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"Its appearance just at this time is helpful and seasonable."-BISHOP ELLICOTT. "It is a perfect model of what such a book ought to be."-Bookseller. Sold by all Booksellers, and at all Railway Stations. LONDON: SAMUEL BAGSTER & SONS (Limited). JAN 15 100 THE ARAMAIC GOSPEL. INTRODUCTORY. IN THE EXPOSITOR of last July there appeared an article from the present writer entitled, "Did St. Paul Use a Semitic Gospel?" That article was confessed to be a mere side-issue to a much wider theme of investigation; and though complete in itself, and of great importance, as seeming to prove that the words of the Lord Jesus existed in written form during the fifties of the first century, yet the stability of its positions must ultimately repose upon the establishment, on other grounds, of the wider question, Was the Gospel wholly or partially first written in Aramaic? If the reader was conscious of a slight σTepov Tроτероv in the process of argument, it may perhaps be condoned by the fact that the order of discovery is not always the order of logic. The task then to which we wish to address ourselves in a series of articles about to appear in this magazine is to prove the existence of an Aramaic embedded in our present Gospels, and to unveil its The method of research pursued in our investigations is certainly self-originated and independent, and though we shall occasionally come upon the track of other we shall for the most part strike out a path for Gospel contents. explorers, ourselves. But before we proceed to the exposition of our method, it will be desirable to lay before the reader certain facts relating to the Aramaic language and to the Aramaic Gospel mentioned by Papias, and also certain theories respecting these facts, so as to lead to a clearer understanding of VOL. IIL the entire subject. This preliminary matter we will throw into the form of answers to some brief and well-defined questions. I. By whom was the Aramaic language spoken? The Aramaic language was spoken by the inhabitants of Mesopotamia and Syria; by the Mandeans, or Sabians, who lived in Assyria; by the Nabatheans, who at one time inhabited Petra and the Sinaitic Peninsula; by the Temanites of Northern Arabia; and, for at least two centuries before Christ, it was commonly spoken in Palestine. Besides this, for several centuries prior to the conquests of Alexander the Great, Aramaic held the proud position of being the medium of intercourse between monarchs, statesmen, and merchants over the whole of Western Asia. It was known to Rabshakeh the Assyrian (2 Kings xviii. 26), and also to the nobles of Jerusalem, but not, at that time, to the Jewish populace. Rabshakeh insisted, we find, on delivering his insolent message in the Jews' language, , so that all could understand him; whereas the Jewish nobles begged him to speak Aramaic, л, that they only might understand. So also when the adversaries of Judah wrote to Artaxerxes to warn him of the danger of allowing Jerusalem to be rebuilt, Aramaic was the language in which the letter was written, and in which it is still extant (Ezra iv. 11-16), and the decree sent by Artaxerxes to revoke the former one was in the same language (Ezra vii. 12-26). Similarly, in the court of Nebuchadnezzar at Babylon, the one language in which the courtiers, drawn from so many conquered nations, made themselves understood to one another was Aramaic; as we find (Dan. ii. 4) when the Chaldæans came in to interpret the king's forgotten dream, they spoke . A misinterpretation of this verse has been the cause of much confusion all down the ages. Because the Chaldæan magicians spoke Aramaic, it has been inferred that that was the language of the people |