In
a previous post, I
looked at the possibility of an Aramaic source behind Matt. 23. 26//Luke 11.41
and Luke 11.42//Matt. 23.23 by focusing on how Luke especially might have
(deliberately?) read or redacted דכו (‘cleanse’,
‘purify’) as זכו (‘give alms’) and שבתא (‘dill’)
as שברא (‘rue’).
Discussing
the possibility of Aramaic sources can be highly complex, particularly attempts
at reconstruction of whole passages. In historical Jesus studies, the so-called
criterion of Aramaic influence is regularly dismissed. This is both right and
wrong. It is right in that none of the criteria take us back to the historical
Jesus but thus wrong in the sense that it is not necessarily worse than the
other criteria. But, like the other criteria, it might be possible to use Aramaic
to get back to earlier tradition. Of course, even Aramaisms may not even do
that—it is entirely possible, as critics rightly point out, that there could
have been Aramaic influence on Greek traditions. But then the criteria should
never have been used in a quasi-scientific sense anyway. So now, in addition to
the examples of דכו/זכו
and שבתא/שברא, I want to give another two examples where
I think there is evidence of pre-gospel Aramaic sources before giving some
suggestions about what else we might say about Aramaic and the Gospel tradition.
The
first is from the Lord’s Prayer (if that’s the right title) and the (genuinely
famous?) difference between Matt. 6.12//Luke 11.4:
And
forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. (Matt.
6.12)
And
forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
(Luke 11.4)
In Aramaic ‘debt’ and ‘debtor’ (from חובא) is another
way of talking about ‘sin’ and ‘sinner’. Chilton noted some time ago that such
uses are common enough in the Isaiah Targum. Here debt/debtors can refer to
people punished by the Messiah, people destroyed by God, wicked gentiles,
enemies of Jerusalem, and so on. This is entirely consistent with all the
conventional words for ‘sinner’ in Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic, all of which
remained stable from the Hebrew Bible/OT through to rabbinic literature. The
language of debts/debtor is also found throughout the Syriac Peshitta (same
root) and used to translate all the standard uses of ‘sinner’ in the Hebrew
Bible. Obviously, we have to be careful using translations as late as the
Peshitta and the Isaiah Targum but lateness alone should not be used as a
reason or excuse to discount this possibility underlying Matt. 6.13 and Luke
11.4. For a start, the Aramaic root is certainly known by the first century (e.g.
11Q10 21.5; 34.4). But also, related traditions using the language of debt are found
in the Gospel tradition (in addition to Matt. 6.12//Luke 11.4, see Matt.
18.23-25; Luke 7.36-50; Luke 16.1-9).
Given the difference between Matt. 6.12//Luke 11.4, we
might suggest the possibility of an Aramaic source. This time, however, Luke
would not have gone for a significant change (as with ‘rue’ and ‘give alms’)
but for a more straightforward understanding of ‘sins’ which would be less
culturally specific than not including mention of ‘sins’ at all.
The second example is from Mark 2.27-28 and parallels:
Then he said to
them, ‘The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath;
so the son of man is lord even of the Sabbath’ (Mark 2.23-28)
For the Son of Man
is lord of the Sabbath’ (Matt. 12.8)
Then he said to
them, ‘The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath’ (Luke 6.5)
This might be the best possibility of the generic use (with reference
to the speaker/individual too) of the Aramaic idiom for ‘man’
(though the gendered term can be used more generally for ‘human’): (א)נש(א)
בר.
Throughout the Gospel tradition, the term seems to function as something like a
title (as is almost inevitable if the
term was translated from Aramaic to Greek with reference to Jesus). Aside from when
there are obvious allusions to Daniel 7.13 (e.g. Mark 13.26; 14.62), it is not
clear whether it is even possible to determine with any certainty that ‘son of
man’ sayings necessarily reflect an earlier Aramaic idiom. In various cases
they potentially could (e.g. Mark
2.10; Luke 9.58//Matt. 8.20), but in themselves they could equally have been a title which has come from Mark or whoever
else wrote such passages in Greek. The son of man problem across the Gospel
tradition is for another day but in the case of Mark 2.27-28 we do seem to have good evidence of an
Aramaic source where it appears to function as a form of parallelism indicating
its generic aspects (cf. Ps. 8.4). What’s more, the sentiment of justifying
Sabbath practice in terms of being made for humanity was something known in,
and associated with, Palestinian Judaism (e.g. Exod. 16.29; Jub. 2.17; Mek. Exod. 31.12-17; cf. b. Yoma
85b). But perhaps most significant is that both Matt. and Luke drop the generalising
Mark 2.27 (‘The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the
Sabbath’) and clearly make sure that we are dealing with a title for Jesus
alone: The Son of Man. The implication being, of course, that Mark has retained
a more literal understanding of an Aramaic idiom.
These are, then, two more of the better possibilities of Aramaic
sources underlying the Gospel tradition. I have noted that this remains limited
in its use for historical Jesus studies, at least in the sense that it does not
necessarily take us back to the words of Jesus. It is also of limited use for
the Synoptic Problem. If there were lots
of examples like Matt. 23. 26//Luke 11.41, Luke 11.42//Matt. 23.23 and Matt.
6.12//Luke 11.4 then we might be able to make a case for Q (an Aramaic Q or q’s
at that). But I’m not sure that there are enough examples of such parallels in
Matt. and Luke to do so (at least not to my knowledge) and so these one word or
phrase examples alone only point to isolated cases which is not, statistically
speaking, enough. Such examples might mean a qualification of a model of Luke
using Matt., or vice versa, in the limited sense that there might also have been
Aramaic sources alongside Mark and Luke or Matthew. One interesting possibility
is that such Aramaic sources might, in whatever form, account for Papias’ confusion
that canonical Matthew was originally written in the Hebrew (i.e. Aramaic)
language (as I tentatively argued with Mike Kok at SBL in 2013)
Using
such examples are limited. But pointing to the potential of earlier Palestinian
tradition and accounting for some problems in the Synoptic tradition is something, is it not?
