Aramaic New Testament hypotheses
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Aramaic New Testament hypotheses are a number of hypotheses within Biblical scholarship which argue that the Christian New Testament derives in some form from an Aramaic original. A first version was initially advanced in the 17th and 18th centuries, arguing that all Gospels and Acts could derive from one Aramaic proto-Gospel.<ref name=":7">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name=":1">Template:Cite book</ref> Subsequent current-day hypotheses trying to better establish this earlier hypothesis, usually argue some parts of the Gospels could derive from an Aramaic sayings-source.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In current scholarship they enjoy no notable support compared to the consensus hypothesis that the New Testament was written in Koine Greek.<ref name=":4" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":6" />
They are related to and often overlap with the Hebrew Gospel hypothesis, which posits a similar idea but with Hebrew instead of Aramaic.
Greek original New Testament hypothesis
{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} The current consensus view held by almost all scholars of the New Testament is that all of its contents were originally written in Koine Greek.<ref name=":4">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name=":5">Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref><ref name=":6">Template:Cite book</ref>
An example of how mainstream scholars have dealt with Aramaic influences within an overall view of the Gospels' original Greek-language development may be found in Martin Hengel's synthesis of studies of the linguistic situation in Palestine during the time of Jesus and the Gospels:
Since non-literary, simple Greek knowledge or competency in multiple languages was relatively widespread in Jewish Palestine including Galilee, and a Greek-speaking community had already developed in Jerusalem shortly after Easter, one can assume that this linguistic transformation [from "the Aramaic native language of Jesus" to "the Greek Gospels"] began very early. ... [M]issionaries, above all 'Hellenists' driven out of Jerusalem, soon preached their message in the Greek language. We find them in Damascus as early as AD 32 or 33. A certain percentage of Jesus' earliest followers were presumably bilingual and could therefore report, at least in simple Greek, what had been heard and seen. This probably applies to Cephas/Peter, Andrew, Philip or John. Mark, too, who was better educated in Jerusalem than the Galilean fishermen, belonged to this milieu. The great number of phonetically correct Aramaisms and his knowledge of the conditions in Jewish Palestine compel us to assume a Palestinian Jewish-Christian author. Also, the author's Aramaic native language is still discernible in the Marcan style.<ref>Martin Hengel. 2005. "Eye-witness Memory and the Writing of the Gospels: Form Criticism, Community Tradition and the Authority of the Authors." In The Written Gospel, ed. by Markus Bockmuehl and Donald A. Hagner. Cambridge University Press. Pp. 89f.</ref>
Aramaic original New Testament hypotheses
The hypothesis that the New Testament could have been written in Aramaic, the language of Jesus, and then translated to Greek is rejected by the majority of modern scholars.<ref name=":4" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":6" />
Richard Simon of Normandy in 1689<ref>Histoire critique du texte du Nouveau Testament, Rotterdam 1689.</ref> initially asserted that an Aramaic or Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, lay behind the Nazarene Gospel, and was the Proto-Gospel.<ref name=":7" /> A more extensive version of this theory only claiming an Aramaic Proto-Gospel was first proposed by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in 1784.<ref name=":1" /> It was expanded on by Johann Gottfried Eichhorn,<ref>Einleitung in das neue Testament, Leipzig, Weidmann 1804.</ref> who in 1804 provided a comprehensive basis for the Proto-Gospel hypothesis and argued for an Aramaic original gospel that each of the Synoptic evangelists had in a different intermediate form.<ref>Template:Citation.</ref>
In 1887 John Hancock Pettingell in spite of the then-well established view of Greek originals, argued that some texts of the New Testament such as "the Gospel of Matthew, the Epistles to the Hebrews" might have been written "in the vernacular Syriac of the Jews".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Some 19th-century scholars believe the place names in the Peshitta New Testament indicate it was written by someone with independent knowledge of Aramaic place names in Palestine mentioned in the Greek New Testament.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name=":0">Template:Cite bookIntroduction, pages l–li:
"In the names of places, the Peshito shows the same independence of the Greek. . . . . in Acts xxi. 7, the Gk. has, Ptolemais; the Syriac has, Acu.
Mr. Jer. Jones, in his work on the Canon, 1798, contends that the use of the name Acu, for Ptolemais, is a decisive proof that the Peshito must have been made not far in time from A.D. 70, when Jerusalem was destroyed. (vol. i. p. 103. ) He says that the most ancient name of this place among the Israelites was Aco, or Acco, Judges i. 31; that this name was afterwards changed to Ptolemais; that some say it had its new name from Ptolemy Philadelphus, about 250 B.C. He says it is certain that the old name Aco, was antiquated and out of use in the time of the Romans, and that the use of the old name Acu, in the Peshito, can be accounted for in no other way, but by supposing that the persons for whom the version was made were more acquainted with it, than with the new name Ptolemais; that upon any other supposition it would have been absurd for him to have used Acu. He says, that until the destruction of Jerusalem, one may suppose that the Jews may have retained the old name Aco still, out of fondness for its antiquity; but, he says, "how they, or any other part of Syria, could, after the Roman conquest, call it by a name different from the Romans, seems to me impossible to conceive. . . To suppose, therefore, that this translation, in which we meet with this old name, instead of the new one, was made at any great distance of time after the destruction of Jerusalem, is to suppose the translator to have substituted an antiquated name known to but few, for a name well known to all" (pp. 104, 105.) Mr. Jones says that a similar proof that the Peshito cannot have been made much after A.D. 70, is found in the fact that the Peshito often calls the Gentiles, as the Jews were accustomed to do, profane persons, where the Greek calls them the nations, that is, the Gentiles. The Peshito calls them profane, in Matt. vi. 7; x. 5; xviii.17; Mark vii. 26; John vii. 35; Acts xviii.4, 17; 1 Cor. v. 1; x. 20, 27; xii. 2; 1 Pet. iv.3. The expression is used, therefore, throughout the Peshito. Mr. Jones says, that it shows that the writer was a Jew, for no other person would have called all the world profane; and that after the destruction of the temple, all Hebrew Christians must have seen that other nations were not to be reckoned unclean and profane in the Jewish sense, and that therefore this version must have been made either before, or soon after, A.D. 70." (On Canon, Vol. i., pp. 106–110.)</ref>
Throughout the 20th century Matthew Black tried to advance Lessing's hypothesis further, but only was able to establish with some degree of certainty that some parts of the Gospel of Mark could derive from an Aramaic sayings-source or tradition.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> His work was heavily critiqued for its methodology.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name=":3">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> It is republished today with a critical preface lauding it as the "highmark" of an older theory, but describing consequent developments in scholarship.<ref name=":2">Template:Cite journal</ref>
The 20th-century scholar Charles Cutler Torrey held to a view that the Gospels were composed in Aramaic. He also argued in a posthumous publication that the Greek in the Book of Revelation was so bad that it might be indicative of having been composed in Aramaic.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Charles Cutler Torrey, Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence (1936), 108, 113-114</ref>
The 20th-century Vetus Syra translator E. Jan Wilson believed that Luke was written "in the Syriac dialect of Antioch", that Matthew also might be an Aramaic composition, that Mark was unlikely to be Aramaic and that John could not have been written in Aramaic.<ref>xli of his The Old Syriac Gospels: Studies and Comparative Translations (vol. 1, Matthew and Mark) (2003), 381pp.</ref> Fellow 20th-century translator George Lamsa advocated for a similar Syriac-based theory asserting a "Peshitta-original" in his translation of his Peshitta New Testament. However, his work is poorly regarded by most scholars in the field.<ref name=":8">Template:Cite journal]</ref><ref name=":9">Template:Cite journal</ref>
The common response by scholars in the field of New Testament studies to these theories is expressed by Sebastian Brock:
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The only complete English translation of the Peshitta is by G. Lamsa. This is unfortunately not always very accurate, and his claims that the Peshitta Gospels represent the Aramaic original underlying the Greek Gospels are entirely without foundation; such views, which are not infrequently found in more popular literature, are rejected by all serious scholars.<ref>Template:Citation. See also Raymond Brown et al., eds., "The Jerome Biblical Commentary" (London, 1970), 69:88 (article "Texts and Versions"), pg. 575: "Claims that the Syr[iac] Gospels are the form in which Jesus spoke his teaching—claims often made by people who have every reason to know better—are without foundation."</ref>{{#if:|
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Outside of academia
At times leaders of the Assyrian Church of the East express the belief that the entire Syriac Peshitta New Testament in liturgical use by them is the original of the New Testament.<ref>For instance the patriarch Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII declared in 1957: "With reference to... the originality of the Peshitta text, as the Patriarch and Head of the Holy Apostolic and Catholic Church of the East, we wish to state, that the Church of the East received the scriptures from the hands of the blessed Apostles themselves in the Aramaic original, the language spoken by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and that the Peshitta is the text of the Church of the East which has come down from the Biblical times without any change or revision." (April 5, 1957)</ref> However, almost all modern scholars view its Old Testament as a 2nd-century translation from Hebrew and its New Testament as a 5th-century translation from Greek.<ref>Brock, S. P. (2006). The Bible in the Syriac tradition (2nd rev. ed., pp. 17-22). Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press.</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Claims exalting Aramaic in such ways are directly connected to the emergence and current expression of Assyrian nationalism.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Similar beliefs are present in various Messianic Jewish groups.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>