Language Studies

It is really necessary to consider two things before concluding that one or more of the gospels (or some or all of the New Testament) was composed originally in Hebrew (or in Aramaic). First it is necessary to ask what kind of evidence exists that might point in that direction. Second, it is necessary to ask what evidence…

As anyone knows who has read more than one English version of the Bible, there is often more than one way to translate a particular passage from one language into another. This is obviously the case where the translations have differing philosophies of translation, such as the formal equivalence philosophy of the ASV (American…

The eighth type of Semitism that Carmignac identifies in the gospels he calls "Semitisms of Transmission." The idea here is as follows: the gospels, except for Luke, were written originally in Hebrew. They were later translated into Greek, and those are the gospel texts we currently have. However, the Greek versions were…

The seventh type of Semitism that Carmignac finds in the gospels he labels “Semitisms of Composition.” The best way of determining what Carmignac means is by looking at his examples. The first he draws from the opening verses of Mark. The citation given from Isaiah is actually a collation of material from Ex 23:20;…

Carmignac’s sixth category of Semitisms in the New Testament he calls "Semitisms of style." Here he briefly surveys a number of characteristics of Semitic prose and poetry that are found in the gospels. The first is the telling of a story by means of short clauses connected with "and" (p. 25). This is certainly characteristic…

Carmignac’s fourth category of Semitism’s in the New Testament he calls "Semitisms of Vocabulary." What he means by this identification is as follows: Each language uses words in a way unique to itself, and in constructions unique to itself. When a speaker of one language writes in another, he tends to use the words…

Carmignac found in the Greek of the New Testament frequent Semitisms of various types that, to his mind, could only be explained by the idea that the gospels especially had been translated from Hebrew (or Aramaic) originals. He divided these Semitisms into various categories which he then evaluated for their significance…

Jean Carmignac, The Birth of the Synoptics (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1987). Carmignac’s work is short, with fewer than 90 pages of text devoted to his argumentation. In addition, it is aimed at a popular, rather than an academic, audience. However, there are a number of elements to the work that are worthy…

A number of works have appeared over the years, some scholarly some not so scholarly, that suggest that all, or at least parts of the New Testament originated as Semitic documents, either in Aramaic or in Hebrew. The most thorough, and most scholarly of them is Matthew Black’s An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and…