Bible Books: An Unsimple Story

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The name Peshitta, according to a majority of scholars, means “simple” or “straightforward.” For those who lived in the first and second centuries C.E. in the area that today is Turkey, Iran and Iraq, the name would have been plainly understood. The Peshitta is “simple” in contrast with the more elaborate and scholarly translation of the Greek Bible once used in the same region. But for today’s scholars, there’s not much simple about this ancient translation of the Old and New Testaments, which remains authoritative in the Church of the East, the Syrian Orthodox Church and other Near Eastern and Indian churches. Many questions about the date and origins of the Peshitta remain unanswered.

The Peshitta consists of a translation of the Christian Bible into Syriac, an Aramaic dialect used in ancient Edessa (in present-day Turkey) and Western Mesopotamia. Syriac (also called Eastern Aramaic or Classical Syriac) is close to (but not the same as) the Aramaic dialect spoken in Judea in Jesus’ day. The books of the Hebrew Bible include the Apocrypha. The New Testament omits the Book of Revelation, a handful of gospel passages and the epistles 2-3 John, 2 Peter and Jude.

The title Peshitta was intended to invoke its straightforward translation of the Hebrew Bible. Today, however, some scholars question whether the translators worked primarily from the Hebrew Bible. Some believe they relied more or less heavily on the Septuagint (a Greek translation from Hebrew begun in the third century B.C.E.) or used the Targums (Aramaic translations from Hebrew) as a first source before comparing the translation with the Hebrew. The New Testament is a revision of earlier Old Syriac translations.^a

The identity of the translators is also unknown. They have been variously identified by modern scholars as Jews, Christians and Jewish-Christians. Earlier tradition is more inventive. One legend suggests that the Old Testament translation was produced for Hiram of Tyre, the tenth-century Phoenician king who supplied Solomon with cedarwood for the Jerusalem Temple (1 Kings 5:10). Another tradition credits the Samaritan priest who, according to 2 Kings 17:27–28, was installed at Bethel by an Assyrian king after Assyria conquered Israel in 721 B.C.E. Later Christian tradition cites a first-century king of Edessa, who was said to have sent a team of scholars to Judea to translate the Hebrew Bible into Syriac.

And, of course, the date of the Peshitta is hotly disputed. The two oldest extant Peshitta manuscripts date to 442 C.E. and 463 C.E.; they are, incidentally, the oldest Bible translations that can be dated precisely in any language. But modern scholars date the original translation to anywhere between the first and fourth century C.E.

All of these questions surrounding the origins and transmission of the Peshitta are addressed in the late Michael P. Weitzman’s introduction to the Peshitta, published a year after the author’s death at age 51. As the title of his volume suggests, his focus is the Old Testament—especially the relationship between the Hebrew Bible and the Syriac translations. (The Peshitta’s New Testament has an equally complicated history, requiring its own introductory volume.)

According to Weitzman, formerly a reader in Hebrew and Jewish studies at University College London, the Syriac Old Testament was produced in Edessa or its province, at the end of the second century C.E. Weitzman bases this on an evaluation of references to the Peshitta by later Syriac commentators, references within the text to contemporary events, and the vocabulary and grammar used throughout the translation.

Weitzman demonstrates that the translators of the Peshitta did draw on the Septuagint in different instances. They were not in any way systematic, however, and 050would diverge from the Septuagint and follow the Hebrew in neighboring passages. Weitzman also reviews the evidence that the Peshitta is based on an earlier Jewish Targum rather than on the Hebrew Bible. He shows that the examples put forth by other scholars can be explained just as easily by referring to the common traditions of language (Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic), translation techniques and the rabbinical methods of interpretation with which the translators of both the Targums and the Peshitta were familiar.

Weitzman derives his identification of the translators from the translation itself. In the Syriac version of Chronicles and Ezra, the translator seems to identify with the Jews. This is seen, for example, in a pattern of translation that indicates an identification with the sufferings of the Jews. Another example is found in the translation of 2 Chronicles 6:18, which in Hebrew reads: “Can indeed God dwell with man on earth?” The Peshitta translates this passage: “For in faith the Lord caused his presence to dwell upon his people Israel on earth.” Based on this, Weitzman concludes that the translators were not Christian. Because the translators sometimes follow rabbinic interpretation, and sometimes understand the text in ways that contradict the rabbinic rendering, Weitzman reasons that they were familiar with rabbinic Judaism, but not part of it.

The goal of the Peshitta translators was to make the meaning of the Hebrew text clear to a Syriac audience. Of course, they made mistakes. Furthermore, the Peshitta’s translators did not have policies on how certain words and expressions should be translated. Theirs is, consequently, an uneven translation, with the same words and expressions in similar contexts being translated in different ways in different places. Some scholars have proposed that this unevenness is evidence that the work was prepared over a long period of time, perhaps several centuries. Weitzman, however, suggests that it indicates many hands working on the project at the same time.

A statistician as well as an expert in Semitic languages, Weitzman charts the range of variation (from the most conservative or traditional to the most “modern”) in the translation of certain Hebrew words found throughout the Peshitta. He concludes that the Peshitta was produced by 15 translators. According to Weitzman, the majority of differences between the Hebrew and Syriac can be attributed to the translators; they do not provide evidence of variants in the original Hebrew. For this reason, Weitzman warns against making too great a use of the Peshitta in the text-critical investigation of the Hebrew text (an assessment with which this reviewer agrees).

In his final chapter, Weitzman addresses how the Peshitta text developed over time. He concludes that a manuscript known as 7a1, in the Ambrosian Library in Milan, preserves “on occasion” the original text. Most later variants may be attributed to scribal error or attempts to “improve” the text.

In the introduction to his Introduction, Weitzman promises to give the reader a comprehensive study of the Syriac Bible and its relationship to the Hebrew Bible. He succeeds. For scholars, this book will surely become the standard reference work on the Syriac version of the Bible. Yet even specialists in Semitics and text-criticism will find Weitzman’s highly technical discussions challenging. To understand the author’s arguments, readers must be proficient in Hebrew, Syriac and Greek.

This volume is Dr. Weitzman’s legacy. It is also, as Robert P. Gordon notes in the foreword, a sad reminder “that we have been denied so much by his passing.”

The name Peshitta, according to a majority of scholars, means “simple” or “straightforward.” For those who lived in the first and second centuries C.E. in the area that today is Turkey, Iran and Iraq, the name would have been plainly understood. The Peshitta is “simple” in contrast with the more elaborate and scholarly translation of the Greek Bible once used in the same region. But for today’s scholars, there’s not much simple about this ancient translation of the Old and New Testaments, which remains authoritative in the Church of the East, the Syrian Orthodox Church and other Near Eastern […]