Idioms (Hebraisms; Aramaisms; Grecisms)
Engaged: Eternally Dwelling In Hell?
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Becker discusses a JP article where one verse of Mark has Jesus using an idiom which might be misunderstood by translators. Becker purports that the discovery should engage our readers on the topic of death after death....
Blessedness of the Disciples
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Without a knowledge of the saying’s context, the saying about eyes and ears and prophets and righteous men, is quite prosaic. However, if this saying deals with the Kingdom of Heaven, it would be one of the most important verses in the Bible....
Cataloging the Gospels’ Hebraisms: Part Six (Parallelism)
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Parallelism is a beautiful and central feature of Hebrew poetry. Scholars have identified three types of Hebrew parallelism. In the previous article of this series we discussed the first of these types: Synonymous Parallelism. In this article, we will discuss the second type: Antithetical Parallelism....
Cataloging the Gospels’ Hebraisms: Part Five (Parallelism)
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Parallelism is a central feature of Hebrew poetry. It permeates the words of biblical poet and prophet. The frequency with which parallelism occurs in the utterances of Jesus is surprising, and leads inevitably to the conclusion that the Greek source (or, sources) used by the authors of Matthew, Mark and Luke derive(s) from a Greek translation (or, translations) of Hebrew documents....
Cataloging the Gospels’ Hebraisms: Part Four (Parallelism)
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Doubling, or repeating, is a characteristic feature of Hebrew. Hebrew loves to say things twice (or more!) by adding equivalents. Words, phrases, sentences, and even stories, are doubled (or tripled). ...
Cataloging the Gospels’ Hebraisms: Part Three (Impersonal “They”)
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Awareness of even the simplest Hebrew grammatical structure can bring to life a vague, or difficult-to-understand, saying of Jesus. Since potential Hebrew idioms are so dense in the Greek texts of Matthew, Mark and Luke, one has to ask, Could these apparent Hebrew idioms be evidence that the synoptic Gospels are descendants of an ancient translation of a Hebrew "Life of Jesus," the gospel that the church father Papias spoke of when he wrote: “Matthew...arranged the sayings [of Jesus] in the Hebrew language”?...
Cataloging the Gospels’ Hebraisms: Part Two (Luke 9:51-56)
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Rather than looking at isolated words or expressions that appear to be Hebraisms, or, examining a category, or type, of Hebraism, let’s take a complete story from the life of Jesus: Luke 9:51-56, a story found only in the Gospel of Luke. This approach will allow us to gain an impression of the density of Hebraisms that often exists in gospel passages. I followed this approach in writing " Cataloging the Gospels’ Hebraisms: Part One," pointing out the density of Hebraisms in Matthew 13:16-17....
Jesus and the Enigmatic “Green Tree”
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Jesus made bold messianic claims when he spoke. To thoroughly understand these claims, however, we must get into a time machine and travel back in time to a completely different culture, the Jewish culture of first-century Israel. We must acculturate ourselves to the way teachers and disciples in the time of Jesus communicated through allusions to Scripture....
Treasures in Heaven
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The men of Nineveh shall stand up with this generation at the judgment and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah. And behold, something greater than Jonah is here. No one, after lighting a lamp, puts it away in a cellar, nor under a peck-measure, but on the lampstand, in order that those who enter may see the light....
Measure For Measure
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Some of the things Jesus emphasized in his teachings stand as strong warnings to those who belong to the community of faith. Jesus made statements about not lapsing into prideful judgmentalism, and becoming centripetal in one’s thinking. Jesus taught that our attitude toward other people—outsiders, even sinners—must be like God’s....
Scholars and Saints: A Critical Collaboration
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Most academics would question the value of attempting to identify material originating from the historical Jesus because Matthew, Mark and Luke are not historical narratives in the modern sense. ...
Matthew 5:19: The Importance of “Light” Commandments
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In the modern Hebrew translation that was published by the Israeli Bible Society in 1976, and revised in 1991 and 1995, Matthew 5:19 was rendered "...ha-mitsvot ha-ketanot...katon yikare'...gadol yikare'..." (the small commandments...small [smaller, smallest] he will be called...big [bigger, biggest] he will be called). It is highly probable, however, that in this context Jesus was speaking about mitsvot kalot (light commandments) and not about mitsvot ketanot (little or small commandments)....
Blessed Be the “Name”!
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We Christians sing a hymn that contains these words: "Blessed be the name, blessed be the name, blessed be the name of the Lord." We also sing choruses that proclaim: "Your name is like honey on my lips"; "His name is exalted far above the earth"; "Praise the name of Jesus, praise the name of Jesus...." However, we may have misunderstood, or partially misunderstood, many biblical expressions that contain the idiom, "the name of."...
Cataloging the Gospels’ Hebraisms: Part One (Matt. 13:16-17)
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The most frequent request we receive from readers is: "Have you published a list of Hebraism you assume are embedded in the Greek texts of the gospels?" Hebrew idioms leap out from every page of Jesus' life story, and I began cataloging them years ago. I discussed a number of them in the Appendix to Understanding the Difficult Words of Jesus, for example: "bring out your name bad" (pp. 115-117), "the appearance of his face was altered" (pp. 117-119), "lay these things in your ears" (pp. 119-123), and "he set his face to go" (pp. 123-126)....
Let the One Who Has Ears to Hear
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Gospel parables are probably the most widely identifiable teaching form of Jesus. However, readers seldom recognize Jesus’ sophisticated skill as a first-century Jewish parabolist. Indeed, many Christians are unaware that his use of story parables is one of the strongest links between Jesus and contemporary Jewish piety. His parables also demonstrate that Jesus taught in Hebrew....
Jesus’ Command to “Hate”
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If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. (Lk. 14:26, RSV)...
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