George Lamsa

George M. Lamsa
Born 5 August 1892
Mar Bishu, Turkey
Died 22 September 1975(1975-09-22) (aged 83)
Occupation Biblical Scholar
Known for The Holy Bible from Ancient Eastern Manuscripts

George M. Lamsa (Syriac: ܓܝܘܪܓܝܣ ܠܡܣܐ) (August 5, 1892 – September 22, 1975) was an Assyrian[1] author. He was born in Mar Bishu in what is now the extreme east of Turkey. A native Aramaic speaker, he translated the Aramaic Peshitta (literally "straight, simple") Old and New Testaments into English.

Contents

History and views

Lamsa was a member of the Assyrian Church of the East. He was a strong advocate of one of that Church's beliefs: Peshitta primacy (a form of Aramaic primacy). His hypothesis was that for the New Testament, the Peshitta was the original text, and the Greek version was translated from it. In support of this, he noted that Aramaic was the language of Jesus and the earliest Christians,[2] because of the historical fact that, according to Lamsa, "Aramaic was the colloquial and literary language of Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, from the fourth century B. C. to the ninth century A. D."[3]

Lamsa further claimed that while most of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, the original was lost and the present Hebrew version, the Masoretic text, was re-translated from the Peshitta.

Lamsa produced his own translation of the Bible in the form of The Holy Bible from Ancient Eastern Manuscripts, which is commonly called the Lamsa Bible.[4]

Translation of Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani

A notable difference between Lamsa's translation and other versions of the New Testament occurs in the fourth of the Words of Jesus on the cross – Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani. This is regarded by more conservative scholars as a quotation in Aramaic of the opening of Psalm 22, which in English is "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" This is similar to how the psalm appears in the Aramaic Peshitta Old Testament and it appears in earlier Aramaic Targums. Lamsa believed that the text of the Gospels was corrupt, and that it is not a quotation but should read /Eli, Eli, lemana shabaqthani, which he translates as: "My God, my God, for this I was spared!" An accompanying footnote in Lamsa's English version of the Bible explains Jesus's meaning as "This was my destiny."

Aramaic grammars and dictionaries,[5] disagree with Lamsa's assertion about Jesus' last words, as the word שבקתני [shvaqtani] in Aramaic is the perfect 2nd person singular form of the verb שבק [shvaq] which means "to leave, to leave s.t. left over, to abandon," or "to permit"[6] with the 1st person singular pronoun affixed. This would, in turn, cause the phrase to translate as "why have you left me?" "why have you let me be?" "why have you abandoned me?" or "why have you permitted me?"

Reception

Where many scholars hold that the sources of the New Testament and early oral traditions of fledgling Christianity were, indeed, in Aramaic, the Peshitta appears to have been strongly influenced by the Byzantine reading of the Greek manuscript tradition, and is in a dialect of Syriac that is much younger than that which was contemporary to Jesus.[7]

Critics of Lamsa assert that he, like many native speakers Aramaic, extend the semantic areas of words beyond the evidence of existent texts.[8]

Bruce Chilton, scholar and prominent Aramicist, has said:

"A still less defensible tendency confuses Aramaic of the first century with Syriac, a different form of the language. The approach of George Lamsa, who used the Peshitta Syriac version as an index of replicating Jesus’ teaching in Aramaic, has been taken up and popularized by Neil Douglas-Klotz. This approach willfully perpetuates a basic confusion of language, since Aramaic and Syriac come from different centuries and areas (although they are closely related Semitic languages), and is based on uncritical treatment of the Peshitta, a Syriac version of the Gospels."[9]

In 1989 the Christian Evangelical apologetics research ministry Christian Research Institute asserted in a published review that several of Lamsa's theological positions and interpretations were not supported by the Bible. The review concludes by saying:

"On the surface, Lamsa appears to be a revealer of biblical truth and culture and a friend of evangelical Christianity. Closer study, however, has revealed that Lamsa promotes metaphysical, not evangelical teachings which have led him to inaccurate interpretations and translations of portions of the Bible. As an ambassador of Nestorian, not biblical culture, Lamsa became a cultic figure in his own right." [10]

Works

Biographical Works

See also

Notes

  1. ^ http://www.lamsabible.com/George%20Lamsa.htm
  2. ^ Lamsa, G. (1933) The Four Gospels According to the Eastern Version. A. J. Holman Company. Philadelphia. Trans. by George M. Lamsa. p. xvi-xviii
  3. ^ Lamsa, G. (1933) The Four Gospels According to the Eastern Version. A. J. Holman Company. Philadelphia. Trans. by George M. Lamsa. p. xv
  4. ^ http://www.innvista.com/culture/religion/bible/versions/lbp.htm
  5. ^ including CAL and Payne Smith,
  6. ^ The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon at Hebrew Union College
  7. ^ Casey, M. (1998) Aramaic sources of Mark's Gospel. Cambridge University Press.
  8. ^ Casey, M. (1998) Aramaic sources of Mark's Gospel. Cambridge University Press.
  9. ^ Chilton, B. "The Aramaic Lord's Prayer"
  10. ^ "Christian Scholar or Cultic Torchbearer?" by John P. Juedes, Christian Research Journal, Fall 1989, Volume 12 Number 2, page 9

External links