Importance Of The Aramaic Old Testament

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In the lesson History Of The Aramaic Old Testament, we saw that the Aramaic Old Testament or Peshitta Tanakh was translated from the Hebrew Tanakh several centuries B.C.E. It was subsequently adopted by Christian believers and Jewish converts to Christianity.

This makes the Aramaic Old Testament a vital witness to the text of the Massoretic Text of the Hebrew Tanakh. Whenever the text of the Hebrew Tanakh is unclear or the meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain, consulting the Aramaic Old Testament shows how Jews at the time understood the Hebrew. People who knew Hebrew inside out, thoroughly steeped in its culture and worship, who had respect for the Holy text and did not want to corrupt it, and who were more than 2000 years closer to the original text than we are today, translated the Hebrew Tanakh into the Peshitta Tanakh. The record of the Aramaic Old Testament is therefore extremely valuable. When there are suspicions that the Massoretic Text of the Hebrew Tanakh has been copied incorrectly, the Aramaic Old Testament provides a vital witness, since (assuming it has been preserved as faithfully as the Hebrew Tanakh and that it is free of corruption!) it is an early and very reliable witness of the original text.

Furthermore, since the Aramaic Old Testament and the Aramaic New Testament (Peshitta) are in the same Syriac dialect, together they provide an extensive body of literature which allows us to understand the vocabulary and grammar they use. If your interest is in the Aramaic New Testament (Peshitta), studying the Aramaic Old Testament will be of immeasurable help in broadening your knowledge of the language. It will also help you to see connections between the Aramaic Old Testament and the Aramaic New Testament that you would otherwise miss. It will shed new light on the language which Yeshua spoke and in which his words are recorded. Conversely, if you are primarily interested in the Aramaic Old Testament, understanding the Aramaic New Testament will also benefit you.

The importance and practical benefits of the Aramaic Old Testament can hardly be over-estimated. For students of the Hebrew Tanakh and Biblical Aramaic, for students of the Targums, for students of the Aramaic New Testament, and for all Bible students everywhere, it is a hugely under-utilized resource whose treasures lie mostly unknown and untapped by Bible students in the West today. Saying it has not been fully studied has to be the under-statement of the century. By comparison, the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Hebrew Tanakh) is a mass-market popular phenomenon which has had immense volumes of scholarly time and money poured into it. The Aramaic Old Testament, by contrast, is essentially ignored in the West (not in the East, though!)

And you want to know the best thing about the Aramaic Old Testament? Like the Hebrew Tanakh, the level of variation amongst existing manuscripts is virtually zero. The Hebrew Tanakh, the Aramaic Old Testament and the Aramaic New Testament (Peshitta) simply do not contain the mass corruption, changes, conflicts, blatant errors and insertions, variant readings, and everything else that is the hallmark of the Greek New Testament and Septuagint. In the Hebrew and Aramaic world, there is no need for countless theories of textual transmission, the endless theorizing over different textual types and geographical origins, the careers built on promoting one manuscript over another, pontificating over whether the majority manuscripts are more original than the corrupt 'early' ones, and multitude of similar phenomena which abound in the world of Greek textual criticism. The level of variation in manuscripts of the Hebrew Tanakh, the Aramaic Old Testament and the Aramaic New Testament (Peshitta) are on a micro-level compared to the Greek, and generally consist of grammar or spelling alternatives.

Think about the implications of that for a moment. Down through more than twenty centuries of human history, though world empires have come and gone, across cities, counties and continents, the Hebrew Tanakh, the Aramaic Old Testament and the Aramaic New Testament have been miraculously and meticulously preserved. Wars have ravished. Cities have been plundered. Rulers have come and gone. Religious leaders have long since arisen, died and been buried. Schisms have split both church and state. No single empire or nation has conquered the whole great territorial expanse covered by all those manuscripts over time and geography. Yet amazingly, miraculously, the Hebrew Tanakh, the Aramaic Old Testament and the Aramaic New Testament have been preserved intact down through all those centuries, remaining as free from corruption and variation as mortal man is capable of. Compare manuscripts separated by whole centuries, continents and cultures, and you will find that all the many thousands of extant copies of the Aramaic Old Testament and Aramaic New Testament exhibit that same reliable uniformity that is so characteristic of the Hebrew Tanakh.

Septuagints and Greek New Testaments differ widely, and doctrinally, in hundreds (nay, thousands) of places. Greek variant readings of the Scriptures abound. Yet the Hebrew and Aramaic Scriptures stand far apart in how uniformly they have been preserved. Copied for thousands of years with scarcely a variation between them - preserved the same across all continents. Is not this a testimony to how great the Word of YHWH is, that he has preserved His Word as a sign and a testimony for this evil and adulterous generation? As it is written in Isaiah 8:20; “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”

So, is the Aramaic Old Testament important? Is it worth studying? Open its pages and find out for yourself.

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