A minister, a priest, a rabbi, a moslem, and Deepak Chokra (sp) walked into Larry King’s show last night. No punchline, but there was a long discussion on whether the NT was written completely in Greek or, whether some of it was written in Aramaic. It seemed to make a great deal of difference to the minister “Me thinks he doth protestant too much”.
So, what was it written in and why does it matter?
There are a few Aramaic words and phrases in the New Testament. For example, in Mark 5:41
Talitha cumi is Aramaic.
There has been some specultion that some of the Gospels (especially Matthew and Mark) may have been originally written in Aramaic, but these supposed originals have been lost and only the Greek translations (if they are translations) have survived. This speculation seems to have been fueled by by their use of Aramaicisms (that is, phrases distinctive of Aramaic but carried over into another language). This could be because the books were translated from Aramaic to Greek, but it could also be because the evangelists were thinking in Aramaic but writing in Greek.
Current consensus is that the Gospels were written as the Church was moving into the Greek-speaking community at large (AD 65 to AD 95 or thereabouts). Likewise, many of the Epistles of St. Paul were addressed to presumably Greek-speaking congregations (Corinthians, Romans, etc.). I would not be at all surprised if at least the earliest written source material were Aramaic or Aramaic/Greek mixture, but the Gospels, themselves, seem to be addressed to a wider audience than the Jewish community, so Greek (specifically a version of Koine) would have been a good choice. I agree that Aramaic idiom that we often see could very well be the product of bilingual authors.
Writing around the period of 130, Papias wrote
([symbol]Ebraidi dialektw ta logia sunetaxato hrmhneusen d auta ws hn dunatos ekastos.[/symbol]) Since the Gospel of Matthew makes the most overt appeals to the Jewish traditions, a tradition grew up that Matthew had originally written his Gospel in Hebrew and that it was later re-written in Greek.
This has led to a lot of acrimonious discussion. Eusebius (ca 291 - ca 341) passed on the comment, but he also indicated a fair amount of personal scorn for the lack of scholarship in the works of Papias. (Indeed, Papias readily admits that he preferred to collect the spoken sayings handed down by people who may have heard someone rather than by relying on mere books.)
Current theories are rather divided between the notion that the Greek Matthew is an original work in Greek, based on its organization and its internal language, (this tends to be the majority opinion), and those who hold that the Greek Matthew is a re-worked version of a Hebrew (or even Aramaic) Matthew, (the minority position). An intermediate position notes that Papias only notes that Mathew recorded the sayings (or words–logia) of Matthew and posits that the Greek Matthew may have been originally written in Greek, but was based, in part, on a Hebrew “sayings of Jesus.”
I can see scripture scholars getting heated defending their pet theories on the subject, but I am not sure why some theologians get caught up in the heat of the discussion.
I have never heard that Mark was written (in whole or in part) in anything other than Greek.
There is some mild speculation that the Letter to the Hebrews might have an earlier Aramaic version, but since it appears to have been written to a more literate Greek-speaking audience (based on style and content), generally it is regarded as having been written in Greek from the beginning.
Aside from the speculations regarding Matthew, I know of no New Testament work that is not presumed to have been written originally in Greek. Greek was both the lingua fraca and the language of the literate in the Eastern Mediterranean (and even, to some extent, in Rome) in the first century and there is not reason (lacking other evidence) to belive that any of the NT was written in any language other than Greek.
tomndebb’s post is spot on.
Just let me point out why one of the ministers might have been worked up over Matthew being in Aramaic:
The majority scholarly opinion is that the Gospel of Matthew in its final form was not written by Matthew. It is obviously later than the Gospel of Mark, since it borrows so much directly from Mark. This means that the earliest Gospel, Mark, was written a generation after the death of Jesus, and the other Gospels, even later.
Fundamentalists don’t like that dating. They’d much prefer Matthew to the first written Gospel as written by the Apostle Matthew himself. The claim that the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic would bolster that claim.
Scholarship, however, can not support that assertion. There are word plays and puns in the Greek version of Matthew that wouldn’t make sense in Aramaic or Greek, indicating composition in Greek.
“No pre-evangelical sayings source documents? Well, ex-Qs me!”