Julius Wellhausen's Approach
to the Aramaic Gospels
By Chaeles C. Tobeey, Chicago, Ihinois
The emphatic insistence on a pervasive Aramaic idiom in our Greeli
Gospels is a phenomenon which made its appearance suddenly and
simultaneously in different parts of the learned world. The time was the
beginning of the present century, and the countries primarily concerned
were Germany and the United States of America.
The fact of an Aramaic tinge in the Greek had long been familiar.
Each Gospel has its quota of undoubted Semitisms ; and there are also,
especially in the Gospel of Mk, transliterated words of the Aramaic which
was the vernacular of Jesus and his disciples. It was a publication of an
unexpected character, however, which compelled certain scholars to
recognize a variety of New-Testament Greek which had never been
recognized before, namely a Greek which is definitely and constant¬
ly geared to Aramaic idiom.
In the year 1894 there was published in England, by the Cambridge
Press, the first edition of the Old Syriac Gospels which Mrs. Agnes
Smith Lewis had discovered in 1892 at the Monastery on Mt. Sinai^.
These Syriac Gospels made a sensation. Their text was at least as
old as the Cmetonian ; they certainly were translated from Greek Gospels;
and they presented a number of strange readings, notably the reading
"Joseph begot Jesus," in Mt 1:16. There were critical problems here,
and an interesting bit of Old Syriac for students of the language. In ah
parts of the learned world scholars in the Semitic field "took time out"
to read and study this new text.
One of these experts was the famous German scholar, Julius Well¬
hausen of Göttingen. Primarily an Arabist, he had made his great repu¬
tation in O.T. criticism^. It was apparently with N.T. criticism in view
that he proceeded to study the Lewis (Sinaitic) Gospels, and he seems
at the outset to be chiefly interested in thehistorical and literary tradition.
^ The Four Oospels in Syriac transcribed from the Sinaitic Palimpsest by
the late Robeet L. Bensly, M. A., and by J. Rendel Habbis, M. A., and
by F. Ceawfoed Bubkitt, M. A., with an Introduction by Agnes Smith
Lewis.
^ Composition des Hexateuchs, 1876 f .; Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels,
1878 ff. ; Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, 1884 ff.; Israelitische und jüdische Ge¬
schichte, 1894 ff.; epoch-making volumes.
126 Charles C. Torrey
He had long been accustomed to compare translations with their
originals, and especially Greek translations with Semitic originals, verse
by verse, phrase by phrase, word by word, and this was now his pro¬
ceeding. What he obtained from it was a discovery which he found
extremely interesting.
It dawned on him gradually and at lenght became a certainty, that
in the Syriac version of the Gospels is to be found the key to the peculiar
Greek in which they are written. The pharscs and turns of speech, the
structure of the sentence, noteworthy idioms — in short, the linguistic
and stylistic features — which are seen in the Old Syriac version are
found also in the corresponding passages of tho standard Greek. The
verbal form of any given chapter and verse in the one version is sure to
be duplicated, with rarely more than slight variation, in the other. This,
to be sure, was nothing new ; it has been well understood that the ancient
versions "agree very closely with the Greek."
That which Wellhausen now saw, which no one before his time had
seen so clearly, was that the basal idiom, all through the Gospel,
was Syriac, not Greek. He could sec that in numerous places where
the Greek appears awkward or faulty the closely corresponding Syriac is
perfectly idiomatic and explains the Greek. He threw out the charac¬
teristic remark, that his N.T. colleagues would have to learn Syriac.
Not that Wellhausen supposed any evangelist to have composed his
work in Syriac. When it became clear to him that the Semitic element
in the language of the Synoptic Gospels was all-pervasive and, on tbe
whole, dominant, he could only conclude that the language underlying
and perpetually coloring the Greek was Aramaic, the vernacular of
the Jews of Palestine. Its vocabulary and idioms were duplicated,
with insignificant difference, in the Eastern dialect of Aramaic,
always known as "Syriac."
The material of the three Gospels, then, was originally Jewish Aramaic,
at least in the main. Our traditional Greek was derived from it, in some
way. This conclusion is repeatedly stated, e.g. Einleitung, p. 9: "Die
mündliche Überlieferung ... war also von Haus aus aramäisch, und
wenn sie uns nm in griechischer Niederschrift erhalten ist, so hat sie einen
Sprach Wechsel durchgemacht." It must not be forgotten that all this
interest in the Semitic coloring of the Synoptic Gospels had its origin in
the study of the Old Syriac version.
Wellhausen's critical examination of the Synoptic tradition began,
of course, with a study of the Gospel of Mark. Since Mk was the first
of the Gospels to be written, and the one on which both Mt and Lk
depended for their order of events, it had generally been held that its
material is older, more primitive, than that of the others. He held this
Julius Wellhausen's Approach to the Aramaic Gospels 127
view, and believed also, with modern scholars generally, that Mt and Lk
drew a considerable part of tlieir material from Mk.
The dates commonly assigned to the Gospels were accepted by him,
and in the case of Mt he argued at some length in support of the current
view^, while at the same time recognizing the presence of an amount of
primitive material in this Gospel. See p. 79 above. A similar reservation
is made (ibid.) in the case of Lk.
In the year 1904 appeared the first fruit of the new approach to the
Gospels. This was Das Evangelium Marci, a small volume of 143 pages,
consisting of a German translation accompanied by a concise commen¬
tary. This was followed in the same year by similar volumes dealing with
Mt and Lk.'^ It was unmistakable that in the Greek of these two Gospels
also there was the same Aramaic element, and that here also it was
dominant.
Wellhausen, thinking of Mk (in the customary way) as early, homely,
and original, and of Mt and Lk as much later and of a decidedly literary
character, fancied their Aramaic less in amount and somewhat different
in character from that seen in Mk. On this matter, see below. Examples
of its presence would rarely receive mention in the Notes appended to his
translations, and then only as Semitisms in a Greek composition. See,
for example, Evang. Matt. 41 bottom, 67; Evang. Luc. 61, 139, 141.
The publication of the three Gospels was followed immediately by the
Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien, 1905; second edition, 191 F.
Here, in the first edition of this Introduction, we are given first of all
an amount of Graeco-Aramaic material covering more than forty pages.
It is an eye-opening demonstration, worthy of Wellhausen at his best.
In the multitude of acute and striking observations the student of the
N.T. is here for the first time provided with detailed and convincing
evidence that the Synoptic Gospels are written in a Greek thatinits
every part is influenced by Semitic idiom. This had never before
been said so clearly nor with such authority. This linguistic demonstra¬
tion is not repeated in the second edition.
^ His firmly held belief, that theZeohariah referred to in Mt 23 :35 was the son of Bariscaius, who was slain by the Zealots in 67 or 68 A. D., is fully set
forth in the Einleitung, pp. 118—123. It is evident from pp. 119 and 121
that the argument for the son of Jehoiadah is misunderstood, and that the
importance of 2 Chron. 24: 20 f . in Jewish folk lore was unknown to him.
"Son of Berechiah" in the Gospel text is the characteristic insertion of a
Greek copyist or editor, obtained from Zech. 1:1.
^ Das Evangelium Matthäi, 1904, pp. 3—152; Das Evangelium Lucae,
1904, pp. 3—142. The title page of Evang. Marcihe&is the date 1903, but
it was actually put on the market in 1904, the date on the publisher's cover.
^ In the sequel, every mention of the Einleitung refers to the second
edition, unless the contrary is stated.
128 Chabjubs C. Torrey
The remainder of the book is taken up with essays in literary and
historical criticism. Here again we have the comments and conclusions
of a great scholar who feels that he is breaking new ground and therefore
advances cautiously.
The reader of Wellhausen's three Gospels might be inclined to think
that their author had lost interest in the Aramaic which he had postulated
and to some extent had already demonstrated. Throughout his work of
translating and annotating it is apparent that he made no search for
Semitic words or idioms, and that he was not always prepared to recognize
them when they stood before him. The atmosphere of these translations
and their commentary is widely different from that of the linguistic
demonstration in the first edition of the Einleitungl
Wellhausen was singularly well fitted by his own labors to appreciate
the splendid work of N.T. criticism accomplished by the great German
scholars of the early nineteenth centmy and their successors down to his
own time, those in particular who had laid the foundations of Synoptic
criticism. He was proud of their achievement and accepted it without
question. It could hardly have occurred to him — and it apparently never
did occm to him — to dissent from them, except in the one matter of the
Aramaic origin. He could not have foreseen that this "one matter" would of necessity transform the enthe critical theory.
Having it firmly fixed in his mind, at the outset, that the Gospels
were written in Greek, it does not occur to him to ask what Aramaic
word or idiom would correspond to the Greek reading which has made
trouble.
From the beginning of the Evang. Marci onward, inherited reverence
for the Greek text seems to have blinded his eyes to the underlying
Semitic. Thus in Mk 4 (the Parable of the Sower) he remarks on vs. 4:
"Man erwartet auf den Weg, nicht neben den Weg; doch läßt sich auch das
letztere verstehen." On the contrary, the reading "on the road" alone
gives the right sense, and the same Aramaic preposition would be used
for either reading! The Greek with its Ttapa mistranslates.
In vs. 8, the meaning "thirty/oW, sixtjfold," is expressed in Aramaic by putting chad, "one" (Greek ev), just before the numeral. Wellhausen
is staggered by the Greek here (and no wonder)^, but eventually recogni¬
zes the Aramaic idiom when he comes to deal with the parallel passage
in Mt (Evang. Matt., p. 67 f.).
The astonishing ufisL? auTot in Mk 6:31 should have been recognized
as merely replacing the Aramaic "ethical dative."
^ The eI? which has taken the place of the first is apparently the fruit
of an ordinary copist's error, the Scpepev elz being obtained from the
Stteocv el? just above.
Julius Wellhausen's Approach to the Aramaic Gospels 129
In 16:2, the false division of clauses which has the absm-d result of
making "very early in the morning" (Xiav vrpcoi) equivalent to "at simrise" (!) could not have been made in the Aram, original.
In Matt., pp. 141 ff., W. has trouble with dcTi' apTi in 26:64. The exact
equivalent in Jewish Aram, means "soon, presently," the meaning
required here.
Faced with the xaipcTi in Lk 20:10, he says in the note to his translation that it "kann zwar nicht, muß aber bedeuten: zu der geeigneten Zeit."
If he had tmned it back into its exact Aram, equivalent, li-zman, he
would have recognized the well-known adverbial compound which has the
required meaning (see Targ. Gen. 18:14 "at the set time I will retmn unto thee" !). It is quite impossible Greek, and the rendering, is such as only
translators like Aquila and Luke (see below) could choose to make.
These few examples out of many may serve to show how remote from
the mind of the great scholar, when he was translating, was the thought
of an imderlying Semitic text. He accepted the Greek without testing]it.
Wellhausen's idea of the original Synoptic material was that in the
first place it all was written down in Aramaic (see below). In this he
was certainly right. He was accustomed to speak of it as "tradition,"
but in this he was wrong, as will be shown ; it ah had a distinct character very different from that of tradition.
This large body of Aramaic material, he held, was presently translated
into Greek, in some way and at some times and places. How the three
Gospels obtained their Aramaic-colored Greek is in no case made clear;
indeed, the subject is nowhere directly approached. The general impres¬
sion is given, that each and all of these written accoimts had their origin
(somehow!) in oral tradition.
It is plain that W. never entertained that phantom of an embarrassed
criticism, the idea of the unlettered man whose native tongue was Ara¬
maic but who wrote where Greek was the only literary language^.
Something similar to this, but in fact quite different, made its appearance
in the first edition of the Einleitung. There was much in the two longer
Gospels, Mt and Lk, that seemed too formal, too "Biblical," for a simple
' This has been the standard explanation of the mongrel Greek which
appears in the many books of the apocryphal literature which now are
known to be translations from Hebrew or Aramaic originals. Thus in The¬
odor Schermann's Vitae Prophetarum, p. 122, we read: "In Syrien-Palä¬
stina mag das griechische Sprachidiom immer mit Hebraismen versehen
gewesen sein, so daß die vielen Anklänge . . . eigentlich nur Zeugen der sy¬
risch-palästinischen Heimat sind." Since this was written, the Greek which
he edited and to which he referred has been shown in detail and by com¬
mon consent to be the literal rendering of a Hebrew original. The man who
"thinks in Semitic whUe he writes in Greek" is purely imaginary.
9 ZDMO 101
130 Charles C. Torrey
record of events and sayings. So we read on p. 34: "es gibt ein Juden¬
griechisch, welches unter dem Einfluß der Septuaginta steht und sich
kennzeichnet durch Aufnahme von aUerhand Biblicismen. Markus ist
ziemlich frei davon, nicht aber Matthäus und Lukas."
It is significant that this is omitted in the second edition. The ex¬
perience of the intervening years had shown him that the theory was
untenable. In Einl. p. 26 he takes account of the possibility that some
slips and mistranslations such as he has been describing might occur in
the reporting of spoken tradition; but he proceeds: "Aber das Wahr¬
scheinliche ist doch, daß das Evangelium, welches von Haus aus ara¬
mäisch war, zuerst auch aramäisch niedergeschrieben wurde.
Und es gibt Varianten in den von Matthäus und Lukas gemeinsamen
Redestücken, die sich nicht gut anders als aus Mißverständnis einer
schriftlichen Vorlage erklären lassen."
In general, wherever the test could be applied, the evidence accumulat¬
ed that the "Sprachwechsel" mentioned above was tho result of a process
which was not vaguely oral but definitely literary.
No man of the time was better able than W. to recognize formal
translation; it was a field in which he had been active for many years.
In spite of his own loyally held theory, the fact crops out, again and
again, that the impression left on his mind, as he worked along, was that
of Aramaic texts rendered into Greek.
In his Evang. Matt., pp. 67 f., he speaks of "der griechische Übersetzer,"
who did his work in both Mt and Mk. What manner of "translator" may
this have been ? and how much of the Greek of these two Gospels should
be regarded as formal translation ? The same (or another ?) Übersetzer is
mentioned in the note on Mt 10: 12f.
The treatment of Mark as a quasi Aramaic Gospel is significant. Here,
again, the giant is groping, not having found firm standing ground. He
postulated a primitive Gospel, an "Urmarkus," as many before him had
done. In his own theory this must have been Aramaic, not Greek. The
relation of this imagined forerunner to our Gospel of Mark is not made
clear (see Einl., pp. 45—48), nor has any trace of its existence been
demonstrated. The total disappearance of such an important document
is not easy to credit. Would it not have been translated, and would not
some distinct trace of the translation have been preserved ?^
There is a reference to translation — of some sort ! — in the first edition
of the Einleitung, p. 57 above, in a context dealing with the Urmarkus.
^ It must be borne in mind that in W.'s time it was not yet known that
in Palestine in the first century there was an extensive Jewish-Aramaic
literature; nor was it yet understood that translation from Semitic into
Greek was there and then a very familiar proceeding.
Julius Wellhausen's Approach to tho Aramaic Gospels 13 1
The subject in hand is the early appearance of secondary elements in the
tradition. "Man hat auch keinen Grund sich gegen die Annahme zu
sträuben, daß in unserem Markus auch noch nach der ersten Nieder¬
schrift, wenngleich vor der Übertragung ins Griechische, eine Überarbeitung
stattgefunden hat." The words here printed in italics were omitted in
the second edition (p. 48 below). What translation was here had in
mind ?
The material of all three Gospels, material which is Palestinian in
its origin, comes to us in a Greek which in every part is tinged with
Aramaic. This is made even more definite in the Einleitung, p. 78: "Die
dem Matthäus und Lukas gemeinsame Redequelle ist ebenfahs jerusale¬
misch, schon wegen ihrer Sprache, bei der am deutlichsten ist, daß sie
ursprünglich rein aramäisch war."
Wellhausen adopted (ibid, 59ff ) the long-accepted theory of a single
document, known as Q, extensively utilized by both Mt and Lk ; observing
also (as above noted) that some variant readings are plainly the result of
misreading or misinterpreting a written Aramaic original. He postulated
different recensions, supposing that the form which lay before Lk was
different from that which Mt used. Both recensions were read, he con¬
cludes, in Greek translations, which could still be compared with
the Aramaic text (p. 60).
To this rather difficult hypothesis should be added what is said on
p. 49 regarding the use of Mk by Mt and Lk. After the statement has been
made that Mk lay before the other two Synoptists in the same form and
extent which it now has, there is added: " Sie haben den aramäischen
Text vielleicht noch einsehen können, aber in der Regel den
griechischen benutzt, wermgleich nicht notwendig überall in der Form,
wie ihn unsere Handschriften überliefern."
The process by which the two Gospels obtained their Semitic coloring
was never clear to Wellhausen. The origin of the written Aramaic source
or somces, and the reason for the remarkable variation in the use of it or
them by Mt and Lk, were unsolved problems; see Einl., first ed., p. 68,
second ed. pp. 59 f.
In the Einl., p. 37, the language of Mk is characterized in terms long-
familiar, as homely ("volkstümlich"), vigorous, and original, and as
possessing more of the quality of oral tradition than do the two others,
in the material which they all have in common.
The Aramaic text (which is insisted upon) is lost, however; and the
Greek translation — or whatever it may be cahed — cannot tell us much
about the quality of the original language. There is, moreover, in the
Synoptic Gospels very little, hardly anything, that sounds like oral
tradition, as has already been remarked.
9*
132 Charles C. Torrey
In the Einl., pp. 43—45, is given a masterly concise characterization
of the Markan material. It deserves to be quoted in full, but only the
gist can be given here, as follows.
The Gospel of Mark has not the characteristics of a historical record,
nor has it those of biography There is no interest in chronology, no
dating. Localities are indicated, often quite indefinitely, as the background
of isolated anecdotes Between successively narrated incidents, or
the stages of a journey, there is generally no clear cormection We are
not given the impression that men who were the companions of Jesus
are here attempting to give others an idea of his person .... He is shown
as standing far above his surroundings and his contemporaries, including
his disciples, who stand at a distance and in awe In this Gospel, as
in the others, the miracles of healing are proofs of the Messiahship. Mark
has not the intention of describing or explaining Jesus ; his one purpose
is to make known that Jesus is the Messiah. This was also the purpose
and the character of the entire "tradition" which lay be¬
fore Mark. ... The narrative material of the Gospel is not such as could
have been obtained from the original disciples.
This admirable statement supports the conclusion gained from all other
sources, that the material out of which the Gospels are put together is
the Nazarene written propaganda (see John 20:31!), which was prepared
with great care and skih, presumably in Jerusalem, and was distributed
all through the Holy Land in the manner described in my Four Gospels,
p. 260, more fully in Our Translated Oospels, pp. xlv-xlvii, and in Docu¬
ments of the Primitive Church, pp. xiii-xv. It was perfectly homogeneous
throughout (unlike oral tradition!), and ah of it belonged to the one
early time.^
The enthe Gospel material, it must be repeated, consists solely of the
detailed proof that Jesus is the Messiah, "the Son of God" (John 20:31,
also frequently in the O.T.), the pre-existent divine being appearing on
earth, commander of demons and of the forces of nature, possessed of the
power for healing and (especiaUy) of the "tongue for teaching" (Is. 50:4)^.
There is no feature of the description which does not contribute
directly to this pmpose, nor is there even the slightest incongruity.
Oral tradition, as W. more than once insists, has always its later accre¬
tions. It is to be noticed that in all this picture of the coming Kingdom
there is no mention of the missions to the Gentiles, or of that most
significant event, the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem.
^ See the chapter, "The Literary Propaganda of the First Decade", in
Our Translated Oospels, pp. xli ff.
^ The first limmüdim in the verse is the abstract noun; one of the best
examples of the prophet's habit of using a word twice in different meanings.
Julius Wellhausen's Approach to the Aramaic Gospels 133
Later strata, now commonly recognized, are pmely imaginary^. The
material used in Mt and Lk is of precisely the same age as that used in
Mk. The order of events, which Mk was the first to devise, was followed of
necessity by Mt and Lk. In hke manner, Lk arranged the non-Markan
material of his Gospel in agreement, as far as was practicable, with the
order aheady established by Mt. (This seems to render a "Q document"
imnecessary.)
The Gospel translators supported one another admirably. They had
every reason to do so! Grk. Mt uses the words of Grk. Mk, as far as he
can, in presenting the same or similar material. Lk, incorporating and
translating the material already used by Mk, or Mt, or both, adopts the
wording of their Grk. wherever fidelity to his original permits this to be
done. The evidence of this clear imderstanding is as interesting as it is
abundant. There was little opportunity for contradiction in the material
itself, for it was all homogeneous and self-consistent, the product of one
time and one mighty effort^.
It has already been said, that Wellhausen found in Luke's Greek the
same Aramaic tinge as that in the Greek of Matthew. This is remarkable
and very significant in view of the weU-established doctrine regarding
Luke and his writings. In Einl., pp. 26 and 27, examples are given of mis¬
translations in the Third Gospel from written Aramaic sources; and
in Evang. Lucae, pp. 139ff. the noticeable Semitisms in Chapter 24 are set
forth, here also from written Aramaic. Where did the Evangelist
find these ? For the Gospel is treated as originally Greek.
Here, again, the great scholar holds fast to the current critical view.
It could not occur to him to antagonize it, even though he has discovered
and pointed out so many things that seem incompatible with it.
He begins a characterization of the Evangelist, Einl., 63 f., as follows:
"Lukas zeigt sich in seinem Sondergut nicht palästinisch-jüdisch, sondern durchaus hellenistisch und weitherzig." As to this must first be said, that
every particle of Lk's material is concerned with the Jews and addressed
^ Wellhausen has an example of the kind, to which he refers more than
once, the passage Mt 5:23—25; see Einl., p. 62, footnote. Other examples,
frequently brought forward, are Mt 16:18 f. and 18:15 ff.
^ The Fourth Gospel went its own way, making indeed selection from
the same body of literary propaganda, but giving it small space and trans¬
forming it in an utterly new and wonderful creation. There was no inten¬
tion, however, of contradicting what the predecessors had said.
There are two seeming contradictions of importance, the one relating to
the hour of the crucifixion: contrast Mk 15:25 with Jn 19:14; the other,
to the question whether the Last Supper was also the Paschal meal, as the
three Synoptists consistently declare it to have been. In neither case was
there contradiction, but only full agreement in the original text, as
has already been shown in full detail.
134 Chables C. Tobbey
to them. As the late Professor Burkitt said of the thought and mental
atmosphere of the three Synoptic Gospels, "Greek influence is simply
non-existent. The main ideas all have their explanation and illustration
from contemporary Judaism. They are all utterly foreign to the native
thought of the Graeco-Roman world^." Luke was certainly "weitherzig",
but he takes no account of the Gentiles. He drew the material of his
Gospel out of the same Palestinian reservoir, the Nazarene written
propaganda, from which Mk and Mt had been supplied; making charac¬
teristic use of the parenetic-popular discourses for which Mk, in his
compendium intended for use in the Dispersion, andMt, with his extended
appeal to holy scriptme, had had no room.
Again, the language of the Third Gospel is a more slavishly literal
translation-Greek than that of any other gospel. This is the case throu¬
ghout the whole book, showing a consistent mental attitude, the only
exceptions being the brief prologue, 1:1—4, and the preparatory verse
3:1. The conception of the task of the translator is like that of Aquila in
the Old Testament.
A feature which certainly would have interested Wellhausen,
evidence showing how thoroughly "hellenistisch" Luke the Gentile was,
is the clear demonstration that he, aside from being bilingual, was not
familiar with the Jewish-Aramaic dialect. The facts are set
forth fully in Our Translated Gospels, pp. 82—90. The word medinä in
Jewish Palestine meant always "province"; outside Palestine it meant
always "city"; hence the mistranslations in Lk 1:39 and 8:39. — Ar'ä
in Jewish usage meant the Holy Land; in Gentile usage it mean^ the
world. Hence the mistranslations in Lk 2:1 and Acts II : 28. — The word
qertthä in Gentile Aramaic usually meant "city"; in Palestine it was very
much used to designate the "open country" adjoining or belonging to a
city or town^. Hence the rather ridiculous mistranslations in Lk 8:27
and 9:10. — The word laclidä, as an adverb meaning "exceedingly," was
^ Quoted from the second edition of my Four Gospels, p. ix.
^ There is a good illustration of the latter use in a Syriac document of
the 12th century belonging to the Convent of St. Mark in Jerusalem,
published by Prof. W. R. Taylor in Vol. XI of the Annual of the Am.
Schools of Or. Research, pp. 120 —130. A passage on p. 129 of the Syriac
text treats of a qerithä which in former times had belonged to a convent
(Taylor mistranslates here) named Deir Dakreh, or Dabreh, but had been
taken over by the Franks ; and now at last was restored to the Church, and
made the property of the Church of St. Mary Magdalene. The word, occur¬
ring four times on the page, designates an extensive and unoccupied field,
purchased for nearly 1000 dinars. Taylor renders each time by "village,"
though on the last occurrence of the word it is said that the holy father
Ignatius "began to build on it a castle and a church and around them some houses," Luke certainly would have written ttöXk; in every case!
Julius Wellhausen's Approach to tho Aramaic Gospels 135
in constant use in Jewish Palestine, but was unknown elsewhere. The
original meaning was "uniquely." Lk. 17:22 must be rendered: "The days will come when you will greatly desire to see the days of the Son of Man."
Also Acts 2:47, literally: ,,And the Lord added to the saved day by day
greatly'." Taqqm in Jewish Aramaic meant "fitting, right, good," etc.;
in Gentile Aramaic it meant "fitted, ordered, prepared," etc. Luke's
rendering of it in 6:40 makes no acceptable sense. The conclusion, as
to Luke the Gentile translator, is certain.
WelIhausen himself calls attention to more than one of the slavishly
literal translations in the Third Gospel, but learns nothing from them in
regard to Luke. He was firmly fixed in the belief which had stood un¬
disturbed and unquestioned for nearly two thousand years ; everybody
knew that the Third Gospel was written in Greek for Greek readers.
The absurdly literal a-o [uölq "at once," a true monstrosity, in 14:18,
is more than once declared by him to be the too literal rendering from a
written Aramaic source, and is one of the "trump cards" which he plays
in Einl., p. 26; but it could not have occurred to him to make Luke
responsible for it.
The astonishing xaipw in 20:10, explained above, could not then show
W. that Luke was a translator of the type of Aquila: but taken in con¬
nection with the other evidence here presented it must convince every
scholar of the present day.
Another example of the same sort is 11:33, eic, xpuTiTviv, an absurdly
"exact" reproduction of the Aram. fem. passive participle, "concealed";
feminine, because this gender stands for the neuter in Aramaic. W.
renders excellently, "in ein Versteck," but does not explain the gender.^
An example of another sort is 12:49, "I came to bring fire upon the
earth, and what do 1 desire if it is already kindled ?" The second clause,
in its context, is pure nonsense, and nothing else than this nonsense can
be obtained from the Greek, which is clear and idiomatic. The Aramaic
gavo the true sense, and Luke reproduced its words exactly, by their
Greek equivalents, in the original order. This is no legitimate translation,
it is merely transferring, after the manner of Aquila, and the procedure
is eminently characteristic of Luke's method.
There is a Semitic idiom frequent in the Hebrew of the O. T.^, but
especially common in the Aramaic dialects, which as employed in simple
^ There have been numerous attempts, no one of them accounting for
the facts, to get rid of the plain mistranslation hero. Any attempt, indeed,
must be futile.
^ The English R. V., followed by the Am. Revised Standard Version of
1946, has tho strange rendering, "in a cellar" (the place where a lamp is especially useful !).
" Gesenius- Kautzsch, § 119, s.
136 Charles C. Torrey
narrative would serve well to distinguish the written source from hearsay ;
this is the dativus ethicus. The narrator "thinking in Semitic while
writing in Greek" (!) would never use it. No scholar could be more
familiar with this idiom than Wellhausen was, and the fact that he does
not recognize it, indeed is perplexed by it, in two instances where it stood
clearly before him shows how remote from his mind was the idea of Luke
as a translator.
In Lk 7:30, according to the Greek: "The Pharisees and the lawyers
rejected [for themselves'] the divine plan." Wellhausen in his note on
the passage finds the eli; eauTou? hard to understand (läßt sich schlecht
verstehn). It is indeed remarkable Greek here, but anyone who had in
mind the possibility of translation would immediately recognize the
"ethical dative." Luke had merely followed his invariable habit of render¬
ing everything that stood in his text.
Equally obvious, even with the alteration of the Greek text (see below),
is 18:11: "The Pharisee stood [for himself] and prayed." The TTpoc eauTov
has always made trouble, for it is worse than useless. Here, again, the
master's eyes were shut. With the help of the Sjrriac (see his note) he
determines that the Pharisee "stand für sich besonders und betete." But this same circumlocution for "stood and prayed" is common in Aramaic,
see Levy's Chald. Wörterbuch, p. 326, for example: xniVs"? nV Dj?
•"Dina "Mordecai stood [for himself] to pray." The demonstration is perfect^.
Interesting evidence that Luke was the translator of the Aramaic
document. Acts 1:1—15:35, is presented by the series of painfully
"hteral" renderings which are there to be observed. See my Composition
and Date of Acts (1916), pp. 33—40, the notes on Acts 7:53, 8:7, 10:30,
10:36f., 13:24, 14:27, 15:4. The document was Judean, and on at least
one occasion Luke mistranslates because the meaning of a word in the
Jewish dialect was unfamiliar to him. The passage is 5:13, "None of the
rest dared to contend with them" (verb hithlacham).
This appreciation of Julius Wellhausen's epoch-making "approach"
to the original Gospels may well close with a letter which he sent to the
present writer in 1912, the year after the publication of the second edition
of the Einleitung. It was called forth by my article, "The Translations
made from the Original Aramaic Gospels," published in Studies in the
History of Religions presented to C. H. Toy (1912), of which I had sent
him a copy.
^ It should be remarked, incidentally, that the Greek of Lk 18:11 was
altered at an early date. The original reading, given in tho W. & H. margin, was unquestionably: 6 Oapioaio? araOclc; 7tp6? ^auTÖv TaOra 7rpo<j7]uj(eTO.
Julius Wellhausen's Approach to the Aramaic Gospels 137
The fact may be of interest, that the way in which the present writer
reached his belief, eventually becoming certainty, that the Gospels are
translations was exactly the same as in the case of Wellhausen, namely
through eager study of the Lewis Gospels, from 1894 onward. It was
unmistakable that the Greek of the Four Gospels is translation Greek.
Göttingen, 23 Dec, 1912.
Verehrter Herr.
Sie haben mich sehr erfreut und zu Dank verpflichtet, als sach¬
verständiger Bundesgenosse. Es ist schwer, sich mit Leuten auseinander
zu setzen, die nicht hören können \md nicht hören wohen. Radermacher
ist das neueste anmuthige Beispiel.
Die klassischen Philologen — mit Ausnahmez. B. von Eduard Schwartz
— reklamieren Alles als echtgriechisch ; nicht bloß die Sprache, sondern
auch den Inhalt. Die Wmzel des Christenthums soh womöglich Plato
sein; das Judenthum wird nach Kräften ausgeschaltet.
Auf Einzelheiten kann ich nicht gut eingehen, weil mein Befinden mir
mangenehme Schranken auferlegt. Ich gebe im Ahgemeinen gern die
Möglichkeit zu, daß Manches bei Lukas, was ich auf Conto der Nach¬
ahmung der LXX gesetzt habe, in Wahrheit auf aramäisches Original
zurück geht. Dagegen halte ich daran fest, daß dmch '^'^ ein jüdisches
ri3| erwiesen wird, wovon abgeleitet ist.
Mit aufrichtigem Dank
Ihr ergebener Wellhausen.
Beobachtungen an der
, »syrischen" Jesajarolle vom Toten Meer (DSIa)
Von Johannes Hempel, z. Zt. Salzgitter-Lebenstedt
Johannes Herrmann zum 70. Geburtstag.
Difficile est saturam non scribere angesichts des sich mit jeder neuen
Aussage steigernden Durcheinanders der Berichte über die Auffindung
der viel besprochenen Rollen und der Höhle. Trotz einzelner von mir
herausgehobener Unstimmigkeiten habe ich vor Jahresfrist gemeint, die
Erzählung des syrischen Metropoliten der Darstellung zugrunde legen
zu können-^. Seitdem veröffentlichtes oder doch erst nachträglich mir
bekannt gewordenes Material^ hat die Sachlage verschoben, und auch die
kritische Aufarbeitung desselben durch S. Zeitlin' überbetont m. E.
nebensächliche Dinge, während wesentliche unerörtert bleiben. Die
Ta'amire, von denen zwei Kaufleute oder auch drei Geißhirten die
glücklichen Finder sein sollen*, sind als systematische Schatzgräber^ be-
1 Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Phil.-Hist.
K. 1949 S. 41 Iff., auoh ZAW 62 (1950) S. 246ff., vor allem S. 283. Beide
Arbeiten werden im folgenden vorausgesetzt und nur aus besonderer Ver¬
anlassung zitiert. Die Jesajarolle (und der Habakkuk-Text) ist unterdessen
veröffentlicht: The Dead Sea Scrolls of St. Mark's Monastery, Vol. I, ed.
by MiLLAE BuEBOWs with the assistance of John C. Teevee and William
H. Beownlee, New Haven, American Schools of Oriental Research, 1950;
vgl. dazu R. P. BABTHfeLEMY, RB. 57 (1950) p. 530ff.
2 Vgl. namentlich P. de Vaux, RB. 56 (1949), 580ff.; G. Lambeet,
Nouv. Rev. Theol. 72 (1950), 493ff. und A. Bauchau, ebenda 515ff.,
G. B. Dbiveb, JQR 40 (1950), 359ff., Bleddyn J. Robebts, Exp. T. 61
(1949/50), 323ff. — Auf eine mögliche weitere Bezeugung der ,, Sekte",
der die MSS. angehört haben, bei Qirqisani (in Gestalt der von ihm und
anderen erwähnton Maghäria) verweist de Vaux RB 57 (1950), 420ff.
^ JQR 41 (1950), p. Iff.; vgl. auch in der gleichen Nummer J. Reidbe,
p. 59 ff. Zur Frage der Auswertung der Gewebe der Hüllen für die Alters¬
bestimmung vgl. BASOR 118 (1950) p. 9ff. mit dem Ergebnis: Save for
the fact that the piece is antique there is nothing that can bo said about
its date (p. 11).
* Kaufleute: Bibl. Arch. XI (1948) p. 47 laut Bericht des P. Butros
Sowmy und seines Bruders, des Zöllners Karim Sowmy (während nach
seinem ersten Bericht P. Sowmy bei Katalogarbeiten im Kloster auf die
Rollen gestoßen sein wollte!); Geißhirten: ThLZ 50 (1950), 597 nach
Erzählung der Beduinen an Dir. Habding.
' Zu den Taamire als Schatzgräbern vgl. die sehr aufschlußreichen Dar¬
legung von P, H. Vincent, RB 54 (1947), 296 ff.; zu diesem Stamme im all-
