Recently, Mr. Bauscher stumbled across my little essay (the #2 result of a Google search for his name), and wrote me to let me know that I have failed to refute his work and have falsely given the impression that I have read all his books. Then he urged me to read his free ebook on the topic, despite the fact that he did not even attempt in his email to prove that I was wrong on any single issue, and despite the fact that it would be cruel to expect anyone to slog through 13 pages of his writing, let alone an entire book by him. I intend to do no such thing! This is my response to his private email (and it is a good thing he emailed me privately, because any attempt to debate me publicly on the issue would make him look ridiculous in public):

Hello David Bauscher,

I have most certainly not given the impression off that I read all of your books and articles. I made it very clear in my article (http://fontwords.com/thoughts/refutation_of_peshitta_primacy.pdf) that I had only read a single thirteen page document by you. Why you would expect me to read more of your articles and books after reading the poorly written and illogical summary you misleadingly call “Proofs of Peshitta Primacy” is an utter mystery to me. If you think I am wrong on anything I said in that article, you are more than free to show me in specific detail why I am wrong, and I will publish a public retraction if you show me to be wrong on any point. Your summary has made it clear that you only have a feeble grasp of the basic issues in the primacy debate, and so while I welcome a specific refutation of any statement I have made, I will most certainly not waste my time reading an entire book you have written.

Have a good day,

Mitchell Powell.

Until such time as Mr. Bauscher is willing to argue against any specific objections I made to his essay, I will consider this matter closed.

A pity this sort of stuff gets mixed in with the people who are trying to have genuine conversation about interesting topics.  The anonymous Aramaic is welcome to continue commenting on this blog, but should know that any comment that contains a link back to that website will be responded to by a link to this post.

Note to others:  if you have opinions I think are silly, I’m not going to denounce you on my website.  I’ll only do that if you insist on plastering your silliness about on my blog.

UPDATE: I’ve done a little proof-reading and revision, so the document is a tad different today than yesterday. Never fear, though, the conclusions and reasoning are the same.

But when it comes to details, things get a little bit more complex. If you just walk into a Christian bookstore, there you’ll see many translations. Biblegateway.com has twenty-two English translations, plus a bunch in other languages as well. And that’s just scratching the surface of issues. Not only do people translate the original texts of the Bible differently; there is also disagreement as to what the original text is.

Let’s start, for example, with the Old Testament. For the Old Testament, the best ancient text still existing is what is called the Masoretic Hebrew text, the type of text found in synagogues throughout the Jewish world. Although there exists virtually letter-for-letter agreement among the texts throughout the world, many scholars believe that the Masoretic text as it currently exists is the result of a deliberate process of standardization which resulted in the destruction of the previous variety among texts.

Scholars who want to work out exactly what the original text was therefore have to try to work with sources other than Hebrew manuscripts. They work by comparing ancient Hebrew manuscripts with the substancially different Greek Septuagint text of the Old Testament, and ancient Aramaic paraphrase/commentaries called Targums. Even when the Hebrew text is trusted by scholars, the vowel points often aren’t.

In the New Testament, it is generally agreed that the New Testament was given in Greek (although some believe that parts were written in Hebrew or Aramaic). Thankfully, we have a much wider variety of sources to work with in the Greek New Testament than in the Hebrew Old Testament. Currently we have about six thousand hand-copied manuscripts of the Greek New Testament from all sorts of various reasons, along with ancient translations in Aramaic, Latin, Ge’ez, and other languages.

Textual criticism, also called lower criticism, is the science (some would say art) of comparing evidence in order to find the original form of a particular text. In the case of the Bible, it is done in order to discover what the text said as originally given by God. Closely related to the topic of textual criticism is the area of translation. Translators frequently refer to the ideas of textual critics in order to explain areas of the text that seem difficult to them, and to choose between readings when differences exist in the various texts before them. More on that later.