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Generally speaking, such things are readily evident in instruction sheets for major products and usually only because the translation is extremely poor. I would venture to say that looking at a KJV and not knowing from what language it was originally translated, it would not be possible to tell it came from Greek. It might be said that it would be easy to translate back into Greek; but, that would not neccessarily be the case. Greek is quite a specific language whereas the King's English was not by comparison.

I would further note that it has been pointed out that there are parts of the Greek language which have no parallel in Chaldee. This has been one of the sticking points from my understanding.

Furthermore, there are phrases that originate in english that are easier to say and more intuitive in other languages. That doesn't mean the original thought was in the other language, just that the happenstance exists. So it is counterintuitive to say that because it's easy to translate a piece from one language to another that it must have originated in the language being translated to. I think this is obvious to anyone who has taken foriegn language classes at any point in their life.

So, while it may be a cute aside, it isn't science nor is it evidence in a practical sense. It's about as useful as
looking at word patterns and trying to guess whether the same person wrote two works based on that. That isn't science either, though some have tried to pass it off as such.

In all honesty, the level of scientific honesty I've seen to date from others with regard to this work have extended to the point of stating as though factually that the book originated in Aramaic, that there is only one aramaic word for "rock" or "stone" and that 16:18 would have to be rendered a certain way because of this. It's stated as a given by many. The simple fact is that Chaldee has so many words for rock and stone that there is one to describe small cupped stones. Cupped, as in having a hollow that could hold water. There are over a dozen words for various forms of stone in Chaldee if memory serves. So that doesn't stand up. Further, no 1st century equivalant of Matthew has ever been found written in Aramaic. And if I'm not mistaken, nor have any of the other Gospels.

As someone who learned the scientific method early and took it to heart, i've little patience for consensus approaches that lack any factual grounding that can be tested and confirmed. That attitude permeates science and religion both. And it should be stopped, though I've no hope that it will, nor that junk science will cease to prevail.

“Generally speaking, such things are readily evident in instruction sheets for major products and usually only because the translation is extremely poor.”

If you were to read my remarks closely, you would see that I was not talking about things that are obviously translations because they are poorly translated and because they are included with a product manufactured by a foreign company. A person in my business can tell where a person who hasn’t had the experience could not.

“I would venture to say that looking at a KJV and not knowing from what language it was originally translated, it would not be possible to tell it came from Greek.”

If one’s native language were the Elizabethan English of the KJV, and if one had spent years translating from Greek into Elizabethan English, there might be indications. (Yes, yes, I know, James was King, but it's still called Elizabethan English.)

“It might be said that it would be easy to translate back into Greek”

The argument being made is a good deal more substantial than “easy to translate.” I don’t know how familiar you are with the process of translation, but where two languages are structurally very different, different methodologies can be used, yielding different results.

I don’t want to go on at great length, but today I was doing something for a major international Japanese firm, and ran across a phrase that I translated (consulting memory here; I’m not at work now) “If the recovery in the US economy is sustained, the Japanese economy will also improve, allowing further growth in the digital components industry.”

A Japanese colleague pointed out that the Japanese read, “kakudai suru to kitai shitai,” which with absolute literalism would be rendered, “…the Japanese economy will also improve, and (someone) wants to expect that the digital components industry will expand.”

Now, if I saw the phrase, “the Japanese economy will also improve, allowing further growth in the digital components industry,” I could render that in Japanese in several different ways. But if I saw, in a document published by a Japanese company, “…and (someone) wants to expect,” I would know immediately that it was a translation of the words, “kitai shitai” and no others. This is not a matter of it being “easy to translate,” but a matter of knowing what the original had to have been.

Further, since we don’t say “I want to expect” something, but rather some variant of “I hope” or “I’d like to see,” the use of that odd wording is a further indication that it is a literal translation of something.

Now, suppose we knew that the native language of an author was Japanese, and we’re trying to figure out whether we’re looking at a translation of something he wrote or something written originally in English. We read along, and we find the odd expression, “I was in a situation of singing on four sides.”

Why in the world would a person fluent in English use such a phrase?

If we back-translate, lo and behold, we find the Japanese cliché “shimen souka.” This is a Chinese literary reference to a work in which the protagonist finds himself surrounded on all four sides by his enemies, whom he can hear singing. It’s used to mean, “beset on all sides,” or “surrounded by enemies,” “cornered like a rat,” etc.

A person fluent in English who was writing freely would have chosen one of the many common phrases to express the concept. He would not write “a situation of singing on four sides,” unless he were (a) so unskilled in English that he didn’t know any better, or (b) trying very hard to stay as close as possible to a Japanese original. Even in the latter case, only a person to whom English is a second language would write so oddly.

For these reasons, and particularly if one has run across many such cases, it is not only reasonable but justifiable to conclude that an English text purporting to be the work of a native Japanese speaker which includes the sentence, “I was in a situation of singing on four sides” is in fact a translation of a Japanese original. This is particularly true if the English text contains many such oddities.

Daijal’s article also refers to Hebrew word order and phrasing being used even though the words are Greek. I see this all the time.

In English, we might say, “Yesterday I read in the newspaper that it was going to snow today, so I cancelled my golf game.”

In Japanese, that would come out “Yesterday newspaper in snow today fall read so, golf cancel (I) did.” If an entire document looks like that, and it is attributed to a Japanese person, you don’t have to be Fellini to figure out what happened.

“I would further note that it has been pointed out that there are parts of the Greek language which have no parallel in Chaldee. This has been one of the sticking points from my understanding.”

The author of Daijal’s article is making a case that the Gospels were originally written in Hebrew.

“Furthermore, there are phrases that originate in English that are easier to say and more intuitive in other languages.”

True, but not to the point. Hackneyed as it is, we understand what is meant by the phrase, “He’s a real cool cat.” Try saying, “Kare wa zuibun suzushii neko da” to a Japanese person and see how far you get. Since the phrase just isn’t used, or even understood, if you saw that in Japanese it would be reasonable to think it a literal translation of the English cliché.

“because it's easy”

You really need to get past that to the actual meat of the matter. (And that's something else that isn't said in Japanese, so if you saw "kadai no niku" you'd have to figure it was a literal translation from English.

“So, while it may be a cute aside, it isn't science nor is it evidence in a practical sense.”

Science and the scientific method are not the only ways of discovering or knowing things. The mind can look at an accumulation of phenomena, none of which in itself proves a proposition, and see that taken together they make the proposition so likely as to render doubt unreasonable.

A mother knows when her three-year-old is lying to her. How? Well, she just reads him. Is that “evidence in a practical sense?” Would you take that to court? Nonetheless, she *knows* and she is right.

“...looking at word patterns and trying to guess whether the same person wrote two works based on that. That isn't science either, though some have tried to pass it off as such.”

Nonetheless, it can be done. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen that a “new” poster to a forum was actually a known poster under a different handle. “Identified by sound of transmitter,” as they say in the electronic warfare community.

“the level of scientific honesty”

The scientific method is only a tool; and it is not the only tool available to us.

“that there is only one aramaic word for "rock" or "stone" and that 16:18 would have to be rendered a certain way because of this.”

If we’re being honest, let’s note that these arguments are advanced in rebuttal of an argument that asserts the use of a particular *Greek* word for "rock" or "stone" renders one certain meaning impossible. The argument to which you refer holds not that there is only one word for rock in Aramaic, but that because Jesus was speaking in Aramaic the Greek is not definitive.

“Further, no 1st century equivalant of Matthew has ever been found written in Aramaic.”

We know of many ancient works of which we have no surviving manuscript. And, once again, Daijal’s article argues that the original was Hebrew, not Aramaic.

“As someone who learned the scientific method early and took it to heart…”

How about if you took a group of 100 Americans, of whom one was me, and showed them 200 passages of English text, 100 of which were translations from Japanese and 100 of which were written by monolingual Americans, and I got them all right and the other 99 people did no better than random chance would allow? Would that be scientific?

I ask because that is the result I would expect from such an experiment. That being the case, the assertion of the author of Daijal’s article that a renowned scholar was able to detect that a document was a translation from Hebrew seems in no way outlandish to me.

“I've little patience for”

And I have increasingly less patience with people who insist that the scientific method is the sole key to knowledge. Just as one would not try to drive a nail with a piece of sandpaper, or to “intuit” one’s way to the correct answer to a engineering problem, there are things to which the scientific method cannot be applied but which are nonetheless discoverable.

“nor that junk science will cease to prevail.”

Among the things that science has not yet come to understand very well are the human mind and the workings of consciousness. Although many would decry it as “unscientific,” a human being can develop an “ear” for some things that allows him to make correct judgments where those who lack the required knowledge and experience cannot. This is surely far less outré than the idiot savant who has the mind of a small child and yet can solve complex problems of higher mathematics in his head.

In all honesty, the level of scientific honesty I've seen to date from others with regard to this work have extended to the point of stating as though factually that the book originated in Aramaic....Further, no 1st century equivalant of Matthew has ever been found written in Aramaic. And if I'm not mistaken, nor have any of the other Gospels.

True enough about the putative original never having been found. But there's a pretty solid tradition that it DID once exist:

Let us now recall the testimony of the other ecclesiastical writers on the Gospel of St. Matthew. St. Irenæus (Adv. Haer., III, i, 2) affirms that Matthew published among the Hebrews a Gospel which he wrote in their own language. Eusebius (Hist. eccl., V, x, 3) says that, in India, Pantænus found the Gospel according to St. Matthew written in the Hebrew language, the Apostle Bartholomew having left it there. Again, in his "Hist. eccl." (VI xxv, 3, 4), Eusebius tells us that Origen, in his first book on the Gospel of St. Matthew, states that he has learned from tradition that the First Gospel was written by Matthew, who, having composed it in Hebrew, published it for the converts from Judaism. According to Eusebius (Hist. eccl., III, xxiv, 6), Matthew preached first to the Hebrews and, when obliged to go to other countries, gave them his Gospel written in his native tongue. St. Jerome has repeatedly declared that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew ("Ad Damasum", xx; "Ad Hedib.", iv), but says that it is not known with certainty who translated it into Greek. St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. Epiphanius, St. John Chrysostom, St. Augustine, etc., and all the commentators of the Middle Ages repeat that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew. Erasmus was the first to express doubts on this subject: "It does not seem probable to me that Matthew wrote in Hebrew, since no one testifies that he has seen any trace of such a volume." This is not accurate, as St. Jerome uses Matthew's Hebrew text several times to solve difficulties of interpretation, which proves that he had it at hand. Pantænus also had it, as, according to St. Jerome ("De Viris Ill.", xxxvi), he brought it back to Alexandria. However, the testimony of Pantænus is only second-hand, and that of Jerome remains rather ambiguous, since in neither case is it positively known that the writer did not mistake the Gospel according to the Hebrews (written of course in Hebrew) for the Hebrew Gospel of St. Matthew. However all ecclesiastical writers assert that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew, and, by quoting the Greek Gospel and ascribing it to Matthew, thereby affirm it to be a translation of the Hebrew Gospel.

Perhaps these traditions are wrong, but to say there is NO evidence is not at all correct.