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Old 04-24-2008, 02:45 AM
Thomas2007 Thomas2007 is offline.
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It's a bible translated by George Lamsa (hence the name the Lamsa Bible) in the 1930's. He was an Assyrian scholar.

He was of the opinion, following the Assyrian Church, that Aramaic was the native language of the region in Christ's day and that the New Testament was originally written in Aramaic and the Greek New Testament is a translation. He also held that the Masoretic Hebrew text is a translation of the Peshitta, because the Jews had lost their authentic texts. Hence, their hypothesis is that both Masoretic Hebrew and Greek texts are inferior to the Peshitta, which is the legitimate tradition. Thus, they hold to an "Aramaic Onlyism," of sorts! Here is a PDF file on the position: "Was the New Testament Really Written in Greek?"

His translation has numerous problems, probably the most famous is his translation of Christ's words on the cross in Mark 15:34, "My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?" to "My God, my God, for this I was spared." The reference back to Psalm 22:1 in his translation reads "My God, my God, why hast thou let me to live?" I won't go into the technical details on this, I'm sure you can find something on the Net that covers the actual words "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" compared to his "Eli, Eli, lemana, shabakthani! I think even Wikipedia has a good explanation on this.

One thing you might try to point out to her is John 19:20 where the sign Pilate placed above the cross, "JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS," was written in "Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin." Her version will read the same thing, John 19:20, AET Why not Aramaic?


Cordially,

Thomas
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Thomas Weddle
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