13th June 2006
Work improves and a very short intro to the text of the Bible
Work has been good, I suppose - or at least as good as grading a few math problems a few thousand times each can be. I’ve made a few friends and really don’t mind the monotony. I really wish they would let us listen to music, but I guess I understand their reasons.
In any case, there’s a guy at work who knows a lot about a lot of things, so it was lovely when the conversation turned to the text of the Bible and all of the sudden I was a bit of an expert (though he wasn’t so sure he trusted my information). So, we don’t have that much time to chat on our breaks (and usually I’m trying to stuff my mouth with lunch or something) so he told me to send him an e-mail. I’ve decided that since I’ve written a brief intro to this thing called text criticism, I might as well put it up here and inform a few folks. Oh, and feel free to correct me and whatnot - I’m tired of only getting Spam responses that I have to delete…
My good Dennis,
I have decided to write you briefly to say hello and to give a brief description of biblical text criticism. Obviously I’m not a bona fide PhD bearing expert, but I can assure you I know my stuff. A short article that I found at http://ask.yahoo.com/ask/20030227.html confirms a few of the things I am about to mention.
The text of the Hebrew scriptures (the Old Testament) were originally written down in Hebrew with the exception of a few chapters of Daniel and Ezra which were written in Aramaic. These writings - the Torah (the first five books of history and law), the books of history, the prophets, and the canonical wisdom books - were translated into Greek about 200 years before Christ. This text, known as the Septuagint, or LXX for “seventy”, was made because Greek had become the common tongue of the Mediterranean world after Alexander and his successors took over. There are debates over which version of the Hebrew scriptures New Testament authors quote, whether the Masoretic (the name for the Hebrew text) or the Septuagint, and sometimes there are definitive answers - like in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he uses the Septuagint because he quotes a passage where “seed” is found as singular in the Septuagint but in the plural in the Masoretic.
The New Testament itself was written in what is known as koine Greek - common Greek, the Greek that had become the trade language of the Mediterranean. The letter to the Hebrews is in nearly Classical Greek - as if someone today would write a letter using legal language or something, and the writer of Luke-Acts (Luke and Acts were originally a single work) was also probably formally educated in Greek. The letters written by Paul and John and Peter all have some similarities with other existing Hellenistic Greek letters; the Apocalypse of John has some similarites with other Apocalyptic literature from the period.There are a number of Semiticisms in the text - expressions that make sense in Hebrew (or Hebrew culture) but not in Greek (or English) - as well as epexegetical comments where the writer used an Aramaic word and then translates it to Greek for us.
Of these texts (the Old and New Testaments), there are no extant “autograph” copies (the originals). The earliest large collection of NT writings is a big section of the Pauline letters written around 200 and is called Papyrus 46. The earliest complete collections of the Old and New Testaments are Greek from the 4th century and in the 5th century, Jerome translated the whole thing into the Latin (known as the Vulgate - also for the “vulgar” common tongue). The Vulgate is a good source because Jerome knew Greek better than we do and because he was in possession of better and older manuscripts than we are - and now we have very well attested texts of the Vulgate.
Some later extra-canonical writings were written in Coptic - an Egyptian/Greek mix recorded with Greek letters. The recently published Gospel of Judas is one of these. Another source of critical material is the Arab world. A number of Arab scholars made copies of the Hebrew scriptures for their own studies.
I think one of the things that might be confusing you about the languages thing is the debate over which language Jesus and his disciples would have spoken. Since the text is in Greek, we might conjecture that at least some of them (Matthew, John, Peter - the writers) would have spoken Greek. And as mentioned above, Greek was the trade language of the Mediterranean world. Others think that they spoke Aramaic. Jesus came from the north country of Israel, on the frontier facing the Arab world, and at this time, Aramaic was probably the principal trade -and official administrative - language of the Arab world (Arabic didn’t come into prominence till the 6th century CE. As mentioned above, there are Aramaic words used in the NT text, though this doesn’t prove that it would be the language used most often by Jesus and his friends. There is also a number of scholars who argue that Jesus and his disciples would have spoken in Hebrew because it was still the language of the rabbinical schools - schools that all Jewish boys would have attended for a period of time, depending on their skills and place in like. Scholars argue about why certain speeches from the gospels show that they would have been speaking one language or the other, but I’m not well-informed enough on this topic to make a judgment call. (It is possible that they would also have known a little Latin as this language was coming in as the language of the Roman government, and the sign on the cross was written using it).
See you at the office and Godspeed,
Daryl
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4 Responses to “Work improves and a very short intro to the text of the Bible”
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Laura says:
June 13th, 2006 at 8:34 pm
I’m glad to hear that work is getting better. I don’t know if I could stand 8 hours a day of math…I’ve been studying this summer for the GRE, and so far those pesky math practice problems have been unfortunate for me, to say the least. In happier news, I’m living in St. Louis, Missouri this summer, and I recently started going to an early morning bible study at my church here. Last week the leader mentioned some of Luther’s writings that I think we had to read in Prof. Wilcox’s class last year (The Freedom of a Christian, The Bondage of the Will), and I felt very pleased with myself for knowing what he was talking about.
Sarah says:
June 15th, 2006 at 11:33 pm
No doubt when you wrote “the writer of Luke-Acts was also probably formally educated in Greek” you were thinking of the hapax “epikellein ten naus” over which i slaved for 20 pages this spring. Right?
Overall, though, nice explanation, good post; I’ve appreciated many as of late. You just have to work in the triremes somehow…
amy brink says:
June 20th, 2006 at 9:49 am
hey daryl. it was fun to hang out with you on friday at carries! so, the other day i was talking to someone about what languages jesus and the disciples would have spoken and i qouted your blog. it was great because quoting your stuff (fear not, i told them it was your stuff) made me look smarter - so thanks!
Daryl says:
June 26th, 2006 at 6:03 pm
Hey Laura, not that you probably read to see if I leave comments back or anything, but the part of Wilcox’s class that I think about the most is probably the 3 tasks of theology: Constructive, Apologetic, and Critical - for we must always remember that judgment is a good thing…
And for Sarah, well, let me just say that I should probably ask Dr. Bratt to do a guest write-in about triremes - unless you wanted to do that… Actually, if there is anything that you just want to get out there and the facebook won’t do for you (do you facebook?) you can always send it to me and I’ll put it up for the public to see (that is, as much of the public as reads this website.