I couldn't access or find anything when I did some searching.DCHindley wrote: I believe that Howard's ideas have been discussed on Crosstalk2 (XTalk), Synoptic-l (not sure if it was in the old one or the current one, which is just plain "Synoptic"), both forums part of Google Groups, and the IOUDAIOS e-lists. Howard, while a bit, well, weird, he knows his Aramaic. He was (maybe still is) a moderator and owner of an e-list that, I believe, had the name Aramaic-l. He is also a (self) published author.
All I found of interest by Jack Kilmon was a post regarding the “debate” between Howard and Petersen and his own view rejecting a Hebrew Matthew.DCHindley wrote: Probably it would help to type the name "Jack Kilmon" into your search engine, as he is proficient in Aramaic, having been taught it, and Biblical Hebrew, informally by family friend William Albright starting when Jack was 8 years old (about 1948). As a side note to Stephan H: I'm pretty sure that if Albright had a boat, Jack has been on it. Jack, like Howard, is also a colorful figure (e.g., used to milk venomous snakes for a living, was a co-owner of a reptile zoo/lab in MD at age 29, and later operating a private research lab, filing several patents related to extraction/purification/concentration of snake venom). Jack has published articles on the subject, and I am sure he participated in the discussions, but to be honest my recollection is vague.
DCH
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/tc- ... sages/5609
Both Nehemia Gordon and Tim Hegg appear to come from a conservative faith group and this seems to be reflected in their methodology.John2 wrote: I was fortunate to be able to talk with Gordon on a discussion group about fifteen years ago when I was considering becoming a Karaite and remain very impressed with his knowledge.
As far as Mt. 23 goes, the Aramaic Matthews say "they say," as a critic of Gordon notes here:
http://www.torahresource.com/EnglishArt ... Gordon.pdf
Tim Hegg states, “The Even Bohan or Shem-Tov Hebrew is only one of several extant Hebrew manuscripts of Matthew. There is also the so-called “Munster” and “du Tillet”. In both of these however, the verb is plural, not singular. Moreover, in all of the extant Syriac manuscripts that contain Matthew 23 (both the so-called “Old Syriac” and the Peshitta), the verb is also plural.”
What I mean by an examination of the Aramaic is the Aramaic that may lie behind the Greek and not an examination of copies of the text in Aramaic as these are often different.
Hegg also states that Gordon “admits that of the extant manuscripts of the Even Bohan, six have the plural rather than the singular.”
Hegg also states that Howard has grouped the manuscripts of the Even Bohan or Shem-Tov Hebrew “into three families”. Hegg writes, “Howard is very clear that he has not given a critical text”. Hegg states that according to Howard, “Only the two manuscripts of Group 1 have the singular, … the two are of the same family.”
Hegg says that when Howard translate this verse not as “he” or “it” but as “they”, because “the seat of Moses” is like the Congress and is a body of people.
It seems interesting that Hegg states that Gordon “also mentions that one witness to the Old Latin (ff2) also reads the singular (dixerit)".
J.K. McKee writes:
“Sifting through the issue of the composition Gospel of Matthew, and some sort of Hebrew involvement concerning it … has today become rather complicated. It is complicated on one level because of the intense amount of emotion and fervor demonstrated in support of an originally transcribed Gospel of Matthew in Hebrew, by both those in the independent Hebrew/Hebraic Roots movement and those in more mainstream Messianic Judaism. It is complicated because there does not seem to be that much engagement, at all, with contemporary examiners of the canonical Greek Matthew, who are certainly familiar with the proposal that Matthew’s Gospel was originally written in Hebrew, but who may not see it as historically and textually valid.”
http://messianicapologetics.net/biblica ... _TORAH.pdf
“No worthwhile Bible scholar today at all denies that there is both Semitic linguistic influence and Jewish theological significance involved with our canonical Greek Matthew. … The present canonical Greek Matthew has no indications of it being a translation of an original Hebrew Matthew. “Matthew’s Greek reveals none of the telltale marks of a translation. Furthermore, Matthew’s OT quotations are derived from the LXX [Septuagint] rather than the Hebrew text” (D.A. Hagner, ISBE).22 If anything is to be noted, “The mix of text forms suggests an author writing in Greek but knowledgeable in Semitic languages and therefore able to vary his form” (Carson and Moo).23 Any Hebraisms or Semitic language forms used in this Gospel and transcribed into Greek, would most likely be oral or from second hand notes,”
“Howard had to reconstruct his text from the Evan Bohan, … authored by a Spanish Jew named Shem Tov ibn Shaprut (or Shafrut), and completed in the late Fourteenth Century.”
“Portions of the Gospel of Matthew, written in Hebrew, are present in Shaprut’s Evan Bohan, and are involved with Shaprut refuting the Messiahship of Yeshua and Biblical doctrines essential to Messianic faith.”
“Howard, appropriating the material of Evan Bohan, did his best to reconstruct the references from Matthew into a narrative similar to the accepted, canonical Greek text of Matthew.”
I had assumed that the Even Bohan or Shem Tov was a continuous text as an appendix to a work written by Shem Tov ibn Shaprut. I did not think that the text had to reconstructed from the text written by Shem Tov.
A reconstruction is not a reliable source for what was actually present, which can be clearly understood if one tried to reconstruct the text of Mark using only Matthew and Luke with no reference to Mark, or from trying to reconstruct the gospel of Marcion.
J.K. McKee writes:
“Up until the early 2000s, Howard’s HGM was understandably constrained to the examination of various textual critics, examiners of the Gospel of Matthew, and a few people in the Messianic movement. This changed, however, with the 2005 release of the sensational and hype-laden book The Hebrew Yeshua Vs. the Greek Jesus: New Light on the Seat of Moses from Shem-Tov’s Hebrew Matthew by Karaite Jew Nehemia Gordon (Hilkiah Press). He took a special interest at the different reading that the HGM appears to have provided for Matthew 23:2-3, as contrasted to the canonical Greek Matthew, which would support some of his non-traditional views of Karaite Judaism.37 Suffice it to say, the release of Gordon’s publication and the dissemination of it throughout the Messianic community ever since (in spite of the fact that Nehemia Gordon is not at all a professed Believer in Yeshua of Nazareth as Israel’s Messiah), has seen the presumed Hebrew Gospel of Matthew receive a great deal of attention”
J.K. McKee quotes Tim Hegg who he states is a member of the Messianic movement.
McKee considers Mt 1:21 and he doesn’t consider Jesus and sins in Hebrew, but the name change of Jesus, stating the Shem Tov “does not employ the standard Hebrew name Yeshua … which means ‘Salvation’,”. He states Jesus name “is spelled as …, yod-shin-vav, with the specific intent of the reader not to pronounce it as ‘Yeshua’ or ‘Salvation’.” He states that Howard states that the Hebrew stands for “‘may his name and memory be blotted out.’”
McKee points out that in the Lord’s prayer Mt 6:9-10 the Shem Tov has changed ‘Your kingdom come’ to ‘Your kingdom be blessed’. He speculates that this is because for the author Jesus is not “a figure who is to usher in the Kingdom of God upon Earth”.
McKee points out that in Mt 9:2 the Shen Tov has changed Jesus forgiving sins to God forgiving sins.
I think McKee is pointing out in Mt 16:16 that it would be strange for a Hebrew original gospel to have ‘You are the Messiah, that is, Kristo’ because Kristo or Christ only makes sense in a Greek original. If the Hebrew was original ‘You are the Messiah’ would be sufficient as modern Hebrew versions have. He concludes here, “This is an internal proof of the fact that the HGM does not originate from the First Century period, given the presence of a Greek-derived term such as Qristo in its text”.
Maurice Casey in Aramaic sources of Mark’s gospel states, “Howard proceeds to argue from puns, wordplays and alliteration. He thinks they go far beyond what a translator would have created, and that they enhance the text of Matthew in a way that an anti-Christian author like Shem-Tob would not have done. There is some truth in the second point, but this only shows that parts of the text were inherited rather than done by Shem-Tob himself. Howard completely fails to demonstrate the first point” (p 62).
And
“We must therefore conclude that Howard’s hypothesis is completely unsatisfactory. … nor did he test the inadequate methodology of his argumentation” (p 63).
It is a shame that Casey does not deal with more than three examples from Howard and none deep enough to totally satisfy me.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=oxl ... rd&f=false
Maurice Casey in An Aramaic Approach to Q has about 40 pages discussing the Scribes and the Pharisees mainly on Mt 23:23-26 (Lk 11:39-51) but doesn’t seem to discuss Mt 23:2-3 as there is no Lucan parallel and therefore it is not generally seen as part of Q.