George Lamsa

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Dr. George M. Lamsa (August 5, 1892 – September 22, 1975) was born in Mar Bishu in what is now the extreme east of Turkey. A native Aramaic speaker, he translated the Aramaic Peshitta (literally "straight, simple, sincere or true") into English versions of the Old Testament and New Testament.

History and views

Lamsa was a member of the Assyrian Church of the East. He was a strong advocate of one of that Church's beliefs: Peshitta primacy (a form of Aramaic primacy). His hypothesis was that for the New Testament, the Peshitta was the original text, and the Greek version was translated from it. In support of this, he noted that Aramaic was the language of Jesus and the earliest Christians.

Lamsa further claimed that while most of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, the original was lost and the present Hebrew version, the Masoretic text, was re-translated from the Peshitta.

Scholarly views

Few mainstream scholars accept Lamsa's hypotheses and many strongly believe his research to be pseudoscience.

Where many scholars hold that the sources of the New Testament and early oral traditions of fledgling Christianity were, indeed, in Aramaic, the Peshitta appears to have been strongly influenced by the Byzantine reading of the Greek manuscript tradition, and is in a dialect of Syriac that is much younger than that which was contemporary to Jesus.Casey, M. (1998) Aramaic sources of Mark's Gospel. Cambridge University Press.

Lamsa's view about the Old Testament, too is rejected by most conventional scholars, especially in light of the discovery and character of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Controversial translation

A notable difference between Dr. Lamsa's translation and other versions of the New Testament occurs in the fourth of the Words of Jesus on the cross – Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani. These are regarded by virtually all scholars as a quotation in Aramaic of the opening of Psalm 22, which in English is "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Where this similar to how the psalm appears in the Aramaic Peshitta Old Testament, it also appears in earlier Aramaic Targums. Lamsa believed that the text of the Gospels was corrupt, and that it is not a quotation but should read /Eli, Eli, lemana shabaqthani, which he translates as: "My God, my God, for this I was spared!"/ An accompanying footnote in Dr. Lamsa's English version of the Bible explains Jesus's meaning as "This was my destiny."

Lamsa's revision makes more sense to some Christians, in that it shows Jesus Christ's understanding — even while he was in the process of "dying" – that as the Son of Man he was sent by his Father to be the final Passover lamb - the final sacrifice for sin. Dr. David R. Hawkins, a medical doctor and mystic claims in his books Power vs. Force (2002) and Truth vs. Falsehood (2005) that his non-linear research shows that Dr. Lamsa's version of the Bible is the most truthful available.

Most Aramaic scholars, however, contend with Lamsa's assertion about Jesus' last words, as the word שבקתני [shvaqtani] in Aramaic is the perfect 2nd person singular form of the verb שבק [shvaq] which means "to leave, to leave s.t. left over, to abandon," or "to permit"[The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon] at [Hebrew Union College] with the 1st person singular pronoun affixed. This would, in turn, cause the phrase to translate as "why have you left me?" "why have you let me be?" "why have you abandoned me?" or "why have you permitted me?"

With this in light, serious Aramaic scholars believe that Lamsa, and many other Aramaicists who, like native speakers, extend the semantic areas of words to provide whatever meanings are needed, go beyond the evidence of existant texts.Casey, M. (1998) Aramaic sources of Mark's Gospel. Cambridge University Press.

Footnotes