[Havoc]

You should go read Michael Crichton's recent article on junk science. There is not a shred of supportable evidence of any factual kind that supports Matthew having been written originally in anything other than greek. Nor was there a need for it to be written in other than Greek. The claim that it was written in Aramaic arose out of a need to support another claim that has since been surrendered. It also arose out of an ignorance of Chaldee. Marvelling about poetic nature is cute; but, it isn't science nor is it factual. I'll underscore that it's cute cause it's just the sort of thing you say when you want someone to buy something without support or make it more likely that they may. And this is exactly the sort of thing that Crichton attacked and attacked with clarity.

Responsibility and credibility go hand in hand. The earliest known texts found have all been in Greek. No first century text has ever been found in Chaldee. And the point that was trying to be made by saying it was is lost in the facts surrounding the language. Some people need to do a better job on homework.

[Jeff Chandler]

Some people need to do a better job on homework.

You don't have to get snippy about it. I was merely sharing something I read, not professing to be an expert on the subject.

[dsc]

"And this is exactly the sort of thing that Crichton attacked and attacked with clarity."

I don't know whether Crichton has done much translation or not, but I've been translating professionally from Japanese to English for 15 years now, and I can tell at a glance when a document was translated from Japanese to English not by a native speaker of English but by a Japanese person, no matter how good he may be.

Even in a text translated by a native speaker of English, unless he was both very good *and* completely free to deviate from the manuscript for the sake of making the English natural and colloquial, which is rare, I can tell if the English text was translated from a Japanese manuscript rather than originally composed in English.

While I am not equally sensitive WRT to Japanese manuscripts, I can also tell--without fail--when a Japanese manuscript was composed by a native speaker of a language other than Japanese.

With a Japanese manuscript written by a native speaker of Japanese, I can often make a good estimate of the age of the writer.

The grounds for theorizing that the Gospels were originally written in Hebrew (described more thoroughly in the article linked by Daijal) may not qualify as "scientific," but to me, as an experienced translator, they are entirely plausible.

Actually, I'll go further than that: when you back-translate and in several places find wordplay that works in the second language but not the first, it's downright convincing.

[Destro]

Bump to you and right on.

Greek was the lingua Franca of the day.

Modern example? Just like non English speaking pop groups who sing in English.