What is the Peshitta?

So much can be said as to exactly what the Peshitta is. The below information only barely touches on this vast subject. If you have questions about specific passages within the Peshitta, feel free to contact The Peshitta Foundation.

The name "Peshitta" is Aramaic and means "straight", (the original and pure version of the targumic Scriptures). The Peshitta is one of the oldest dated Biblical manuscripts in existence. Because it is a part of the Word of God preserved throughout the generations since the Apostles' time, it is a reliable and pure text, which contains the books in the Tanakh and the New Covenant Scriptures, as well as "Apocryphal" books, that were written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Aramaic dialects. Hebrew and Aramaic were the languages spoken by the Messiah and His Apostles in the First Century.

In short, the Peshitta is a full targumic text on the Scriptures written in Hebrew and Aramaic.

The Peshitta is an ancient copy of the original commentary on the Scriptures of the First Century Assembly in Aramaic and Hebrew. The original Peshitta did not contain the books of 2 Peter (Keipha), 2 John (Yokhanan), 3 John and Jude (Yehuda). Nor did the original Peshitta contain the book of Revelation, as it was never considered as a canonical book among various religious bodies in the east. These books were added later to the Peshitto (the edition of the targumic Scriptures as used by the Syriac Church translated from the Greek and Aramaic manuscripts). Neither will you find the story of the woman caught in adultery found in most English translations of the Greek text of John chapter 8.

Yeshua and the Apostles likely spoke more than one language, but Aramaic was the common language of Yeshua's people and their words would naturally be written in their native language by His Apostles and their scribes...but to give the widest possible distribution of the Scriptures they eventually had to be translated into other languages. It is an undisputed fact that Yeshua and the Apostles were Jewish... something that many people quickly forget and Yeshua and His Apostles did not speak in Elizabethan English saying "thou, thy, thine" etc.

To properly understand some of the phrases used in the Peshitta Targum, including some of the parables spoken by Messiah, one must understand the cultural setting that surrounds these first century writings of the collected Scriptures, which was a Jewish world eventually filtering into the world of the Greeks, Persians and various oriental lands.

Evidence leans toward the fact that the Greek (and eventually Latin) manuscripts were translated from the original Aramaic Peshitta and other Hebrew manuscripts. Sometimes the later Greek translators did not understand the Aramaic phrases and catch words, so they had to make up phrases to make it sound the way they understood it and unfortunately these Greek and Latin translations lost much of the original meaning.

Remember the passage talking about people taking up serpents? That was a phrase back then that meant Believers would deal with their enemies....it had nothing to do with snake handling.

What about the passage talking about cutting off one's hand or removing one's eye? These passages have plagued Greek translators who did not understand the phrases Yeshua used. That was a phrase back then that simply meant, "Stop what you are doing." In other words, "If you are stealing, then stop it already!", and so on. Yeshua never commanded that His followers mutilate themselves.

There are so many other examples that have crept into the later editions of the Greek simply because the translators did not understand the cultural setting of Jews in Israel. Unfortunately these same misunderstandings have crept into the modern translations of today.

Aramaic can be dated to five periods, dating from inscriptions that go back to the first millennium B.C.E.:

1. Old Aramaic, 925-700

2. Official or Imperial (Assyrian) Aramaic, 700-200 (when the language was still uniform)

3. Middle Aramaic, 200 B.C.E. - 200 C.E.

4. Late Aramaic, 200-700

5. Modern Aramaic, 700 to our time

Did the Messiah ONLY Speak One Language?

If anyone today claims that the original Scriptures were written in Greek and that Yeshua and the Apostles only spoke Greek, such individuals are either ignoring the historical facts and archaeological discoveries or they simply do not know what they are talking about being totally ignorant of the facts.

Today no one can ignore the facts of history and ancient findings. It is a fact that the Peshitta, written in Aramaic, is the original and that the Greek came second, followed by additional languages.