Language Studies

Aramaic Thoughts

Idioms in the Bible - Part 3

In Matt 3:7, John calls those Pharisees and Sadducees who have come out to him "brood of vipers." The Syriac word for "viper" is simply a transliteration of the Greek echidna, and is not the Hebrew/Aramaic nachash that is used in the Old Testament. Lamsa takes this phrase as an idiom meaning "sly, deceptive." Unfortunately, this meaning neither fits the context nor explains the origin of the phrase.

Many commentators trace the phrase "brood of vipers" as being essentially Greek in origin. Craig Keener, in his Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew says, "More likely, Matthew may allude to a fairly widespread ancient view that vipers were mother killers" (p. 122), citing evidence from Herodotus and other Greek historians and naturalists. While that view may have been widespread in the ancient world, this too seems beside the point of the passage.

As John begins to criticize the Pharisees and Sadducees, he dismisses their claims to descent from Abraham saying, "God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham" (3:9). Jesus later uses the same sort of language in his condemnation of the Pharisees (John 8:33. 39). In this, John is not saying that the Pharisees and Sadducees are being sly or deceptive, though they may well have been both. Rather, John contrasts their claims of descent (sons of the promise through Abraham) with their real descent. Now it is a fact that the claim of the Sadducees and the Pharisees to descent from Abraham was a real, legitimate claim. They were descended from Abraham, and probably all could trace their lineage back to the twelve tribes. John’s point is that their behavior is contrary to their claim. They claim to be Abraham’s seed, but they do not behave like Abraham. John is saying that spiritually, they are of different descent than Abraham.

This takes the reader back to the Old Testament, where from the very beginning (at least after the Fall) mankind is divided into two "seeds": the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman (see Gen 3:15). What John is saying to the Pharisees and Sadducees is that they are descendants of the serpent which, of course, represented the devil. Jesus made the accusation more explicit in John 8:44 saying, "You are of your father the devil." The phrase "brood of vipers" is an idiom, but it has both a more specific and ancient reference than Lamsa recognized.

On another front, the use of the Greek loan-word echidna rather than the Semitic nachash argues for the Syriac version being a translation from a Greek original. The Semitic term does not appear in the New Testament, though it was frequently used in the Targums and rabbinic literature. If the writings of the New Testament had appeared originally in Aramaic or Hebrew, it is unlikely that a Greek loan-word would have been used in preference to a perfectly good Semitism.

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