Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Adam wrote:Church service starts at 9AM (making doubtful that I will ever actually get there from 70 miles away) and would probably be over by 10:30. I would probably go on the one Sunday a month the guest pastor is there (probably Nov. 8) and would probably talk to him (her?) and others there until noon. Do you get up Sundays by then?
Isn't Dirty Dingus McGee near you? Or some better place for lunch?

You mean the place I started working at when I was 15 and bought my truck from the owner with my own earned cash

Yep know the place.

Lunch it may be.

Michael BG wrote:

gmx wrote:Much scholarly endeavor has been spent asserting that Mark's or Matthew's Aramaic usage betrays their respective primitivity. Which is true?

Mark's direct Aramaic quotations are almost always accompanied with a translation, indicating that he does not expect his readership to understand the Aramaic...

Matthew uses fewer Aramaic words, but tends to use Aramaic structures or formulas in his Gospel to a far greater degree than the other evangelists...

To what extent does the scholarship value the Aramaic underpinnings of the synoptic gospels?

I am surprised that you state this is the current scholarly thinking on Aramaisms in the gospels. Mark has Aramaic structures as well. Matthew often has copied the exact wording of Mark. I think there is a suggestion that the Bezan text of Luke and Acts have more Aramaisms. Sometimes Luke and sometimes Matthew have the closer relationship to Aramaic Q traditions. I have not seen any discussion for comparing L and M material. Some scholars also see Aramaism in John.

My original question derived from reading Bulter's "The Originality of St Matthew", however, I didn't intend to indicate any particular view of modern scholarship, only that various authors have attempted to associate assumed Aramaic usage with primitivity. I assume that as a simple fact.

What Butler says, for example (p149), in what he calls "Markan contexts", is that Matthew uses the word τότε (then) 51 times, whereas in the parallel passages, Mark uses it only 6 times. Matthew's use of the word (in both Markan and non-Markan contexts) is not always correct Greek, but is symptomatic of a translation from Aramaic. Butler asks is it more likely that a native Greek compiler using Greek-Mark as a source added this word 45 times to Mark's account (often incorrectly), or that Mark removed it 45 times on account of it being incorrect Greek?

gmx wrote: What Butler says, for example (p149), in what he calls "Markan contexts", is that Matthew uses the word τότε (then) 51 times, whereas in the parallel passages, Mark uses it only 6 times. Matthew's use of the word (in both Markan and non-Markan contexts) is not always correct Greek, but is symptomatic of a translation from Aramaic. Butler asks is it more likely that a native Greek compiler using Greek-Mark as a source added this word 45 times to Mark's account (often incorrectly), or that Mark removed it 45 times on account of it being incorrect Greek?

This surprises me. I was not aware of τότε (then) being a translation of an Aramaism. I have read that Mark’s και (and) is an example of poor Greek and reflects a Hebraic or Aramaic usage. And that Matthew often changes it. An example is Mk 7:29 – “and he said to her” which Matthew (15:28) changed to “then answering, Jesus said to her”. However it appears τότε (then) often appears in Q and M material in Matthew. I haven’t looked at them all, but I would be interested in seeing which of these 45 parallels where Matthew has τότε and Mark doesn’t that Butler actually examines.

Butler’s book was published in 1951 and Grant R. Osborne and Matthew C. Williams state that he didn’t have any “objective criteria by which to judge priority, many of his conclusions are too subjective to be of any ultimate value” (p. 44 Three Views on the Origins of the Synoptic Gospels Ed. Robert L Thomas).