Hebrew NT Books?

Sometimes one hears of an Aramaic Gospel of Matthew, usually from a member of the Church of Rome because of "thou art Peter" relating to the reference to the "rock" referred to as Peter or Jesus or Peter's confession.

Personally I believe it's a smoke screen to muddle the issue.

As the Book of Acts indicates, the Gospel was to be delivered to the gentiles after the violent rejection of the apostolic offering of the Gospel to the Nation of Israel.

The lingua franca (and in many places the primary tongue) of the gentile world at that time was koine Greek.

Thus the Holy Spirit codified the NT message in koine Greek not Aramaic or Hebrew.

HankD

 

There is some interesting evidence to suggest that Matthew was originally written in Hebrew. The early church fathers Irenaeus, Papias, Eusebius, Origen and Jerome seem to believe this. Jerome even said the original Hebrew manuscript was still around in his day, stored in a library in Caesarea.

It's a pretty interesting topic to study.

 

If there is a gospel of Matthew written in Hebrew, it would be interesting to see how the tranlation from greek to hebrew happened. Was it dynamic equivalence or formal equivalence? I suspect the latter.

 

There was an interesting hypothesis that was discussed in college regarding Hebrews originally being a Hebrew book that was later translated into Greek. I hadn't seen enough referenced on it to take much credence in it. I think it was a hypthesis constructed to fit the belief that Paul wrote Hebrews - translation would help the stark differences in the Greek texts