No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2011
Professor Torrey's new translation of the Gospels has more importance than a mere substantiation of a thesis might be expected to have. Whether or not his theory of a written Aramaic (and in part Hebrew) original of the four Gospels is correct, there can be no doubt of the value to New Testament scholarship of a critical translation made by so competent a Semitist and biblical student as the author is universally acknowledged to be. And lest this brief note of appreciation be taken as the conventional tribute paid by the disapproving critic before he attempts to show that the author's theories deserve less polite treatment, the reviewer wishes to make clear that he has studied the arguments for translation-Greek advanced in Torrey's essay on “The Origin of the Gospels” and has examined a fair amount of the evidence without any preconceived notions about Torrey's ability to prove his points.
1 It would have been impossible to comment in this review on all of the suggestions made by Torrey on all four Gospels. The reviewer has therefore chosen the first fifteen chapters of Matthew (and the synoptic parallels) as test-material. The conclusions reached may not be valid for John's Gospel.
2 One is tempted to be facetious and note that “shatters on,” in this sense, is a Germanism, cf. “scheitert auf,” and might, on Torrey's own reasoning, indicate the use of a German document. Obviously he has read so much scientific German that occasionally he thinks in German, to the extent of using an academic phrase.
3 Cf. Schürer, Gesch. Jüd. Volkes iii. 3rd ed., 93 f.; Juster, Les Juifs dans l'empire romain, i. 365 ff.; Tcherikower, Ha-Yehudim we ha-Yewanim, 355 ff.
4 Torrey aptly reminds us (p. 279) that “for any bilingual scholar of that day many Hebrew words and phrases had their standing Greek equivalents, mainly provided by the Greek Bible.”
5 Torrey's transliteration of Aramaic is kept in quotations from him; elsewhere a slightly different system is used.
6 Cf. the preface to vol. 5 of the Loeb Classical Library edition of Josephus.