George Lamsa
Encyclopedia
George M. Lamsa (August 5, 1892 – September 22, 1975) was an Assyrian
author
. He 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") Old
and New
Testaments into English.
. 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, because of the historical fact that, according to Lamsa, "Aramaic was the colloquial and literary language of Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, from the fourth century B. C. to the ninth century A. D."
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.
Lamsa produced his own translation of the Bible
in the form of The Holy Bible from Ancient Eastern Manuscripts
, which is commonly called the Lamsa Bible.
Aramaic grammars and dictionaries, disagree 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" 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?"
Critics of Lamsa assert that he, like many native speakers Aramaic, extend the semantic areas of words beyond the evidence of existent texts.
Bruce Chilton
, scholar and prominent Aramicist, has said:
In 1989 the Christian Evangelical apologetics research ministry Christian Research Institute
asserted in a published review that several of Lamsa's theological positions and interpretations were not supported by the Bible. The review concludes by saying:
Biographical Works
Assyrian people
The Assyrian people are a distinct ethnic group whose origins lie in ancient Mesopotamia...
author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
. He was born in Mar Bishu in what is now the extreme east of Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
. A native Aramaic
Aramaic language
Aramaic is a group of languages belonging to the Afroasiatic language phylum. The name of the language is based on the name of Aram, an ancient region in central Syria. Within this family, Aramaic belongs to the Semitic family, and more specifically, is a part of the Northwest Semitic subfamily,...
speaker, he translated the Aramaic Peshitta
Peshitta
The Peshitta is the standard version of the Bible for churches in the Syriac tradition.The Old Testament of the Peshitta was translated into Syriac from the Hebrew, probably in the 2nd century AD...
(literally "straight, simple") Old
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
and New
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
Testaments into English.
History and views
Lamsa was a member of the Assyrian Church of the EastAssyrian Church of the East
The Assyrian Church of the East, officially the Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East ʻIttā Qaddishtā w-Shlikhāitā Qattoliqi d-Madnĕkhā d-Āturāyē), is a Syriac Church historically centered in Mesopotamia. It is one of the churches that claim continuity with the historical...
. He was a strong advocate of one of that Church's beliefs: Peshitta primacy (a form of Aramaic primacy
Aramaic primacy
The hypothesis of Aramaic primacy holds that the original text of the New Testament was not written in Greek, as held by the majority of scholars, but in the Aramaic language, which was the primary language of Jesus and his Twelve Apostles....
). His hypothesis was that for the New Testament, the Peshitta
Peshitta
The Peshitta is the standard version of the Bible for churches in the Syriac tradition.The Old Testament of the Peshitta was translated into Syriac from the Hebrew, probably in the 2nd century AD...
was the original text, and the Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
version was translated from it. In support of this, he noted that Aramaic was the language of Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
and the earliest Christians, because of the historical fact that, according to Lamsa, "Aramaic was the colloquial and literary language of Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, from the fourth century B. C. to the ninth century A. D."
Lamsa further claimed that while most of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
, the original was lost and the present Hebrew version, the Masoretic text
Masoretic Text
The Masoretic Text is the authoritative Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible and is regarded as Judaism's official version of the Tanakh. While the Masoretic Text defines the books of the Jewish canon, it also defines the precise letter-text of these biblical books, with their vocalization and...
, was re-translated from the Peshitta.
Lamsa produced his own translation of the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
in the form of The Holy Bible from Ancient Eastern Manuscripts
Lamsa Bible
Formally titled The Holy Bible from Ancient Eastern Manuscripts, the Lamsa Bible first appeared in 1933...
, which is commonly called the Lamsa Bible.
Translation of Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani
A notable difference between 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. This is regarded by more conservative 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?" This is similar to how the psalm appears in the Aramaic Peshitta Old Testament and it 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 Lamsa's English version of the Bible explains Jesus's meaning as "This was my destiny."Aramaic grammars and dictionaries, disagree 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" 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?"
Reception
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.Critics of Lamsa assert that he, like many native speakers Aramaic, extend the semantic areas of words beyond the evidence of existent texts.
Bruce Chilton
Bruce Chilton
Bruce Chilton is a scholar of early Christianity and Judaism, now Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion at Bard College, and formerly Lillian Claus Professor of New Testament at Yale University. He holds a degree in New Testament from Cambridge University...
, scholar and prominent Aramicist, has said:
"A still less defensible tendency confuses Aramaic of the first century with Syriac, a different form of the language. The approach of George Lamsa, who used the Peshitta Syriac version as an index of replicating Jesus’ teaching in Aramaic, has been taken up and popularized by Neil Douglas-Klotz. This approach willfully perpetuates a basic confusion of language, since Aramaic and Syriac come from different centuries and areas (although they are closely related Semitic languages), and is based on uncritical treatment of the Peshitta, a Syriac version of the Gospels."
In 1989 the Christian Evangelical apologetics research ministry Christian Research Institute
Christian Research Institute
The Christian Research Institute is an Evangelical Christian apologetics ministry. It was established in October 1960 in the state of New Jersey by Walter Martin . In 1974 Martin relocated the ministry to San Juan Capistrano, California. The ministry's office was relocated in the 1990s near Rancho...
asserted in a published review that several of Lamsa's theological positions and interpretations were not supported by the Bible. The review concludes by saying:
"On the surface, Lamsa appears to be a revealer of biblical truth and culture and a friend of evangelical Christianity. Closer study, however, has revealed that Lamsa promotes metaphysical, not evangelical teachings which have led him to inaccurate interpretations and translations of portions of the Bible. As an ambassador of Nestorian, not biblical culture, Lamsa became a cultic figure in his own right."
Works
- Life in the Harem. Washington, D.C: [s.n.], 1921.
- The Secret of the Near East: Slavery of Women, Social, Religious and Economic Life in the Near East. Philadelphia, PA: Ideal Pr., 1923.
- Emhardt, William Chauncey, and George Mamishisho Lamsa. The Oldest Christian People: A Brief Account of the History and Traditions of the Assyrian People and the Fateful History of the Nestorian Church. NY: Macmillan, 1926.
- Did 'the Jews' Kill Jesus? NY:[s.n.], 1930.
- Key to Original Gospels. Philadelphia, Pa: John C. Winston Co, 1931.
- My Neighbor Jesus: In the Light of His Own Language, People, and Time. St. Petersburg Beach, Fla: Aramaic Bible Soc., 1932.
- The Four Gospels According to the Eastern Version. Philadelphia: A.J. Holman, 1933.
- Gospel Light: Comments on the Teachings of Jesus from Aramaic and Unchanged Eastern Customs. Philadelphia: A.J. Holman, 1936.
- The Book of Psalms, According to the Eastern Version. Philadelphia: A.J. Holman, 1939.
- Modern Wisdom. New York: Association Pr., 1939.
- The Shepherd of All: The Twenty-Third Psalm. Philadelphia, Pa: A.J. Holman, 1939.
- Josephus and the Greek Language. New York: [s.n.], 1940.
- The New Testament According to the Eastern Text: Translated from Original Aramaic Sources. Philadelphia: A.J. Holman, 1940.
- Second Reader in Aramaic. Philadelphia: [s.n.], 1942.
- New Testament Commentary from the Aramaic and the Ancient Eastern Customs. Philadelphia: A.J. Holman, 1945.
- New Testament Origin. Chicago: Ziff-Davis, 1947.
- The Short Koran, Designed for Easy Reading. Chicago: Ziff-Davis, 1949.
- The Holy Bible from Ancient Eastern Manuscripts: Containing the Old and New Testaments. Philadelphia: [s.n.], 1957.
- Was Jesus an Essene? A Comparative Study of Jesus and the Prophets; a New Light on the Hidden Years. Pontiac, Mich: Charles R. Hocklin, 1959.
- A Brief Course in the Aramaic Language. [s.n.], 1960.
- Old Testament Light: A Scriptural Commentary Based on the Aramaic of the Ancient Peshitta Text. Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall, 1964.
- Gems of Wisdom. Lee's Summit, Mo: [Unity School of Christianity], 1966.
- The Kingdom on Earth. Lee's Summit, Mo: Unity Books [distrib. Hawthorn, NY], 1966.
- The Shepherd of All: The Twenty-Third Psalm. San Antonio, Tex: Aramaic Bible Center, 1966.
- And the Scroll Opened. Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1967.
- More Light on the Gospel: Over 400 New Testament Passages Explained. Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1968.
- The Hidden Years of Jesus. Lee's Summit, MO: Unity Books, 1968.
- The Man from Galilee; A Life of Jesus. Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1970.
- Roses of Gulistan. St. Petersburg Beach, Fla: Aramaic Bible Society, 1972.
- Old Testament Light: A Scriptural Commentary Based on the Aramaic of the Ancient Peshitta Text. Philadelphia: Holman, 1978.
- Pearls of Wisdom. Marina del Rey, Calif: De Vorss, 1978.
- Idioms in the Bible Explained; and, A Key to the Original Gospel. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1985.
- The Holy Bible from the Ancient Eastern Text: George M. Lamsa's Translations from the Aramaic of the Peshitta. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985.
- New Testament Light: More Light on the Gospels, Acts, the Epistles, and Revelation: Over 400 Passages Explained. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988.
- The Modern New Testament from Aramaic. Marina del Rey, CA: DeVorss, 1998.
- Lamsa, George Mamishisho, and Daniel Jon Mahar. The Deluxe Study Edition of The Modern New Testament from the Aramaic: With New Testament Origin, Comparative Bible Verses, & a Compact English-Aramaic Concordance. Martinez, GA: Aramaic Bible Soc., 2001.
Biographical Works
- Lamsa, George Mamishisho, and Tom Alyea. The Life of George M. Lamsa, Translator. St. Petersburg, Fla: Aramaic Bible Soc., 1966.
See also
- Lamsa BibleLamsa BibleFormally titled The Holy Bible from Ancient Eastern Manuscripts, the Lamsa Bible first appeared in 1933...
- Words of Jesus on the cross, section "Eli Eli lema sabachthani"
- Rocco A. ErricoRocco A. ErricoRocco A. Errico is an American minister and founder of the Noohra Foundation, an organization devoted to Aramaic Biblical research. Errico was a student of the late George M...