Divine name in NT
Larry Swain
swainl at calcite.rocky.edu
Thu Oct 1 11:33:56 EDT 1998
On Wed, 30 Sep 1998, Wes Williams wrote:
>
> The early writers Papias, Irenaeus, Origen, Eusebius, and Jerome all allude
> to or quote a Hebrew version of Matthew (for references and discussion, see
> "Hebrew Gospel of Matthew," by George Howard, 1995). The earliest complete
A minor nitpick: There is a good deal of discussion and interpretation
about just what Papias said and meant in the snippet recorded in
Eusebius-some believe he is referring to a Hebrew original, others to
Aramaic, others have argued that he meant it was written in a Hebrew
"style" of argument and "each one interpreted" means a rabbinic or
philosophical style debate, not translation. There are a few other
intriguing interpretations of the passage, but I guess my point is that we
need to be careful about a too facile acceptance of a singular position on
this one.
On another note however, the fact that Irenaeus is a little more
definitive and very probably received his information from Papias or
Polycarp, this lends a little more emphasis to the Hebrew original idea,
at least in so far as understanding Papias.
Hope that doesn't cloud the issue too much.
Larry Swain
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