Jesus Words: Aramaic or Greek?

Jack Kilmon jkilmon at historian.net
Thu Sep 3 19:44:53 EDT 1998


I do a treatment on the Aramaic LP on my website, Jon.

http://www.historian.net/lp-pap2.html

Jonathan Robie wrote:

> 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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