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I read Lancaster's shorter booklet on Aramaic Primacy.  I took time to deeply consider and evaluate in detail his proposal and the many examples he provides.  I annotated the printout and cross-checked with other sources, checking in various other technical sources and the Greek New Testament.  I found this book very interesting and stimulating.

This book attempts to prove that the whole New Testament was first written in Aramaic, rather than Greek, as most textual scholars think.  I was familiar with the theory that one or more gospels were first written in Aramaic, and have read the background and translation introduction information on the Lamsa translation of the Bible, translated by Dr. George Lamsa into English from Aramaic, which I own.

But this Aramaic Primacy theory for the whole New Testament was new to me when I read this book in 2005.  This Lancaster book is a short version of his 300-page tome on this topic, Was the New Testament Really Written in Greek?, which I may read later.  This and the longer version were edited by another major proponent of this theory, Paul David Younan.

In a return visit to his website in October 2007, I noticed that he has recently revised his website, which you will find very inviting and congenial.  He now also presents himself as Raphael Lataster.

While this is a short book, it kept me busy checking the biblical texts and evaluating his comparisons of various passages in Greek variations and Aramaic Peshitta.  Some of Lancaster's examples are thoughtful, but I found that most of his examples could be accounted for in other ways using standard critical comparisons and language translation techniques, with their special techniques for accounting for the problems involved in hand-copying manuscripts.

Ignores Linguistics
A general trend I perceive is that he seems unaware of general linguistics, principles of comparative linguistics and Bible translation techniques.  Thus sometimes his examples seem far-fetched.  He does not indicate any awareness of factors in Bible translation into other languages, like critical textual evaluations and standard procedures for determining between textual variants.

Lancaster seems unaware of language history and the standard science of Historical and Comparative Linguistics, which has amassed a considerable literature and techniques related to the languages he refers to and the claims he makes.  He exhibits a singular tunnel vision that views all of history in terms of Aramaic.  This leads him to accept, apparently, the ethnocentric and imperialistic attitude of the Assyrian church that Aramaic was the original Semitic language!

Other Ideas
While Lancaster/Lataster aapears to be a conscientious and diligent scholar, this work unfortunately reminded me of some other things I have come across.  Some uninformed Hebrew "scholars" (fundamentalist Christians) in biblical interpretation also make such a claim about Hebrew!  Some even simple-mindedly claim the language God spoke was Hebrew!  Only because the words God said were written in Hebrew!

As if God does not speak English in the English Bible and Swahili in the Swahili Bible!  When I work in the Swahili Bible, god speaks to me in Swahili, just as Moses speaks to the Israelites in Swahili, and Paul writes to the Philippians in Swahili!

Of course God speaks Hebrew in the Hebrew Bible and Aramaic in the Aramaic Bible!  But why should we think God literally even "speaks" any human language.  Isn't the basic biblical character of God that he exists beyond human categories and limitations!?

Serious
This is not to say that this extreme attitude is characteristic with Lancaster.  My impressions of his book did not lead me to such a judgement, they only reminded me of some of the other theories I have encountered.  I had no direct communication with him until he contacted me in October 2007 in repsonse to my review, suggesting further discussion on the factors in this question.  In this correspondence, he signed himself as Raphael Lataster.

Lataster also referred me to his website where the full version of his book is available am including the direct link to the book.  Perhaps I can make time between already-committed projects to read this full book to get a better appreciation of the broader argument.  It should take some time, but should be rewarding.  For those interested in this question, I suggest you go download the book and read it.

Ignores Orality
Lancaster presents some good observations, which I feel account strongly for the original oral teachings of Jesus being in Aramaic, which is universally accepted.  In his own approach, however, he actually ignores the oral aspect of culture and communication universal in human culture, of which the recent 150-200 years of modern literacy as we know it in the west is an anomaly.

An excellent resource by Dr John Harvey published in 1998 clarifies and documents the oral character and Greek composition of Paul's writings. This analysis documents that the quotes of Paul form teh Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) are mostly direct quotes from the Greek Septuagint, not a Hebrew or Aramaic verision. Professor Harvey demonstrates that every oral rhetorical style in Greek literature occurs in Paul's writings. This is consistent with recent insights on the oral character of ancient culture that has recently arisen from several disciplines studying the ancient literary sources.

Lancaster also exhibits no awareness of concepts of oral-culture communication.  The limitations of modern literacy seem to limit the possibilities he can see in how Aramaic teachings of Jesus could be learned and transmitted other than in official, formal written styles in the dominant language of the common people.  The approach to the character and history of the current text seems to assume only a literate context.

My Impression
My growing impression is that most of the items he presents can be accounted for in other ways consistent with what we know about human language, textual transmission and translation procedures, which make more sense than the Aramaic Primacy theory.

I should hope his longer version would provide more challenging examples which might alter this conclusion.  But, frankly, from the tone of this shorter book, I doubt it.    I was not encouraged to invest more time in his longer version of this flawed linguistic excursion.

Aramaic Sources in the Greek
His info about the poetic sections in Paul's writings reflects likely already-circulating Aramaic hymns and proverbs.  They are likely in the cultural "storehouse" of the Jews who accepted Jesus as the Messiah, and would be quoted in Aramaic, and translated into Greek for the Greeks and Romans who had become "God-fearers" (Proselytes to Judaism).

Notable is 1 Corinthians 13, which is known to be a hymn, and could well have been a pre-Christian Jewish hymn in Aramaic.  The other proverbs Paul uses sound like common Semitic proverbs, similar to those in the great traditional store of Jewish wisdom literature that is not part of the Tanakh (Jewish Old Testament).

Ignores Common Cultural Backgrounds
He seems unaware that these things would have already been part of the cultural background of Paul and his audience.  He seems to think all of this would have been new in Paul's writing.  As though they would not have been familiar with anything Paul was saying.

But Paul even quotes Greek poets and philosophers.  It depends on his audience and the topic.  Just like current writings refer to various aspects of popular culture and other literature (like TV shows and characters, or Shakespeare's plays).

Galilee was Greek
One critical historical factor Lancaster ignores is that Galilee was primarily a Greek-speaking Gentile area, only re-settled by Judeans under the short Maccabean re-conquest before the Roman era.  Aramaic continued to be spoken also, but there was extensive Greek settlement.

Greek would have been required to relate to any of the Roman authorities.  Rome basically took over the domains of the Greek Empires in the Mediterranean and Asia, and continued to use the well-established Greek language there.  From the days of the Roman Republic, Romans had spoken Greek alongside their native Latin, especially well-to-do families.  Greek was the language of administration of the Roman Empire.

Latin was the language of the City of Rome and its colonies in the empire.  It was never the language of the whole Roman Empire.  Because of the direct rule from Rome in the western colonies, and more settlement of Romans in areas like Gaul, Spain and Britain, Latin did become a common language in those areas.  It later became the common interlanguage only in Europe through the international network of the Roman Church, as the west was further and further separated from eastern domains by the onslaught of the Germanic barbarian forces from the 400s.

Corrections of the Greek?
Another item on the web site, and in the Peshitta Primacy paper by Lancaster, he claims that the Peshitta clears up discrepancies in the Greek gospels.

Actually it seems to me that this is one argument indicating that the Peshitta was a translation, or "version," an edition smoothing out differences between different gospels or different version of the hand-copied manuscripts of the same gospel.

It is common for subsequent copies to "correct" discrepancies in the interest of clarity, to correct a known or perceived error, maybe accidentally entered by an earlier scribe in a copy.  Some of these kinds of errors are in numbers, where, for instance, Hebrew or Greek alphabet letters are used for numbers, and may get confused with similar handwritten forms.

Different Oral Versions
Or there may have been two slightly different versions of a story in the oral forms and one writer used one version from his region or informant, and another writer used another one.  This is common, so when you see "corrected" copies, it tends to indicate a later version that was "corrected."

Determining questions like this becomes a very technical matter for those with time and knowledge to specifically, laboriously compare the specific hand-copies of the original manuscripts and work out likelihoods on various factors.  This is related to historical-critical method of studying not only the Bible but any other ancient documents.

In the process of translation, the translators have to make some decision about which version to follow.  Thus a translation or "version" would have more similarity from one section to another due to the hopefully consistent choices made for the translation.  This is a sign of a translation, not of an original.

Related Articles and Reviews:
Aramaic Primacy: Was the New Testament first Written in Aramaic?
Christians Started with a Greek Old Testament
Cultural Drama in Christian Beginnings
Different Literacy — Different World
     (Are Older Bible Manuscripts More Reliable?)
Hebrew Usage in the First Century
Jesus and the Jewish Resurrection
Josephus and Aramaic Primacy:  The Language and Literacy Culture of First Century AD
Koine Greek as a Mother Tongue
The Language Jesus Used
A New Testament Window into First Century Jewish Literature
The Oral Gospel and the Written Gospel: The Hermeneutics of Speaking and Writing in the Synoptic Tradition, Mark, Paul, and Q
The Oral Greek Character of Paul's Writings
Primacy and Possibility:  Problems Facing Aramaic Primacy Claims
          (Cultural Settings for Greek and Aramaic as Literary Languages in the First Century)
Textual Themes and Language Variations in the late Prophets
What Was Koine Greek?

Further Resources
Aramaic Peshitta Primacy for Dummies
Dates of Early Versions (Translations) of the New Testament to various languages
Dr. George Lamsa
Exploring Aramaic Primacy
The Greek History of the Middle East from 330 BCE.  Brief Historical Background To The New Testament
The Old Syriac Translation
Peshitta Syriac Translation information
The Peshitta (Peshitto) translation in the 5th century
Peshitta Translation Online — Paul David Younan
Syriac Diatessaron Background
Syriac Diatessaron; English translation and resource links
Syriac (Pre-Peshitta) translation
Was the New Testament Really Written in Greek?

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Many other books have review notes with the entry

OBJ

Early notes written 3 February 2005
First review notes posted as part of the article "Aramaic Primacy" 5 January 2006
Review expanded 9 July 2007 and 22 September 2007
Rewritten and posted on OJTR 25 September 2007
Last updated 19 May 2008

Orville Boyd Jenkins, Ed.D., Ph.D.
Copyright © 2006 Orville Boyd Jenkins
Permission granted for free download and transmission for personal or educational use.  Other rights reserved.

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