Jesus Words: Aramaic or Greek?

Jonathan Robie jonathan at texcel.no
Thu Sep 3 17:22:31 EDT 1998


At 03:52 PM 9/3/98 -0700, Jack Kilmon wrote:
 
>but in Aramaic:
>
>w$bwq ln xwbyn
>w'shevok lan hoyween
>
>)ykn) d)p xnn $bqn lxybyn
>aykeno dup heneen shevkon l'hoyween
>
>In Aramaic hoyween/l'hoyween can be translated to
>debts/debtors but xwbyn is an Aramaic idiom for "sin."

Where can I find this original Aramaic?

>In the Aramaic, therefore, it makes sense.  There are many
>cases where enigmatic Greek sayings suddenly make sense
>in Aramaic.  Additionally, the Aramaic often reveals word
>plays lost in the Greek.
>
>Having said this, I will agree that mere retroversion to Aramaic
>is not often useful unless it is associated with clarifications in
>the idiom or syntax. 

Retroversion worries me in general. Often, I hear a passage quoted from the
New Testament, and I get an idea what the original Greek may have been.
Sometimes I'm right, sometimes I'm wildly wrong. If I hear an English work
translated into German, I'm still often wrong when I try to guess the
original English. As a matter of fact, even though English is my native
language and I speak German quite fluently, in most cases, I suspect the
German is a better representation of the original than my guesses at what
the original may have been. My guesses at the original English may give me
all kinds of insights - but there's no guarantee that these insights have
anything to do with the content of the English original.

Jonathan
___________________________________________________________________________

Jonathan Robie		jwrobie at mindspring.com

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