[B-Greek] Re: 1 Cor. 14:8 - word order, BDF & Turner
R Yochanan Bitan Buth
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
Mon Jun 6 20:17:24 EDT 2005
Shalom jmtait,
Tait egrapsen
>For example, I've come across the view that, at this time, the
Targums were
almost exclusively oral - is this true? >
Well, two copies of Job were found at Qumran. So "almost exclusively
oral" is probably not the best explanation. See more below.
>(Were written Targums not actually forbidden at one time?)>
No.
During later talmudic times translation in a synagogue during the Tora
reading was supposed to be done orally and not from a written text.
But the time of this directive is the time that written targums were
in existence. The directive did not preclude written targums.
Please note: quite obviously Qumran were not operating by a written
targum constraint. They had two copies of Job. Probably Eastern in
origin.
The 'oral' argument has been raised in the past to explain an
assumption (1) and a fact (2). Assumption (1): the Jewish people in
the Land would not have understood Hebrew, and/or biblical Hebrew, and
so they must have had to have a targum. Fact (2): the Dead Sea
Scrolls have almost no Aramaic Bible, even though they have lots of
Hebrew Bible, some Greek Bible and documents in all three languages.
The consensus among Mishnaic Hebrew specialists is that the assumption
(1) above is false. (Perhaps related: the later 'Palestinian targum'
was interpretative/midrashic, giving 'spin', not a diplomatic
translation.) The assumption that Hebrew was poorly known during the
second temple period was developed by Geiger in 1845 as part of an
agenda to undermine rabbinic authority and was linguistically refuted
by Segal in 1908. The details of this debate are probably not germane
to a Greek elist.
>Does the view that literacy was low at this period
(some scholars now seem to simply assume that Jesus would have been
illiterate) have a bearing on this? >
Not really. An illiterate person can listen to the tora read in
Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek, provided they know the language. (The
'illiterate Jesus' and 'low literacy' are views that would get far
away from Greek to discuss. It gets into historical methodology. I see
no problem with Jesus' being literate, nor with their being relatively
high literacy.) From the Bar Kochba letters it appears that
quasi-illiterates understood Hebrew. Several Hebrew letters have a
Hebrew word "et" written as a single-letter prefix, something
unthinkable for anyone who has studied even a week or two of literary
Hebrew. J.T. Milik concluded from this that Segal, Klausner and the
'Israeli' school on Mishnaic Hebrew were confirmed beyond question. I
would agree.
>With regard to the Semitic influence on NT Greek being Hebraic rather
than
Aramaic, >
The previous emails were discussing possible influence on the written
gospels, if I remember, not the more general question of "NT Greek".
That gets much further afield and brings in several different kinds of
influences both in the Land and throughout the Greek Middle East.
>does anyone know whether the Aramaic of Palestine was itself
influenced by Hebrew? This wouldn't be unusual in a situation where
one
language replaces another, would it?>
Yes, there was mutual influence while both languages were in continual
popular use over a 600 year period (500BCE to 150 CE). Even later
Aramaic dialects like Christian Palestian (500CE) and Samaritan
(400CE) show some Mishnaic Hebrew influence. Back to the first
century: Hebrew and Aramaic were still different languages and in
narrative they left slightly different 'signatures' in Greek, as
mentioned in an earlier email. I would think that only this last point
would deserve continued discussion for Greek.
Blessings,
Randall Buth
Randall Buth, PhD
Director, Biblical Language Center
www.biblicalulpan.org
and Director, Biblical Studies in Israel
Hebrew University, Rothberg International School
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
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