Aramaic of Jesus - Aramaic Phrases in The Greek New Testament

Aramaic Phrases in The Greek New Testament

The Greek New Testament transliterates a few Semitic words. When the text itself refers to the language of such Semitic glosses, it uses words meaning "Hebrew"/"Jewish", but this term is often applied to unmistakably Aramaic words and phrases; for this reason, it is often interpreted as meaning "the (Aramaic) vernacular of the Jews" in recent translations. The "Semitisms" are mainly words attributed to Jesus by Mark, and perhaps had a special significance because of this.

A very small minority believe that most or all of the New Testament was originally written in Aramaic. This position, called Aramaic primacy, has been rejected by mainstream scholarship. Instead, the consensus among mainstream academia is that where it is very likely that there are Aramaic layers or source materials that underpin portions of the New Testament, the volume as we know it today was compiled and redacted in the Greek language.

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