by
Damien F. Mackey
“The Benedictus, the song of Zachary,
is given in Luke 1:68-79. In Greek, as in English, the Benedictus, as
poetry, seems unexceptional. There is no evidence of clever composition.
But, when it is translated into Hebrew, a little marvel appears”.
Introduction
Astute scholars such as Jean Carmignac, John Robinson and Claude
Tresmontant have breathed some refreshingly healthy new air into
biblical studies by arguing for much earlier dates than conventionally
accepted for the various books of the New Testament, and, in Carmignac’s
case, for the Greek texts of the Synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and
Luke), in particular, to have arisen from Semitic originals.
And I personally would favour Robinson’s view, too, that the entire
New Testament was written before the Fall of Jerusalem, in c. 70 AD.
The following brief article summarises Carmignac’s ground-breaking
efforts – including his wonderful reinterpretation of the “Song of
Zachary” – and it also makes references to the research of Robinson and
Tresmontant:
http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/were-the-synoptic-gospels-composed-in-hebrew
Were the Synoptic Gospels Composed in Hebrew?
Forget what Winston Churchill said about Russia being “a riddle
wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Yes, it was a memorable line,
but it should have been applied to modern biblical scholarship.
Here’s a field for those wanting to make a name for themselves, who
want posterity to know about the Smith Hypothesis or the Jones Theory.
You can come up with any idea you like, and you can do a sophisticated
form of proof-texting establishing your thesis.
All you must do is cite in your notes the Usual Suspects–there are
only two or three dozen names to get right–and Authority is on your
side. Your work will become part of the “assured results of modern
biblical scholarship.”
Unless, of course, you take an entirely new tack. Some things are
simply off limits. People look down their noses at you, for instance, if
you posit early dates for the authorship of the New Testament books.
Look at the cool reception the late John A. T. Robinson got when
Redating the New Testament appeared
in 1976. Robinson was already a well-respected scholar. More than that,
he was a liberal scholar, founder of the New Morality school of
thought, which started with his
Honest to God.
But here he was, taking a fresh look at the presuppositions used in
dating the New Testament books and realizing that the presuppositions
were worthless. They were little more than prejudices.
He started from scratch and came up with the conclusion that every
book of the New Testament was written prior to the fall of Jerusalem in
A.D. 70. The Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and even John he put as early as
the forties, which, if true, would pretty much prove that the men whose
names their bear wrote them.
Redating the New Testament was politely but not, for the
most part, enthusiastically reviewed in the scholarly journals. What
could one expect? People who had staked their reputations on dating the
New Testament as late as possible–even, parts of it, well into the
second century–were displeased that someone not able to be classified as
a reactionary should come up with answers Augustine would have been
comfortable with.
Robinson “worked from an exclusively historical methodology,” wrote Jean Carmignac in
The Birth of the Synoptics.
“I work with a methodology which is principally philological but
historical on occasion.” Carmignac, a Dead Sea Scrolls translator and an
expert in the Hebrew in use at the time of Christ, reached conclusions
similar to Robinson’s, but he came at the problem from a different
angle.
He translated the synoptic Gospels “backwards,” from Greek into Hebrew, and he was astonished at what he found.
“I wanted to begin with the Gospel of Mark. In order to facilitate
the comparison between our Greek Gospels and the Hebrew text of Qumran, I
tried, for my own personal use, to see what Mark would yield when
translated back into the Hebrew of Qumran.
“I had imagined that this translation would be difficult because of
considerable differences between Semitic thought and Greek thought, but I
was absolutely dumbfounded to discover that this translation was, on
the contrary, extremely easy.
“Around the middle of April 1963, after only one day of work, I was
convinced that the Greek text of Mark could not have been redacted
directly in Greek and that it was in reality only the Greek translation
of an original Hebrew.”
Carmignac, who died recently, had planned for enormous difficulties,
but they didn’t arise. He discovered the Greek translator of Mark had
slavishly kept to the Hebrew word order and grammar.
Could this have been the result of a Semite writing in Greek, a
language he didn’t know too well and on which he imposed Hebrew
structures? Or could the awkward phrasings found in our Greek text have
been nothing more than overly faithful translations (perhaps
“transliterations” would be more accurate) of Semitic originals?
If the second possibility were true, then we have synoptic Gospels written by eyewitnesses at a very early date.
Carmignac spent most of the next twenty-five years meticulously
translating the Greek into Hebrew and making endless comparisons.
The Birth of the Synoptics is a popular summary of what he hoped to publish in a massive multi-volume set. It is a delightful shocker of a book.
Consider just one example. (Carmignac gives many, but his short book isn’t weighed down with them.) The
Benedictus, the song of Zachary, is given in Luke 1:68-79. In Greek, as in English, the
Benedictus,
as poetry, seems unexceptional. There is no evidence of clever
composition. But, when it is translated into Hebrew, a little marvel
appears.
In the phrase “to show mercy to our fathers,” the expression “to show mercy” is the Hebrew verb
hanan, which is the root of the name
Yohanan (John).
In “he remembers his holy covenant,” “he remembers” is the verb
zakar, which is the root of the name
Zakaryah (Zachary).
In “the oath which he swore to our father Abraham” is found, for “to take an oath,” the verb
shaba, which is the root of the name
Elishaba (Elizabeth).
“Is it by chance,” asks Carmignac, “that the second strophe of this
poem begins by a triple allusion to the names of the three protagonists:
John, Zachary, Elizabeth? But this allusion only exists in Hebrew; the
Greek or English translation does not preserve it.”
Carmignac gives many other examples, and he draws these conclusions
about the dating of the synoptics: “The latest dates that can be
admitted are around 50 for Mark . . . around 55 for Completed Mark,
around 55-60 for Matthew, between 58 and 60 for Luke. But the earliest
dates are clearly more probable: Mark around 42, Completed Mark around
45, (Hebrew) Matthew around 50, (Greek) Luke a little after 50.”
These dates are all approximate, of course, particularly those for
Mark and Matthew, and they are the result of Carmignac’s mainly
philological analysis.
Claude Tresmontant, in
The Hebrew Christ, working parallel
to Carmignac but with a different methodology, comes up with these
datings: Matthew, early 30s (within a few years of the Resurrection);
Luke 40-60; Mark 50-60.
Carmignac keeps to Marcan priority, while Tresmontant goes for
Matthean priority. Regardless, each denies what is the majority opinion
among biblical scholars, that the synoptics were written late in the
first century, possibly into the last decade or two.
Carmignac draws a few other conclusions:
“(1) It is
certain that Mark, Matthew, and the documents used by Luke were redacted in a Semitic language.
“(2) It is
probable that this Semitic language is Hebrew rather than Aramaic.
“(3) It is
sufficiently probable that our second Gospel
[that is, Mark] was composed in a Semitic language by St. Peter the
Apostle” (with Mark being his secretary perhaps).
Expanding on this last point, he says that “it is probable that the
Semitic Gospel of Peter was translated into Greek, perhaps with some
adaptations by Mark, in Rome, at the latest around the year 63; it is
our second Gospel which has preserved the name of the translator,
instead of that of the author.”
As he wrote
The Birth of the Synoptics, Carmignac suspected
his “scientific arguments [would] prove reassuring to Christians and
[would] attract the attention and interest of non-believers. But they
overturn theories presently in vogue and therefore they will be fiercely
criticized.” They will also be, with Carmignac’s death, fiercely
ignored.
But not forever. Truly honest scholars will have to grapple with what
Carmignac has come up with. Others will continue where he left off. It
may be, a few decades from now, that the “assured results of modern
biblical scholarship” will look quite different from what we have been
told to accept as gospel truth.
— Karl Keating
Luke 1:68-79
New International Version (NIV)
“Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,
because he has come to his people and redeemed them.
He has raised up a horn
[a] of salvation for us
in the house of his servant David
(as he said through his holy prophets of long ago),
salvation from our enemies
and from the hand of all who hate us—
to show mercy to our ancestors
and to remember his holy covenant,
the oath he swore to our father Abraham:
to rescue us from the hand of our enemies,
and to enable us to serve him without fear
in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.
And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High;
for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,
to give his people the knowledge of salvation
through the forgiveness of their sins,
because of the tender mercy of our God,
by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
to shine on those living in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace.”
