About the Peshitta
By servant@nazareneisrael.org
Shalom, Nazarenes.
From time to time, people ask me about the Aramaic Peshitta. I began looking at this manuscript many years ago, as I was intrigued by the possibility of a Hebrew or Aramaic original.
While I have no desire to quarrel with anyone, after many years I have come to the conclusion that, while the original New Covenant texts were inspired either in Hebrew and/or Aramaic (or both), the Peshitta is not the original manuscript. While it is a very interesting document, and while it yields a lot of insights into the original documents, it can only be a later translation from the Greek.
With all respect to those who have made a specialty out of studying the Peshitta, and who have far superior knowledge of Aramaic than I do, it seems to me that there are certain issues with the Peshitta which can only arise due to it being translated either from Hebrew, or from Greek.
For example, please consider carefully Mark 15:34, where the Peshitta quotes Yeshua, who was speaking Aramaic, and translates His Aramaic into Aramaic.
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Mark 15:34
34 And at the ninth hour Yeshua cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eloi, Eloi, lamna sabachthani?" which is translated, "Elohi, Elohi, lamna sabachthani?"
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a[q !y[v [vtbw PEH Mark 15:34
lya rmaw amr alqb [wvy
hytyad yntqbv anml lya
`yntqbv anml yhla yhla
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An Aramaic original would not translate Yeshua’s Aramaic into Aramaic. The only way this kind of thing could happen is if the Peshitta was translated from either Hebrew or Greek. (And, if it was a translation from the Greek, it must have been translated from a Hebrew original).
There are other issues with the Peshitta, which show up mainly in the form of ‘Hellenisms’, which are Greek-thought-pattern insertions into an otherwise Hebraic text. For example, please consider