The Shem-Tob text above translates to English as follows:

Our Father, may your name be sanctified;

may your kingdom be blessed; may your will be done in the heavens and on earth.

Give our bread continually,

Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us,

and do not lead us into the hands of temptation (literally, a trial), but keep us from all evil, amen.

All versions of the prayer say "may your name be sanctified." That is top-of-mind in Judaism, because of the enormous reverence and respect due to the Name. Some versions insert "who is in the heavens," but this one does not. Neither does Luke's shorter version of the Avinu, at Lk. 11:2-4. So far as I know, the reading "may your kingdom be blessed" is unique to Shem-Tob. I prefer it to "may your kingdom come," because, as we are told (Lk. 17:21), "the kingdom of God is in the midst of us." Also, we are told in the Gospel of Thomas that the kingdom of heaven is among us, but we do not see it.

Give our bread continually (or day by day) seems to be the earliest reading.

In Aramaic (and possibly also in Hebrew, I'm not sure) the same word means both "sin" and "debt," which explains the confusion in translations.

Both the Aramaic word "nesyuna" and the Hebrew word "nisayon" literally mean "a test" or "a trial." They can also figuratively mean "temptation," but it would not be my first thought if the one doing the leading was God. I believe the intended meaning is "do not bring us to trial," in other words, "do not judge us."

The phrase "the hands of" is a Hebrew idiom meaning "the power of." It is not present either in the canonical, Greek text or in the Latin of the Vulgate. It is interesting to note that both Salkinson and Delitzsch used the phrase in their Hebrew translations, because they knew that it belonged there. The Shem-Tob Hebrew Matthew does not look like a translation from any Western text, and it is not the same as any of them. Some of the features of the Shem-Tob text, including some that can be seen in both the "Our Father" and in the Beatitudes, clearly show it to be more primitive than the canonical, Greek text.

I believe the reading "shomrenu" ("keep/guard/protect us) is found only in Shem-Tob and related Hebrew texts (such as Du Tillet and Munster). It is one of my favorite features of the Shem-Tob text, since it is proactive rather than reactive.

But the Shem-Tob Hebrew Matthew is not merely attractive due to some of the features mentioned above (which are all to be found in a mere five verses). Its greatest value lies in its intermediate position between the canonical, Greek text and parallel verses in Luke. This intermediate position provides us with a window to the development of the Gospel of Matthew, and gives us hope to solve the "synoptic problem."

(to be continued)

Tuesday, July 19, 2022

The "Our Father" and What It Can Tell Us about the Gospels - Part III

אָבִינוּ יִתְקַדַשׁ שְׁמֶךָ

וְיִתְבָרֵךְ מַלְכוּתְךָ רְצוֹנְךָ יִהְיֶה עָשׂוּי

בַשָׁמַיִם וּבָאָרֶץ

וְתִתֵּן לַחְמֵנוּ תְּמִידִית

וּמְחוֹל לָנוּ חַטָֹּאתֵינוּ כַּאֲשֶׁר אֲנַחְנוּ

מוֹחֲלִים לַחוֹטִאים לָנוּ

וְאַל תְּבִיאֵנוּ לִידֵי נִסָיוֹן וְשָׁמְרֵינוּ

מִכָל רָע אָמֵן

The above is a pointed text of the Avinu (Our Father) in the Shem-Tob Hebrew Matthew, one of the treasures preserved for us by the Jewish rabbis (though they did it for polemical purposes).

Now we continue with the list of salient points begun in Part II of this article:

5) The Greek word "peirasmós" means "temptation." The Hebrew word "nisayon," while it CAN mean "temptation," literally means a test or trial. The Hebrew is saying, "do not bring us to a test," or "do not bring us to trial."

6) While the later (Matthew III in my terminology) Hebrew version said "deliver us from evil," the earlier Hebrew version (Matthew IIb, corresponding to the Shem-Tob text) had "keep us from all evil." I prefer the latter, because it is proactive rather than reactive, and it says all evil.

Returning to the Hebrew text at the top of the page (the Shem-Tob version of the Avinu), its pronunciation is approximately:

awveenoo yeetkadesh sh'mehchaw

v'yeetbawrech malchoot'chaw ratson'chaw yeehyeh awsooy

bashawmayeem oovawawrets

v'teeten lachmaynoo t'meedeet

oom'chol lawnoo chatawtaynoo

kaasher anachnoo mochaleem

lachoteem lawnoo

v'al t'veeyaynoo leey'dey neesawyon v'shawmraynoo

meekol rah awmayn

One thing that will be noticed right away is that this version does not say "sh'bashawmayeem (in the heavens)." Neither did Luke's terser version at Lk. 11:2-4.

(to be continued, perhaps)

The image above is from a page of my notebooks, the page on which I added vowel pointing to the unpointed Shem-Tob text of the Avinu.

Monday, July 18, 2022

The "Our Father" and What It Can Tell Us about the Gospels - Part II

The image above is a modification of one that I found on the internet, and I do not own any rights in it. It contains a descendant of the oldest Hebrew text of the Avinu ("Our Father") that we have, It corresponds to my Matthew IIb, and is from a text similar to that of Shem Tob's Hebrew Matthew, also preserved for us by the Jewish Rabbis. It is here written in Dead Sea Scrolls script, which is much the way it would have been written in the time of Rabbi Yeshua (Jesus).

In concluding Part I of this article, I indicated that there was much more that could be said on this subject. Indeed, there is, and I'll try to say it, or at least some of it, in this part.

Some of what remains to be said concerns the Aramaic version of this prayer, known as the "Abun," "Abwoon," or "Awoon," depending upon the dialect. It is important to remember, though, that Jewish Aramaic and Christian Aramaic (Syriac) are rather different. It is quite misleading to call Syriac (the language that Jesus spoke," as is often done by speakers and proponents of that language. Jesus (Rabbi Yeshua) was a Jew, and it is therefore logical to assume that he spoke Jewish Aramaic. It is also a fact that the Peshitta, the official Syriac text of the Bible, has been intentionally modified to bring it into closer harmony with the Greek textual tradition. In fact, an effort was made to suppress and destroy all earlier Biblical texts in Syriac. As usual though, they couldn't quite get all of them, and a couple of texts (Syr-s and Syr-c) did survive, and were rediscovered in the late nineteenth century. For the purposes of this article, the relevant version is the version in standard Jewish Aramaic, covered in the previous part.

Some of the salient points are these:

1) The Aramaic version is the oldest. As a poet, I am certain that it is original and not a translation, since it employs literary devices such as rhyme and plays on words. It also reveals a structure that was partially lost in all succeeding versions.

2) The Aramaic version makes clear several points that were doubtful. For example, we needn't worry about whether "sins" or "debts" is correct: it should simply depend on the context, because in Aramaic the same word has both meanings.

3) What in Greek was "daily bread" was "our bread, which is from the earth" (give it to us day by day). This is part of an internal structure of the prayer, which contrasts the heavenly kingdom with life here on earth. The idiom used for "day by day" is literally "today and tomorrow," which is why St. Jerome, who apparently didn't know much Aramaic, thought the sense was "give us our bread of the morrow today."

4)The Aramaic original was translated into Hebrew in at least two different versions. In the earlier (Matthew IIb) one, the last line read "keep us (shomrenu) from all evil." But a later Hebrew version (Matthew III) read "deliver us (hatsilenu) from evil." It was from this later, fuller Hebrew text that our Greek Matthew was translated. This is proven by a misreading in the Greek text, a confusion between two very similar-appearing Hebrew words: hatsilenu "deliver us" and chaltsenu "draw us." The word that appears in our Greek text, "rhusai" is a translation of the latter, not the former.

(to be continued)

Sunday, July 17, 2022

The "Our Father" and What It Can Tell Us about the Gospels

The above image (which is a modification of one that I found on the internet, and I do not own any rights to it) contains the "Our Father" in standard Jewish Aramaic. It is written in Dead Sea Scrolls script, which is approximately the way it would have been written in the time of Rabbi Yeshua (Jesus).

I've written previously on this subject (see entries published in this blog on 30 May 2019, 24 July 2019, and 3,4,5 July 2020.

The "Our Father" ("Avinu" in Hebrew, "Abun" in Aramaic) is an ancient prayer, and it would have been first taught in Jewish Aramaic, not in Syriac. The prayer in the image above would sound like this:

Abbun d'bishmayya

yitkadesh sh'makh

titey malkhutakh

tihey re'utakh

heykhma d'bishmayya,

keyn af be'ar'a.

lachman d'me'ar'a

hab lan yoma deyn umachra.

ushbaq lan chobayn,

heykm d'af sh'baqnan l'chayyabayn.

ve al ta'eylan l'nisayuna,

ela atseylan min bisha.

This translates to:

Our Father in the heavens,

may your name be sanctified,

may your kingdom come,

may your will be done

as in the heavens

so also on earth.

Our bread, which is from the earth,

give us day by day.

Forgive us our sins,

as we also forgive those indebted to us.

And do not bring us to trial,

but deliver us from evil.

I am certain that this is the most original version that we have. It incorporates rhyme, which is an aid to memorization, as well as at least one play on words, a common feature of Semitic literature, and this one (ta'eylan/atseylan) works only in Aramaic.

At this point, I think I need to back up a bit. I was recently reading a Hebrew translation of this prayer (that of Salkinson). I compared the last line to the last line in Delitzsch's Hebrew translation, and I noticed a strange thing: where Salkinson had "hatsilenu," Delitzsch had "chaltsenu." What was going on here? Had Delitzsch made a mistake? Was he dyslexic?

What happened was this: Salkinson translated according to the well-known meaning, "deliver," and he used exactly the right Hebrew word (which happens also to be cognate with "atseylan" in Jewish Aramaic, so we know it's correct). Delitzsch, on the other hand, had slavishly followed the Greek, which is based on a confusion of two similar-appearing Hebrew words (hatsilenu הצילנו and chaltsenu חלצנו).

The word in the canonical, Greek text of Matthew is "rhusai" (from Strong #4506, rhuomai), a Greek word meaning "to draw off," here taken to mean "rescue" or "deliver." This word is based on a misreading of "hatsilenu" as "chaltsenu" in an unpointed Hebrew manuscript. The meaning of the second verb is, in fact, "to draw off." By following the Greek text so literally, Delitzsch reproduced the original error of the translator into Greek (or of a Hebrew copyist, it makes no difference), and thus brought the error, unnoticed for almost 2000 years, to our attention.

I consider this to be strong evidence, and perhaps even sufficient proof, that our canonical, Greek Matthew was translated into Greek from a Hebrew manuscript.

There is more that could be said about this prayer and what it can tell us. Let me know if you are interested. If so, I'll continue this article.

Donald Traxler's Poetry