Block, SkipCaptcha, Upload, Automoderated users, edit
3,189
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Line 368:
Line 368: + + + + + + +
→Early New Testament history
The oldest surviving New Testament fragment of which there is a reliable date is the [[John Rylands Fragment]] (P52) of the ''Gospel of John'', dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. <ref>[http://www.biblefacts.org/history/oldtext.html N.T. Ancient Manuscripts]</ref> The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as [[Herodotus]], [[Plato]], [[Euripides]], and [[Homer]] have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.
The oldest surviving New Testament fragment of which there is a reliable date is the [[John Rylands Fragment]] (P52) of the ''Gospel of John'', dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. <ref>[http://www.biblefacts.org/history/oldtext.html N.T. Ancient Manuscripts]</ref> The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as [[Herodotus]], [[Plato]], [[Euripides]], and [[Homer]] have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.
==The Peshitta==
The second translated version of the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament (after the Greek Septuaginta) was the Aramaic language Peshitta. In 36 A.D., both the Queen of Adiabene (the last existing Province of the hated and feared by the Jews Assyrian Empire), known in Greek as Queen Helena (not the mother of Constantine) and known to the Jews as Queen ShlomZion ("Peace of Zion"), and her son King Ezad were converted to Judaism. Queen Helena's conversion, as wiell as others of the Kingdom, furthered the already developing translation of the Hebrew Scriptures in her Kingdom's language -Aramaic. That developing translation came to be known as the Peshitta - meaning simple or common speech, in much the same way as the Hebrew Bible would be translated into Latin by Jerome, with extensive help from a Rabbi,and the resultant translation would be called the Vulgate - meaning simple or common speech. The Peshitta, retaining elements of the then Jewish "[[Targum]]ic" (interpretive) and other Jewish understandings of the Hebrew Bible (see[[Midrash]]), is primarily based on the Pre-Masoretic Hebrew Scriptures - though certain books, such as the Prophet Isaiah,are translations primarily from the Septuagint The development of the Old Testament Peshitta translation is held by some to have taken place alternatively in Adiabene's nearby neighbor Edessa.
As Thomas and his followers went to India, others (possibly Adai (Thaddeus), the Galilean from Caesarea Phillipi among them) arrived in [[Adiabene]], and having gone probaly to the synagogues first, as did the Apostle Paul), they found already, if not a populous, then an elite governmental element, conversant with the Biblical message in Aramaic. From these people, hearing the preaching of the messengers from Israel ,came believers in Jesus Christ, and soon after, came the translation of the Greek New Testament Scriptures into Aramaic, and so the Peshitta was added to by inclusion of the New Testament in Aramaic. Unlike the Greek canon of the New Testament Scriptures, the Peshitta originally did not include the following books: the Second Epistle of Peter, the Second Epistle of John, the Third Epistle of John, the Epistle of Jude and the Book of Revelation. But these books translated into the Syriac (as Christian Aramaic is known) are part of the Peshitta now and used by the Aramaic based churches, primarily in India and the Middle East - the Syrian Catholic Church, the Assyrian Church of the East (Holy Apostolic and Catholic Church of the East), the Indian Orthodox Church, the Chaldean Catholic Church, the Maronite Church, the Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church, the Syro-Malabar Church and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church.
Adiabene and its surroundings then became the sending center for a mission to the East that would eventually, taking advantage of the newly rediscovered monsoon winds blowing for months across the Arabian sea, making it possible for ships to no longer hug the coasts, and taking advantage of the "Silk Road" all the way from Antioch in Syria to China, take the message of Jesus Christ to India (bringing about the Aramaic (Syriac) language churches of Kerala) and even to China itself. And so, the Peshitta, written in the Middle East, become the Scriptures, for a while, of the Far East Churches of Jesus Christ, particularly in India.
===The Vulgate===
===The Vulgate===