A TRANSLATION, IN ENGLISH DAILY USED, OF THE PESHITO-SYRIAC TEXT, AND OF THE RECEIVED GREEK TEXT. OF HEBREWS, JAMES, 1 PETER, AND 1 JOHN. WITH AN INTRODUCTION, ON THE PESHITO-SYRIAC TEXT, AND BY WILLIAM NORTON, Of North Devon. London: W. K. BLOOM, 221, FURNIVAL STREET, HOLBORN. PART I. The many Countries in which Syriac was spoken, iii.-xi. PART II. Proof that very few Israelites in the time of Christ understood Greek, PART III. The Difference between the Syriac of the Peshito-Syriac Text, and the popular Syriac Dialect of Palestine, xvii., xviii. PART IV. How we may know whether Books which are said to be the Word of God, PART V. The Belief of those Christian Bodies which have used the New-Covenant Peshito-Syriac Books, xxvi.-xlvi. PART VI. Internal Evidence that the Peshito-Syriac was made in Cent. I.; and that it is not a mere translation of the Greek, xlvi—li. PART VII. Characteristic Differences between the Peshito-Syriac Text, and the PART VIII. The Result of trusting chiefly to certain faulty Greek copies, and slighting the Peshito-Syriac, liii.—lviii. PART IX. Testimonies founded on Knowledge and Esteem of the Peshito-Syriac, PART X. Chief Peculiarities of the Text of the Peshito-Syriac, lxx., lxxi. PART XI. The Design of this work, lxxi.—lxxvi. PART XII. Words in the Common Version not well understood by some, in words more familiar, lxxvi.—lxxxiii. PART XIII. A List of the more important Greek Readings which are followed in the Text or Margin of the Revised English Version of 1881, but which do not agree with the Peshito-Syriac text, and are condemned by it, lxxxiii.-cxi. PART XIV. A List of the more important Greek readings, followed in the Text or Margin of the Revised English Version of 1881, which agree with the Peshito- Introduction. I. THE MANY COUNTRIES IN WHICH SYRIAC WAS SPOKEN. Syriac is a very ancient language. It belongs to the same family of languages as the ancient Hebrew. In the time of the Redeemer it was spoken, in slightly different dialects, in many countries. SYRIAC BECAME THE LANGUAGE OF PALESTINE.-Dr. Frederic Delitzsch, Professor of Assyriology, in the University of Leipzic, in a work on "The Hebrew Language viewed in the light of Assyrian Research, 1883," p. 2, says, "The transportation of the ten tribes from Palestine to Mesopotamia and Media, and the close intercourse of those left behind with people of different nations, as the Elamites, Babylonians, and Arabs, who supplied the places of the exiled Israelites, struck a deadly blow at the ancient language of the kingdom of Israel Nor was it destined to flourish much longer in the kingdom of Judah......The termination of the Babylonian exile marks the beginning of that process," that is, as to Judah, "by which Hebrew gradually disappeared from among living languages. It is true that a small portion of the nation, those who availed themselves of the permission to return to the holy land, still wrote and spoke Hebrew; but the Aramaic [the Syriac] dialect, which had been favoured by the Persian kings, and was almost regarded as the official language of the western portion of the Persian empire, had already begun to bring its deteriorating influence to bear upon it; and, rapidly advancing, was conquering one portion of Palestine after another. This process continued under the dominion of the Greeks.........At the time of the Maccabees, Hebrew had already ceased to be a spoken language. .The learned among the Jews, during the last two centuries before Christ, even preferred to write in Aramaic; and at the time of Christ, Aramaic reigned supreme as the adopted language of the country." Those of the ten tribes who were "6 CARRIED AWAY INTO ASSYRIA," (2 Kings xvii. 6,) adopted the Syriac language also, as well as those of them who remained in Palestine. We have proof in holy Scripture that Aramaic, now called Syriac, was spoken by some of the Assyrians, when the king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh against Jerusalem. For the elders of the Jews asked him to speak to them in Aramaic, that the rest of the Jews might not know what 4 5 X 46 A2 |