LandonWillis

Category: Aramaic

  • What Is The Peshitta/Syriac?

    In the footnotes to some Bibles, you’ll find references to the “Syriac Text” of the Old Testament.

    Well, what is that?

    The “Syriac Text” typically refers to something called the Peshitta (more on that later). However, “Syriac” can be more general than that.

    Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac

    So, the Old Testament was written almost entirely in Hebrew. But, a few sections were actually written in a language called Aramaic. Hebrew and Aramaic are very similar languages. Think of how Spanish and Italian are similar to each other because they both come from Latin.

    Now, Aramaic was originally the language of the Aramaeans, who were from the country of Aram. The Old Testament talks about these guys a lot.

    Aram was located in what we now call Syria. After the Assyrians conquered Aram, the region began to be known as Syria.

    Once the Assyrians controlled this area though, Aramaic, the language of Aram, began to spread as a common language throughout the Middle East.

    By the time of Jesus it seems that Hebrew was mainly reserved for religious speeches and writings, while Aramaic was the language of the everyday man. So, the main language of Jesus’ day was Aramaic.

    Great. Simple so far.

    Now, what about Syriac?

    Well, Syriac was a dialect of Aramaic that the people in Syria spoke. Think about how the English spoken in Australia is different from in Britain is different from in the United States. We all speak English, just different dialects of English.

    This just means that the people up in Syria were speaking Aramaic slightly differently than the people down in Judea (the dialect in Judea we call “Palestinian Aramaic”). For some reason, scholars decided to make this into a big deal.

    So, remember. Hebrew and Aramaic are similar but different languages (like Italian and Spanish). Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic (like Australian English versus British English).

    Syriac Translations

    Old Testament

    Syriac only started to be a really recognizable dialect by around the time of Jesus in the First Century. However, at some point in either the First or Second Century, some people who spoke Syriac began to translate the Old Testament from Hebrew into Syriac.

    Most scholars agree that these translations started in the city of Edessa, just north of modern Syria. Specifically, many scholars think that Jewish converts to Christianity made the translations (scholars have done some fancy analysis of different handwriting styles to make that guess; it’s not important, just roll with it).

    So, at some point in the first couple centuries, some Christians in Edessa probably made translations of the Old Testament from Hebrew to Syriac. This would make it easier for everyone to learn from the Scriptures in their own language, so that’s good.

    New Testament

    But, around the same time, translations of the New Testament from Greek to Syriac also began to be made. The earliest specific translation we know of is something called “Tatian’s Diatessaron”.

    Diatessaron comes from a Greek word meaning “out of four”. Basically, Tatian took the four Gospels (all originally written in Greek), Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and he lined up their timing to make one, single Gospel. So, this Diatessaron, made “out of four” Gospels, would show the story of the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ in a single, clear narrative. I don’t know why Tatian did this. Maybe he just wanted to have the Gospel all in a single story, instead of having to refer to four different Gospels that say the same thing in different ways.

    But, the important thing for us is that Tatian wrote his Diatessaron in Syriac around the year 170 AD. This is the earliest translation of the New Testament to another language that we know of (there might have been some other earlier translations; we just don’t know of any specific examples).

    We also don’t technically have any copies left of the Diatessaron in Syriac. They were all lost or destroyed over time. The best we’ve got are some later translations of it to other languages.

    Either way, this kicks off our records of translations of the New Testament to Syriac. We have two more manuscripts (rediscovered in the 1800s) which show translations of the Gospels into Syriac from around the 200s or 300s AD. These two documents do contain parts of all four distinct Gospels, not just Tatian’s combined telling of the Gospel story.

    Vetus Syra

    So, we’ve talked about translations of the Old Testament to Syriac, Tatian’s Diatessaron, and two more translations of the four Gospels dating from around the 200s or 300s.

    Collectively, we refer to all of these old Syriac translations as “the Old Syriac” (man, wouldn’t you love it if everything was that simple?). Now, some scholars also call these translations the “Vetus Syra”. Vetus Syra is just “Old Syriac” in Latin. Latin was the language of scholars for a long time, so that name just kind of stuck.

    Peshitta

    Alright, so that leads us into the big point of this article: the Peshitta.

    At some point, probably in the late 300s or early 400s, some scholars decided that they needed a new translation of the Bible in Syriac. The older translations might have been poor quality, or the scholars might have just wanted to make a standardized translation in Syriac that everyone could agree on.

    Either way, by the 400s AD, there was a new, standardized translation of the whole Bible into Syriac. Well, technically not the whole Bible. These Syriac-speaking Christians did not use the Books of 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, and Revelation. But, they did make a translation of the whole Old Testament and the 22 remaining books of the New Testament.

    When talking about this standardized translation, scholars always focus on one man: Rabbula, Bishop of Edessa. This guy, Rabbula, did not like Tatian’s Diatessaron one bit. He ordered that all the churches throughout the region get rid of the Diatessaron and replace it with the four Gospels.

    It seems that, to go along with this, Rabbula either ordered for the new standardized translation to be made, or he actually made the translation himself. However, many scholars think that work on the translation was already started some time in the 300s.

    But, What Does Peshitta Mean?

    This new, standardized translation to Syriac had a couple special things about it.

    First, it was written in pretty simple to understand language and was a very well known, common translation among Syriac speakers.

    Second, it wasn’t any sort of study Bible. Even after this standardized translation was made, there were still some other translations made into Syriac. One of them was the Syro-Hexapla (more on that another day), which used loads of marks and footnotes, like our modern Bibles, to show where translations could be different. This standardized text, however, was very simple; it had none of these markings or footnotes.

    So, for one reason or another, scholars began to call this translation the “simple version” or the “common version”. And that’s what the word Peshitta means in Syriac, “simple” or “common”.

    The first record we have of people calling this the Peshitta is from around the late 800s AD.

    Also, this isn’t the only translation of the Bible to be called “simple” or “common”. In Latin, the term Vulgata also means “common”. That’s why we call the Latin Bible the “Vulgate”.

    So, What?

    Alright, so that’s all really interesting (right? this is just fascinating, isn’t it?). But, why does it matter?

    Well you see, the oldest complete copy of the Old Testament we have in Hebrew dates from 1008 AD. That’s really, really late compared to when the Old Testament was written.

    But remember, Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic. And Aramaic is very similar to Hebrew. So, by looking at the older Syriac translations of the Old Testament, we can confirm that the Bible has been copied and translated correctly over the millennia.

    Our oldest Syriac translations of the Old Testament are from around the 400s and 500s, and our oldest complete copy is from the 600s. Using the Peshitta, modern translators can make sure that they translate what the Bible originally said, even if some later scribes accidentally copied down the wrong word here or there.

    Translators use this same idea with other old translations of the Bible, like the Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate. But, since Syriac is so similar to Hebrew, we can get an even more precise understanding of certain passages by using the Peshitta.

    Other Notes

    There’s one other thing I wanted to mention just because I thought it’s kind of funny.

    In the New Testament, there are a few sections where the authors explain that Jesus said this or that Aramaic phrase (like on the cross, when he says Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?, meaning “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).

    But, in the Peshitta, it doesn’t explain these phrases… because the Peshitta is written in Aramaic for Aramaic speakers. It wouldn’t make any sense to explain the term.

    If the Peshitta did explain these terms, it would be like me saying to you “This is a dog. Dog is the English word for dog.”

    I just found that little detail funny.

    Summary

    Alright, so we looked at how Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic. In the first couple centuries AD, some people (probably Christians in the city of Edessa) translated much of the Old and New Testaments into Syriac. Then, in the 400s, the Peshitta translation became the most popular, standardized version of the Syriac Bible. Peshitta is just the Syriac word for “simple”.

    I hope that helps make things clear.

  • What Does Akeldama Mean?

    In Acts 1:18-19, we read:

    18 (With the payment he received for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out. 19 Everyone in Jerusalem heard about this, so they called that field in their language Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood.)

    However, before we dive into that word, Akeldama, we have to look at how Matthew records the death of Judas. This is the only other place in the Bible that describes Judas’ death and this “Field of Blood”.

    We see in Matthew 27:3-8

    3 When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. 4 “I have sinned,” he said, “for I have betrayed innocent blood”…

    5 So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.

    6 The chief priests picked up the coins and said, “It is against the law to put this into the treasury, since it is blood money.” 7 So they decided to use the money to buy the potter’s field as a burial place for foreigners. 8 That is why it has been called the Field of Blood to this day.

    So, both Matthew and Acts are clearly telling the same story, but they both only give a few sentences of information. Because of this, the two stories don’t clearly line up. There are multiple explanations for the exact timing of events because these are both just short summaries.

    I don’t care to get into the exact arguments for the order of events with Judas’ death right now, but just know there are a handful of them. For example, many people think he probably hanged himself and then his corpse eventually rotted and fell to the ground, “bursting open” his body.

    Anyhow, let’s focus on this word Akeldama. As Acts 1:19 tells us, the people of Jerusalem called this field Akeldama “in their language”.

    Which language is that? Aramaic. Aramaic is a language very similar to Hebrew.

    Akeldama is from two words in Aramaic which together make the phrase “Field of Blood”.

    Acts 1:19 actually gives us the Aramaic word before then giving the translation in Greek (because, remember, the New Testament was written in Greek).

    Matthew just gives the translation “Field of Blood”.

    There’s a lot of history and archaeology that goes along with the Akeldama, and there is even a pretty popular guess as to where the field is located today.

    But, overall, the word Akeldama is Aramaic for “Field of Blood” and is the name given to the field where Judas killed himself.

  • Gilead: The Witness Heap

    When reading through the Bible, have you ever noticed how it just lists off the origins of all sorts of words? Often, we can’t make sense of the explanation without looking at the footnotes. And so, we commonly pass over these things without a second thought. But the history behind the words is fascinating and gives us something to think back on whenever we see that word elsewhere in the Bible.

    One great and detailed example is “Gilead”.

    In Genesis 31:43-49, we read about how Jacob and Laban made peace with each other after Jacob had fled from Laban:

    43 Laban answered Jacob, “The women are my daughters, the children are my children, and the flocks are my flocks. All you see is mine. Yet what can I do today about these daughters of mine, or about the children they have borne?44 Come now, let’s make a covenant, you and I, and let it serve as a witness between us.”

    45 So Jacob took a stone and set it up as a pillar. 46 He said to his relatives, “Gather some stones.” So they took stones and piled them in a heap, and they ate there by the heap. 47 Laban called it Jegar Sahadutha, and Jacob called it Galeed.

    48 Laban said, “This heap is a witness between you and me today.” That is why it was called Galeed. 49 It was also called Mizpah, because he said, “May the Lord keep watch between you and me when we are away from each other…”

    So, before anything else, the obvious. “Gilead” does not appear in this passage. And that’s true… sort of.

    Back in Genesis 31:23, we learn that this encounter takes place in “the hill country of Gilead”. But, remember, the Book of Genesis probably wasn’t written down until several centuries after this event. So, by the time that it was written down, it appears that the Hebrew pronunciation of the word had changed. Originally, the place was called “Galeed”, but after a few centuries of the language naturally changing, people started pronouncing it as something more along the lines of “Gilead”. And that’s why Genesis tells us that the place is Gilead and then goes on to tell us that they named it Galeed.

    Galeed/Gilead

    Alright, so now that we’ve figured out why this place is called both Galeed and Gilead, we can look at why it’s called these names in the first place.

    The Hebrew word gal means “heap” or “mound”. And the word ‛êd means “witness” or “testimony”. So, Jacob and Laban did indeed name the place after the pillar they set up as a covenant. Or, in other words, they made a heap of rocks to memorialize witness towards the peace they reached with each other.

    Jegar Sahadutha

    So, why on earth did Laban call this place Jegar Sahadutha?

    Well, that’s just Aramaic for “witness heap”, so it’s just a translation of Galeed/Gilead from Hebrew to Aramaic. Maybe Aramaic was the language that Laban was more familiar with?

    Mizpah

    But guess what! There’s another other other name for this place!

    As we see in verse 49, the place was also called Mizpah.

    Mizpah is Hebrew for “watchtower” (which lines up with what Laban says, also in verse 49). Mizpah is an interesting word used throughout The Old Testament for several different place names.

    Gilead, The Man

    To throw just one more wrench into this fascinating word, we can look at Numbers 26:29. Here, we learn that a man named Gilead was a great-great grandson of Jacob.

    Specifically, he was the grandson of Manasseh, who is the patriarch of the tribe of Manasseh.

    We also see a reference to the “Gileadite clan”. Thanks to this and the fact that the half tribe of Manasseh on the east of the Jordan controlled Gilead, it seems that the man Gilead was perhaps in some way named for this region. And, it was his descendants, the Gileadites, who would control the region as a clan in the half tribe of Manasseh.

    That last paragraph might not be entirely correct, but from what I’ve read, that seems to most likely be the case.

    Gal’azu

    During the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, the Assyrians of course took the region of Gilead.

    When they did so, they also renamed it to the province of Gal’azu.

    Conclusion

    And so, we have seen that the word Gilead is a direct reference to a certain heap of rocks meant to bear witness to a covenant.

    It’s sometimes so easy to just pass over these etymologies that we see in Hebrew. But they are often fascinating and can serve to give us a greater understanding of what the word really means.

  • Word of The Week No 9: Hosanna

    We only see the word “Hosanna” in two places in our English translations of the Bible, Mark 11:9-10 and Matthew 21:9,15.

    These examples both happen during Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Here are all the verses where we can find “Hosanna”:

    Mark 11:9-10: 9 Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted,

    “Hosanna!”

    “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

    10 “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!”

    “Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

    Matthew 21:9: 9 The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted,

    “Hosanna to the Son of David!”

    “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

    “Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

    And Matthew 21:15 15 But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple courts, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they were indignant.

    So, what on earth does “Hosanna” mean?

    Well, the word in the original Greek manuscripts is hosanna, which is just a transliteration of hosha’na, which is either a Hebrew word or an Aramaic word.

    Either way, this word, hosha’na, seems to be a contraction of the Hebrew word hoshi’ah-nna. And this word, hoshi’ah-nna, does appear in other parts of the Bible, specifically in Psalm 118:25.

    In Psalm 118:25-26, we read: 25 Lord, save us!
        Lord, grant us success!

    26 Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

    That first phrase, “Lord, save us!” (also translated as “Save, we pray”), is the Hebrew word hoshi’ah-nna. When this got shortened down to hosha’na, it started to be used by Jews as a common part of a hymn/prayer.

    And over time the word began to mean not just “Save us” but something more along the lines of “Honor to the one who saves”. This explains why the crowds were shouting Hosanna as a shout of praise. The crowds meant “Honor to the Savior” and “Honor to the Messiah” when they were shouting out Hosanna.

    Plus, as an interesting connection, Jesus’ Aramaic/Hebrew name was Yehoshua, which translates as “The Lord is Salvation” or “The Lord is deliverance”. So, the shouts of Hosanna had an extra connection directly to His earthly name.

    Also, notice how in Psalm 118:26, it says “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” This is exactly what the crowds shouted in both Mark 11:9 and Matthew 21:9. That is a major piece of evidence which lets us know that the word Hosanna does indeed originate from hoshi’ah-nna in Psalm 118:25.

    The Gospel of Luke, per usual, does not contain this Hebrew/Aramaic expression. But in Luke 19:38, we see again the slightly altered phrase “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”

    So, “Hosanna” was originally a cry of distress meaning “Save us!”, but over time it changed into a shout of praise to the Lord/Savior/Messiah. And this shout of praise was most fulfilled during Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, just a few days before He would in fact save us.

  • Golgotha, Calvary, And The Place of The Skull

    The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John all tell us that Jesus was crucified in a place called Golgotha.

    They also all tell us that Golgotha is a Hebrew word meaning “place of the skull”. (Technically, Golgotha is an Aramaic word, but Aramaic is commonly called Hebrew, since it was the common language of the Hebrew people at the time).

    Plus, the Gospel of Luke simply tells us that they crucified him at a place called “The Skull”.

    Every time we see the word “skull” in these passages, it is a translation of the Greek word Kranion, which means “skull” and is also where we get our modern word “cranium”.

    But, where do we get the word “Calvary” out of all this?

    Well, when the translator Jerome was compiling all the Bible into Latin in the late 300s AD, he properly translated that Greek word Kranion into the Latin word for “skull”, Calvaria.

    Then, as the centuries went by, some people translated the Latin Bible into English. When they did this, they just borrowed the Latin term and called the place “Calvary”, from Calvaria.

    Most modern English translations actually use the original manuscripts (Greek) when translating The New Testament though. So, now most Bibles will call it “the place of the skull”.

    But, we still have the word “Calvary” now, which is entirely unrelated to an army of horses, a “cavalry”.

    And, as for the place where Jesus was crucified, there’s been a whole lot of guessing about where it is and why it’s called the place of the skull.

    First, as a quick note, in the original Greek it’s more accurate to say “of the skull” and not “of a skull”.

    Anyhow, all four Gospels just call Golgotha/Calvary a “place”. Tradition has said that this was probably a hill, but we don’t really know for certain.

    A lot of people seem to think the place was called Golgotha because it was on a hill that kind of looked like a skull. Some other people say that it might have been because it could have been close to some tombs. And there are a good deal more guesses that scholars have made over the years.

    The gist of it is all pretty simple though. Jesus was crucified at a place called “place of the skull”. The Hebrew (Aramaic) term for “place of the skull” is Golgotha. And “Calvary” is just pretty much the Latin word for the same thing.

  • Word of the Week No 1: Targum

    Back when the Jews in the Old Testament were worshipping God, they spoke a language we call Hebrew. But, through a whole bunch of historical twists and turns, by the time Jesus was born, the common language of Judea was something called Aramaic.

    Aramaic is very similar to Hebrew, but it’s still a different language. One way I heard it described is to compare them to the Romance languages of Europe. For example, Italian and Spanish are both very similar languages because they come from Latin. But they’re still different languages. It’s the same way with Hebrew and Aramaic, different languages, but very similar.

    However, The Old Testament was written almost entirely in Hebrew, so the Jews needed some sort of translation to really understand it.

    This is very similar to how the Catholic Church would have their services in Latin during the Middle Ages. At a time when no one spoke Latin as a native language, the Catholics still taught in Latin and then translated verses later. Many religious traditions throughout history have tried to hold on to ancient languages and difficult to understand writings.

    So, the Jews came up with a solution for this language barrier. During their Synagogue services, one teacher would read a small section of scripture in Hebrew (think a verse or two), then some other guy would translate that into Aramaic for everyone in the crowd.

    That other guy who would translate the Hebrew into Aramaic was something called a hammeturgem, literally “a translator”. And the translation he gave was called a Targum. You can see that root word Targum in the word hammeturgem.

    However, the word in Hebrew can mean a little more than just “translate”. It can also more broadly mean “to interpret”. This is because the men who gave the translation into Aramaic would commonly add their own opinions of what the text actually meant.

    For this reason, the Jews did not allow anyone to write down any Targumim (plural of Targum), so that no one would start treating them as equal with scripture. But, over the centuries, some Rabbis broke this rule and wrote down massive Targumim, or interpretations, of The Old Testament.

    We also see this word used in Ezra 4:7, when it says:

    “The letter was written in Aramaic and translated.”

    That word “translated” is a form of the word Targum. And, if you read Ezra, you’ll see a footnote telling you that 4:8-6:18, which quotes the letter referenced in 4:7, is in Aramaic. This is one of the few sections of The Old Testament that was written in Aramaic rather than Hebrew.