Terminally Bland (and blind)

The Terminally Bland Church

Something on the periphery of my understanding has almost come into full view in the last couple of decades. Modern, western, Christianity can become the vanilla of all flavors of our (true) religion if left to its own devices. Churches, churches, churches; ministries, ministries, ministries…which one can be bigger than the last? Which one can be more “cutting edge” than it’s neighbor? Which ministry can be “just so”…good while making it’s followers oh so rigid (or is that spiritually constipated…take your pick)? And which can make the biggest media splash?

There are the ministries that cannot abide the eclectic; who must have order or else. The sermons must be reviewed before the speaker ascends the platform for “fear of the juice”. Hard and fast rules will be laid out so the outsiders looking in won’t judge the hoi polloi of the marching ranks. We must be milquetoast don’t ya know! We must not encourage creativity (except from the direction we think it should come). This is how they did it in the first century isn’t it? This is how Moses did it and if it’s good enough for him it should be good enough for us. Wait a minute…Moses was a little different…hey a lot of the prophets were a little different…hey…

I’ve always admired the Christian who was the “different drummer” (not just marching to it); who actually had thrown off the shackles of his/ her mummified upbringing and ventured off into their own wild blue YONDER (led by the spirit don’t ya know). And it is this individual who is continually mocked by his/her peers for not being “part of the community” or not “under the leadership of a local pastor”. But this is not necessarily the case. The individual usually just wants to be him or her…self. To be the different drummer, one must know the tune to keep in the rhythm. The song might be just a bit slower or faster, higher or lower in key, syncopated a bit differently…but the song nonetheless (read: doctrine here).

And God is into individuals. He shook Elijah out from under his (juniper) tree and Jeremiah, Ezekiel…hmmmm…most of the prophets butted heads with those who wanted them to conform. Then there’s Paul. Imagine if you will, the apostle Paul, as a Pharisee, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; getting the revelation of the Secret (read: tell the world that the Gentiles are now the equals in all ways to the Jews). He was kinda’ on his own on this one mates. Jesus trusted him!

People will make mistakes. New blood in an aging (or stodgy) church or ministry will spill out of the scratched or skinned knee; no doubt about it! But do you plan to keep them infants forever? Who will take up the torch if you won’t trust them with matches? Stop being terminally bland and let go of the keys to the car once in a while. It won’t stop the world from spinning on it’s axis.

Was Syriac the original language of Jesus?

My son sent me the following article this past Sunday: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090206/lf_nm_life/us_cyprus_bible. It involves a Bible found in Cyprus. I had read this on the news myself and my guess is that the MSS (manuscript) will be found to be old (maybe 800-1000 years), but not the 2000 years that “they” are looking for. The they in this case is the subject of today’s blog.

Near the end of the hyperlinked article someone said that they noticed some modern Syriac words in the text. It is always interesting what the pro-Syriacists do to promote their language! Note how the media portrays the dueling “experts”. “Experts were however divided over the provenance of the manuscript, and whether it was an original, which would render it priceless, or a fake.”

It was the same when I was at school in Chicago studying this very language with the foremost authority in the field, Arthur Voobus at the Lutheran School of Theology in the late 1970's (you can google him and see that I’m not just name-dropping….go ahead….I’ll wait). There was a faction (friends of mine, even!) that always insisted that Syriac (more properly the Peshitta text of the Syriac Bible) was the "language of Jesus". Their enthusiasm was boundless and the newspapers always picked up the story of this “language of Jesus” thing. Let me try to import some sanity here.

Syriac was not the language of Jesus (as the article rightly points out), but a dialect of Aramaic (“Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic - the native language of Jesus - once spoken across much of the Middle East and Central Asia.”). But this does not tell the whole story. Syriac was a dialect, but it was not spoken in Palestine. Rather, it was an unwritten language until it was given form in Turkey (specifically Edessa, the area of its origins) in the later years just before Christ. It was a dialect specifically of Imperial Aramaic; that form of Aramaic which existed in the upper Fertile Crescent from the 5th Century BC onward.

Jesus spoke Palestinian (more specifically Galilean) Aramaic, which form may be found in ancient texts such as the Genesis Apocryphon (of Dead Sea Scrolls notoriety). The Christian Scriptures, if they had an original autograph in Aramaic (the jury remains out on this matter, but I am firmly in the pro-Aramaic-original school, having done essential research on this hypothesis while in graduate school at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute), would have been written in this language and not Syriac.

I’m not using Syriac as a piñata, but frankly, those who try to tie Jesus to this language are always being a bit disingenuous. Because Syriac was used to bring the message of Christianity to the East (even as far as India) it is revered by the Eastern Churches over against Western Christianity (whose embodiment was principally the Roman Church in the early years after the Councils started meeting). A prejudice developed against the Western church (and it's Greek Bible) in those earlier years and has given rise to the differing “experts” (the Eastern versus the Western) even today. But the scientific study of the languages of the Northwest Semitic varieties tells the true story (see the former paragraph).

Syriac, along with Coptic, Ethiopic, Old Latin, Gothic and other languages into which the Christian Scriptures were translated in the earlier centuries after the death of the apostles are great resources for textual variants (those places where the more familiar Greek MSS readings are dubious or outright forgeries). And Syriac, among all the others, is sometimes better in that it retranslates (is that a word?) the Greek, from which it is taken, back into the idiomatic language of the Original. But Syriac is still not the original language of Jesus.

I’d like to talk a bit about the Old Syriac texts of the Syriac language tradition (over against the Peshitta text of the Syriac Bible), but space and time does not permit.

Until next time...

Greetings Earthlings

My only begotten Son made me do this.

I'm amenable, but a little shy when it comes to pushing myself on the Public.

I'm an independent theologian and sometimes electrical engineer who wishes to create a legacy of words related to life and God. The Bible should fit with life, logic and it's internal scope so diligence is required on the part of the student. A casual interest is OK, but it's not what is ultimately desired.

Jesus once said, "Search the Scriptures for in them you think you have eternal life", but that was to the religious buttheads of the first century Palestine. Imagine what he expects of the person that truly wants to know (believer or unbeliever).

Hebrews 11:6 says, "Now it is impossible to please God without believing, since anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and rewards those who diligently investigate him."

So search and investigate with me and I hope we'll have a blast.

Robert Erasmus