Replies

When they are not definitive, we must turn to other sources. In this case, the meticulate archives of the Jewish people themselves serve most masterfully. They know, and have kept the records, of what language they spoke, and when, and where. Their priestly class was, unlike 95 percent or better of the world, literate and prided itself on that literacy and the maintaining of the records of history.

Well then are you telling us that when the writers of the New Testament used the word "Hebrew" that they really meant "Syriac" which is well known to be "Aramaic" ------ not "Hebrew"????

Are you saying that the people of that day couldn't tell the difference between "Hebrew" and "Syriac/Aramaic"????

Then you also must be saying that all the ecclesiastical writers of the ante nicene period were also likewise confused --- including your own writers of the Catholic Encyclopedia. Here -- read it and weep:

"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." [Catholic Encyclopedia; Gospel of Matthew]

HEBREW --- HEBREW --- HEBREW --- No one can seem to spell the word "Syriac/Aramaic" correctly, including Jerome who translated his Latin OT directly from the "HEBREW" -- not from the "Syriac/Aramaic".

Is that what you are saying ---- that none of you, including your church fathers and present day magisterium, know how to spell words correctly???????

Well then are you telling us that when the writers of the New Testament used the word ~~"Hebrew"~~ Hebraisti that they really meant "Syriac" which is well known to be "Aramaic" ------ not "Hebrew"????

Yes they did mean it to be a Judaized version of Aramaic known as Chaldee, which was the spoken language of the 1st century Palestinian Jews, derived from Syriac (i.e. Aramaic), and sometimes called Judeo-Aramaic by some scholars.

Aramaic is not a single language but a group of related languages used by different tribes and cultures. References to Syriac in the pre-Babylonian period do refer to the language of Syria, that is Aramaic, which was not spoken by the Hebrews at that time.

That language began to be used by the Jews circa 7th century BC for official correspondence several centruies, the languges used by the Jewish homes. Both Targum (Tanakh) and Talmud are written in Chaldee Aramaic, which the Greeks call Hebraisti.

The Jews themsleves do not call OT Hebrew "Hebrew" (the proepr name Hebrew is Ibriy in Hebrew) but Yehudith. The Greeks (see 2 King 18:26 LXX) call the latter (OT Hebrew) Ioudaisti. Ioudaisti does not appear in the New Testament! Only Hebraisti does.

Unfortunately, Latin and subsequent translators translated Hebraisti as "Hebrew" because it was spoken by the 1st century Hebrews! And thence it went into the west as an error and now, after having been repeated enough times, it becomes the "gold standard" of truth!

St. Augustine (whose Greek was marginal) errnenously translated a section of Sirach as Qui vivit in eternum, creavit omnia simul which means "He that lives eternally created all things together" as "he who lives eternally created all thing at once!" Such one-word errors can have destastrous consequences over many repetitions. And such is the case with numerous other examples.

You keep treating Latin translations as accurate renditions of the Greek text when this is cleary not so. Hebraisti does not mean OT Hebrew. It means Chaldee Aramaic. The OT Hebrew is Ioudaisti in Greek.

If we are going to quote from the Catholic Encyclopedia, let us do so in a more complete fashion.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07176a.htm says that:

Hebrew Language and Literature
Hebrew was the language spoken by the ancient Israelites, and in which were composed nearly all of the books of the Old Testament. The name Hebrew as applied to the language is quite recent in Biblical usage, occurring for the first time in the Greek prologue of Ecclesiasticus, about 130 B.C. (hebraisti, rendered by the Vulgate verba hebraica). In Isaias, xix, 18, it is designated as the “language of Chanaan”. In other passages (2 Kings 17:26; Isaiah 36:11; Nehemiah 13:24) it is referred to adverbially as the “Jews’ language” (, ioudaisti, judaice). In later times the term “sacred language” was sometimes employed by the Jews to designate the Bible Hebrew in opposition to the “profane language”, i.e. the Aramaean dialects which eventually usurped the place of the other as a spoken language. In New-Testament usage the current Aramaic of the time is frequently called Hebrew (hebrais dialektos, Acts 21:40; 22:2; 26:14), not in the strict sense of the word, but because it was the dialect in use among the Jews of Palestine. Among Biblical scholars the language of the Old Testament is sometimes termed “ancient” or “classical” Hebrew in opposition to the neo-Hebrew of the Mishna. With the exception of a few fragments, viz. one verse of Jeremias (x, 11), some chapters of Daniel (ii, 4b-vii, 28) and Esdras (Ezra 4:8-6:18; 7:26), which are in Aramaic, all the protocanonical books of the Old Testament are written in Hebrew. The same is true also of some of the deuterocanonical books or fragments (concerning Sirach there is no longer any doubt, and there is a fair probability with regard to Daniel 3:24-90; 13; 14; and 1 Maccabees) and likewise some of the Apocrypha, e.g. the Book of Henoch, the Psalms of Solomon, etc. apart from these writings no written documents of the Hebrew language have come down to us except a few meagre inscriptions, e.g. that of Siloe discovered in Jerusalem in 1880, and belonging to the eighth century B.C. a score of seals dating from before the Captivity and containing scarcely anything but proper names, and finally a few coins belonging to the period of the Machabees.