Devoted to the Propagation and Defense of New Testament Christianity
VOLUME 14
April 4, 1963
NUMBER 47, PAGE 1,12b-13

The Eastern Text And Lamsa

Robert H. Farish

The following excerpt from the book The Final Week, by R. C. Foster will be of interest to those who have come across some of Lamsa's claims with reference to the Eastern Text. This is reproduced in the Gospel Guardian by permission of the publishers, Baker Book House — Grand Rapids, Michigan.

"Claims Of Lamsa"

"Some of the points raised in interpretation of the Gospel accounts out of the Aramaic background have been broadcast in syndicated news articles. G. M. Lamsa, a scholar of Syria, has recently gained much publicity through his bizarre writings on this theme. He claims that the gospels were all written originally in Aramaic, and that the Peshitta-Syric manuscript was an early Aramaic document and not a translation from the Greek. He claims that the Aramaic of Christ's time with only slight changes is still spoken by Assyrians and Chaldeans and is used in liturgy by Syrians of the Maronite and Jacobite sects. These constitute nearly one-half million people who live not far from Galilee.

Black discusses this type of Aramaic. He says: `Frederick Sehulthess found in Christian Palestinian Syric the Aramaic dialect most closely akin to the Aramaic of the Gospels, and in this he had the support of two Cambridge scholars, Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlap Gipson' (op. cit., p. 16).

Torrey also makes mention of this dialect. 'The Old Syric (Lewis) Gospels can occasionally give a suggestion here, for there is evidence that they were translated by Palestinian Christians who had migrated, or fled, to the neighborhood of Antioch. Very many traces of their native dialect appear in the Syric; which, however, rarely has any great value for critical purposes' (Torrey in Kepler, op. cit., p. 56). Lamsa even claims that no traces of Greeks, or Greek language, literature, or culture are found in Syria, Palestine, or Mesopotamia! This last is such a complete contradiction of the actual discoveries of archaeologists, especially In the Trans-Jordan area and of the ruins of Graeco-Roman civilization which have been familiar to all travelers in this section for ages, that it hardly needs refutation. Lamsa argues for the New Testament's being written originally in Aramaic on the basis that an Aramaic speaking people would not write their sacred literature in a foreign language which was not known in these parts and would not have been understood. A curious monstrosity this, with that inscription in Greek at the top of the cross of Christ staring Lamsa in the face. Not only was the country of Palestine bilingual and the New Testament written in Greek from the Christian side, but from the Jewish side, here are the writings of Philo and Josephus. The books of the Apocrypha also were nearly all written in Greek.

Both Torrey and Black cite the fact that Josephus first wrote his works in his native Aramaic for his own people and then published them abroad to the Roman world in Greek. While this would offer some support to Papiss' statement that Matthew first wrote his Gospel in Aramaic (with the implication that Matthew then published his work in Greek), it would not match the radical theory of copying from Aramaic sources which the Gospel writers misunderstood and mistranslated. For any wide reading Josephus had to publish his work in Greek. The church became worldwide in scope and encompassed both Jews and Gentiles very early. Its objective from the beginning was the winning of all the world. The Greek language was the necessary vehicle.

Over all the civilized world Greek was the universal language. Lamsa's argument presupposes that the New Testament was written for circulation in Palestine and that Greek was unknown in Palestine. Both assumptions are in self evident contradictions to the known facts. Lamsa argues further that Christianity was firmly established in Palestine before Greeks and other non-Semites adopted this religion. It is true that a great church was established first in Jerusalem, but even a child's knowledge of the book of Acts would give rebuttal as to how soon the church was scattered abroad and began to preach to the Gentiles. No books of the New Testament were written until Christianity began to reach far out into the Graeco-Roman world, with the possible exception of the Epistle of James. Lamsa reluctantly admits that Paul did travel in Greece and Italy, but claims that even here he spoke in Jewish synagogues and that the work among the Gentiles followed later. But even a tyro in the study of Acts knows that the work among the Gentiles followed immediately after his preaching and rejection in the synagogue in each city: he did not cover the Roman world preaching to Jews and then start over the same Roman world preaching to Gentiles; the work among both was carried on in each city before he went to the next.

Lamsa even goes to the extreme of arguing that Paul wrote his letters to churches in Greece and Rome in the Aramaic language, using the illustration that an American Presbyterian missionary would today write to churches in India in English, not in the language of India. This illustration, which might or might not be true according to the purposes and situation of the writer and readers, completely contradicts his absurd arguments, for Greek was the universal language and Aramaic the language of a section, just as English is world-wide and the language of India local. He admits that Paul may have been able to converse in Greek, but would not have been able to write in Greek and claims that his defense in Jerusalem and Caesarea were made in Aramaic because he could in this language best express himself to be understood. The assertion that Paul's defenses in Caesarea were made in Aramaic is entirely without foundation and contradictory to the whole circumstances of a prisoner, who was such a master of Greek that he could address most eloquently in Greek the very elite of Athens itself from Mars Hill — such a prisoner being tried in a Roman court where Greek and Latin prevailed and having used his native Aramaic! The reason for Paul's use of Aramaic in addressing the mob in Jerusalem is made apparent in Acts 22:2. It was not because Paul was illiterate and not able to use the universal language, but he desired to overcome the Jewish prejudice of the mob, to get them to hear him, and to make sure even the uneducated understood. Lamsa further claims that the New Testament is full of Aramaic idioms and style of speech.

Review Of His Position

The whole line of argument Lamsa advances is so manifestly contrary to the facts that it would hardly deserve any reply were it not for the fact that his writings have been widely publicized in the newspapers of America, and a great many people have been set to talking about the Aramaic background and the marvelous light which is being thrown on the New Testament from the Aramaic. Just what light has been thrown on the New Testament? When Lamsa tries to show Aramaic Idioms which he thinks he sees in the Greek New Testament just what does he cite? One of the points he emphasized particularly was that the mastery of Aramaic which he possessed had given him insight into the idiom which made so difficult the passage about the saving of a rich man being as difficult as a camel's going through a needle's eye. He said that the Aramaic idiom showed that the original word here was not 'camelos' (camel), but 'camilos' (cable). This immediately raises the suspicion that instead of Lamsa being indebted to any mysterious mastery of Aramaic for this suggestion, he simply saw that in the Greek text of Matt. 19:24 and of Luke 18:25 there is a variant reading in some manuscripts which carry the Greek word 'camilos' instead of 'camelos,' and seeing the variation emitted the wild guess that this may have come from an Aramaic background. A study of the passages will show that not one single early or important manuscript carries this reading (camilos) and that the few late manuscripts which do carry this variation are so unimportant they are not even listed for this passage in any ordinary critical apparatus of a Greek New Testament. Furthermore, this confirms the suspicion that Lamsa does not know too much about the interpretation of the New Testament and that the people who are rushing off to follow him are proceeding down a blind alley. For when Lamsa arbitrarily announced that the original reading of the passage was a cable through the eye of a needle (which is quite possible for a man) and not a camel through the eye of a needle, then he missed the very point of the passage for Jesus said he was talking of something which was impossible for man, but possible for God. The very extreme character of the illustration enforced the impact of the passage. The faux-pas to be anticipated was reached when Lamsa finally published a syndicated article in American newspapers announcing his marvelous discovery from the Aramaic background that the original text did not really affirm that Jonah was swallowed by a whale, but that 'he had the whale of a time'! Not even the fact the book of Jonah was written in Hebrew seemed to deter him from his attempts to rewrite the narrative in his fantastic manner."