Post by alon on Jul 19, 2016 15:15:50 GMT -8
Unlike most of the worlds believe that the New Testament (Brit Chadashah)is written in Greek it is not the case. It was written in Aramaic a dialect of Hebrews. Matthews, John, Peter (Kepha) and so on where all hebrew Jews and at the time Yisra'el was under the Roman empire being matured(spelling please) and killed. The common languages in the Roman Empire was Greek like the worlds common language is English today. The roman empire reach over such a vast amount of countries that Greek was used for the common languages.
Now Why would a Jewish writer or any Jew wish to write in Greek the very languages he hates, to other Jews that are also Aramaic?
The new testament was first translated from Aramaic to Greek. And that is where the trouble started.
I use a Bible that are translated word by word method from the Hebrew Aramaic scriptures and not at all a Bible that was translated and influenced by the Greeks.
Many believe the B'rith Chadashah was originally written in Aramaic. Some say it was written some in Aramaic, some in Greek, and some in Hebrew. However many other scholars are coming to believe that it was written entirely in Hebrew. The following is excerpted from a lesson taught by Rav S of Synagogue Beit Aveinu in Wenatchee, WA:
Greek vs. Hebrew
In Bible Schools today they teach that the New Testament was written in Greek. Most have believed that for a very long time. Some teach that Greek was the language that everyone spoke in Israel when Yeshua was here on earth. Others believe that Aramaic was the language of the day. However since the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered in Qumran… and some new information has surfaced… a few Messianic Scholars are taking another look at this topic. The Christian Church as a whole refuses to even open it up for discussion. They become extremely combative at times. It’s almost “heretical” to challenge this belief. Well, we’re going to challenge it right now!
Why is it important? It’s important because the language of Yeshua and the Brit Hadasha helps us to understand the Jewish culture of His time. t’s important to understand the world in which Yeshua lived, taught and interacted. It’s important because it is the language in which the Almighty spoke forth the 
to Moses and it is also the language in which the prophets expressed their revelations.
Much of a culture is wrapped up in its language, and you can’t separate the two. Try to separate English from England and you’ll quickly understand that a language and it’s people go hand in hand. Knowing what language Yeshua spoke, helps us better understand the words, phrases and teachings that are used in the New Testament. What could be more important then that?
Not only that, once we know that it was written in Hebrew we can then pursue to root out one of the most ancient anti-Semitic doctrine within Christianity. One of the most beneficial reasons to knowing that Hebrew is the language of the New Testament is… it gets us out of the Greek mindset and into the Hebraic mindset. So how can we truly know what language the New Testament was written in? Well, let’s look at the facts.
First, we have a book of Mathew written in Hebrew that predates anything we have in Koine Greek. [Koine Greek was one of the lowest forms of Greek, used mostly for translations. ed] The translations we use for our New Testament, come from the Koine Greek. There’s no disagreement on that. But, these are the transcripts they (Christendom) say are the originals. That’s where my disagreement starts. The fact that we have a writing of Mathew in Hebrew that dates before the one we have in Greek forces us to consider what it was originally written in.
Irenaeus (170 C.E.) “Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect.” (Irenaeus; Against Heresies 3:1)
Origen (c. 210 C.E.) “The first [Gospel] is written according to Matthew, the same that was once a tax collector, but afterwards an emissary of Yeshua the Messiah, who having published it for the Jewish believers, wrote it in Hebrew.” (quoted by Eusebius; Eccl. Hist. 6:25)
Eusebius (c. 315 C.E.) Matthew also, having first proclaimed the Gospel in Hebrew, when on the point of going also to the other nations, committed it to writing in his native tongue, and thus supplied the want of his presence to them by his writings. (Eusebius; Eccl. Hist. 3:24)
St Epiphanius (310 AD) “They have the good news in Mathew in it’s entirety in Hebrew. For it is clear that they still preserve this in the Hebrew alphabet as it was originally written.”
Now, there are some scholars out there who conceded the point and they say, “Yes, Mathew and perhaps even the rest of the gospels were written in Hebrew. But nothing else!” We’re going to find out that ALL of it was written in Hebrew, but this just rules out Mathew for now in both Greek AND Aramaic.
Another fact: Josephus wrote in Greek for his captors but he also knew Hebrew and Latin and wrote in Hebrew as well. In his books called the “Jewish Wars” he tells about when Jerusalem was surrounded by the Romans in 70 AD. He says the Greek speaking Romans sent him to speak to the Jews of Jerusalem in their own language. “He persuaded them to surrender the city, now in a manner already taken, and thereby to save themselves, and sent me to speak to them in our own language.” “Jewish wars” 5:9:2
Does this passage alone rule out Aramaic? No it doesn’t. We’ll rule out Aramaic, but I want to make sure we rule out Greek first.
Some scholars try to suggest that under the Hellenic (Greek) Empire, the Jews lost their Hebrew in their rush to become Hellenized and to speak Greek. The problem with this theory is when Antiochus Epiphanius tried to Hellenize the Jews, the Jews quickly formed an army led by Mattias Maccabeus and they defeated Antiochus and eradicated Hellenism! Mattias even killed any Jews who had begun to embrace Hellenism.
The Jews of the Second Temple period hated the Greek language so much that they said “That it is better for a man to give his child meat of swine than to teach him the language of the Greek's.” (Lamsa p.10) The Jews loved their Jewish religion, they loved their Jewish culture and they honored and loved their Jewish language, Hebrew. Just because the Greeks or Romans were ruling Israel, doesn’t mean we gave up our language.
Even though Josephus spoke Greek, he struggled with it. As educated as he was, he still didn’t speak Greek very well. “I have also taken a great deal of pains to obtain the learning of the Greeks, and understand the elements of the Greek language, although I have so long accustomed myself to speak our own tongue, that I cannot pronounce Greek with sufficiently; for our nation does not encourage those that learn the languages of many nations....” — Antiquities of the Jews 20,11.2
Josephus makes it quite clear that the Jews didn’t speak Greek. But we also see some evidences in the Scripture itself as to what they spoke. Here’s Yeshua speaking to Shaul… in Hebrew.
Act 26:14 And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.
Shaul spoke Greek, he was well educated. So Yeshua would’ve been able to speak to him in Greek; if He wanted to. He could’ve spoke to Shaul in Aramaic but He didn’t. He spoke in Hebrew. Some teachers point out John 19 vs. 19 and 20 to prove that Greek was what was used. Let’s look at that:
Joh 19:19-20 And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross. And the writing was, JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS. This title then read many of the Jews: for the place where Jesus was crucified was nigh to the city: and it was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin.
A Pastor pointed this out to me once and said "see there, it is written in Greek!" And I was like, are you blind? It also says it was written in Hebrew! Let me point out something else you may not have noticed:
Acts 2:3-13 3 And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance. 5 Now there were Jews living in Jerusalem, devout men from every nation under heaven. 6 And when this sound occurred, the crowd came together, and were bewildered because each one of them was hearing them speak in his own language. 7 They were amazed and astonished, saying, "Why, are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 "And how is it that we each hear them in our own language to which we were born? 9 "Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya around Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11 Cretans and Arabs -we hear them in our own tongues speaking of the mighty deeds of God." 12 And they all continued in amazement and great perplexity, saying to one another, "What does this mean ?" 13 But others were mocking and saying, "They are full of sweet wine."
Why would the Greek speaking Jews of Rome be “amazed” that any Jews in Israel were speaking Greek if all the Jews in Israel spoke Greek as the Christian commentators tell us? So it wasn’t just a few educated Jews who could understand Hebrew as we’re taught in Bible School.
Now, let’s think like a Jew for a moment. Every Jew knows that Hebrew is the Holy Language. Leshon Hakodesh we say in Hebrew. We know the so called “Old Testament” was written in Hebrew. So if a Jew was going to write the story of The Son of G-d, what would he write it in? The language of the Pagans, the Greek? No! They would’ve written it in Hebrew!
There’s even more evidence that the New Testament was written in Hebrew. The Dead Sea scrolls are a collection of ancient writings that were discovered in 1947. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered they found that over 80% of the writings written during the Second Temple period were written in Hebrew- NOT Greek. Greek and Aramaic texts only comprised 20% of all the writings.
Another thing I hear quite often is that “The New Testament was written in Greek so that the Jews that lived in other countries would be able to understand it because they all spoke Greek.” This shows a lack of understanding of the Jewish culture. Any Jew would know that Hebrew was taught to the Jews of the Diaspora. It was necessary in order to read the Old Testament in its original language.
What has survived by G-d’s providence is a copy in the Greek. [actually there are over 2700 Greek source documents and fragments, not all of which agree- unlike the TNK ed] However that should not shake our foundation. All the fundamentals we need to know are there in the Greek. How to live a good, holy and righteous life before G-d. The fact that it is a translation should not cause us to lose our faith. Many Messianics have defected to mainstream Judaism when they discovered they were lied to about what the New Testament was written in. It was baffling for a long time. But we figured out why this was; these people had their faith in the Bible and NOT in The One who created the Bible. These people saw their faith in The New Testament crumble, due to its being a translation, and they threw out the baby with the bathwater.
There’s a fine line here, but there is a line! Abraham never had a Bible at all! No Old Testament, No New Testament. Anyone here question Abraham’s faith? Is the New testament good? Of course it is. We learn more about G-d from it. I love the Brit Hadasha (New Testament) and would even die to preserve it. But if every Bible in the world was burned tomorrow, it wouldn’t change my faith one iota. Study the Brit Hadasha daily, you’ll grow closer to G-d and you’ll come to understand Him better. But don’t take your eyes off G-d Himself.
Let me tell you how freeing this information actually is. When an Orthodox Jew confronts you with the “errors in the Brit Hadasha,” because there are errors, you don’t have to defend what is impossible to defend. I see Believers trying to defend every last word in the Brit Hadasha. But we don’t have to. We don’t have to defend every word in the Tanach to the unsaved or those who don’t care to hear the truth either, and it (the Tanach) is the original. If I present all that I know on a topic, my job is done. The Holy Spirit is the One to convict.
Back to the Greek. There’s yet even more evidence that Greek is not the original language of the New Testament. It’s called the “Vav Connector.” In Hebrew it is not considered improper grammar to start a sentence with the word “And”. It is and was improper grammar to start a sentence with the word “And” in Greek. And please open your New Testaments. And see if you can find a page that does not have a sentence that starts with “And.” [I've done this many times with both Christians and Meshichi who don't believe the NT was written in Hebrew. Not once has anyone found a single page in any translation that didn't have the vav connector. ed]
Obviously, the Greek text we have is a translation from a language that allows for “And” to start a sentence. Still doesn’t rule out Aramaic, but it does rule out Greek.
Dr Robert Lindsey is one of the greatest Bible scholars of our time. He was fluent in Greek and Hebrew and other languages as well. He translated the book of Mark from Greek into Hebrew. He discovered something rather interesting when he did this; when he read the translation in Hebrew rather than Greek, it made more sense. He also discovered that it flowed better. It wasn’t all disjointed like it is in the Greek. Not only that, many passages had more meaning to the Hebrew ear. He is 100% convinced that the Brit Hadasha was originally written in Hebrew!
And you know, it only makes sense. The Bible is a book written by Jews- of course they wrote it in Hebrew! [Even epistles written to the synagogues (NOT churches) of the diaspora would have been in Hebrew. Jews of the diaspora would have spoken Hebrew, and the leadership of the synagogues wuld be fluent in both speaking and reading/writing in Hebrew. But these letters were mostly encyclicals, meant to be read and passed on to other synagogues. This means they were probably passed to regions which spoke different languages, not all of which spoke any common tongues including Greek. Hebrew was then their only common language, as every synagogue then and now has Hebrew classes. ed]
edit: my notes don't say, but this sounds like a teaching by Rav Stanley. Probably I did some research too, and the credit got lost. But I thought this even when I was in Hebrew Roots, and our studies just seem to lead to more agreement. But a lot of the language sounds like Rav S, so I am guessing this is mostly his work. Anyhow, he is smarter than I am, so I'll give him the credit anyhow 
