Notes and Explication on Luke 3:10-14-- the Second Part of S3

From the Q Parallels,

As well as Some Side-long Business to Which IWould Like to Attend in This Web-Log.

First, let me get some matters extraneous to the bigger project of trying to reconstruct the putative Jewish Aramaic substrate of Q, matters more closely related to my thoughts that occur to me as I work this project and 'learn the ropes' of Aramaic-- all the most-difficult way, without professor or classroom, and only my fairly good personal library and Internet to abet my studies, which are all a work in progress...

I to this point would like to decry the bane of work-a-day distractions, even those which are fairly close to the business of this web-log. I find myself thinking a great deal about my blogs on Biblical languages as I work, frequently finding myself in situations where I would like to 'put pen to paper' and cannot do so. So now, given pause, I shall 'open up' and try to spiel out the high-level-abstractions that have been coming to me in this work, and as well the abstractions of an intermediate level.

To begin with, I would like to say that I am very pleased with the services of the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon (CAL), http://cal1.cn.huc.edu, for here-- along with the great tools of the Aramaic dictionaries of Marcus Jastrow, Michael, and R. Payne Smith-- plus grammars in which to 'swim'-- I am able to build a vocabulary in the sundry dialects of Aramaic-- which with the cross-study of other languages (especially Hebrew, Koine Greek and Arabic) enables me to grow as I try to master this immense job.

As to my initial hypothesis as I began this web-log, that I would need to ascertain whether the differential in languages between Aramaic and Greek presents cognitive discrepancies, I would have to say that in the main, this thesis seems confirmed. The method I am using-- with qualification that I do not think it more than a pragmatic tool for analyzing languages semantically-- is essentially the ad-hoc, simplified form of componential analysis of which we read in Eugene A. Nida's "Procedures for the Analysis of the Componential Structure of a Single Referential Meaning," pp. 151-173, in Componential Analysis of Meaning: An Introduction to Semantic Structures, Mouton, The Hague, Netherlands, 1975; the gist of this approach is to array the semantic senses of a word/expression and choose which sense of the word best fits the context at-hand interpretively. The great elegance of this apprroach-- as well as its potential vulnerabity-- is its assumption that semantics can be understood abstractly-- that once the meanings have been lined up in one language, they can be imputed to another. This 'gives me a logical permission-slip' to use the lingua-franca of CAL-- English-- in deriving semantics for the Aramaic; in a larger sense, it 'permits' me to impute an Aramaic reconstruction even when certain scholars are adamant that the N.T. had no Aramaic substrate per se. In other words, the putative construction is a valid word of academics in-and-of-itself; and if we can accept the very meager assumption that there WAS an active Aramaic-speaking Church population in Palestine for several centuries after Jesus-- yea unto the Syriac Church today-- then this reconstruction is perchance not so speculative after all.

Now to the Lucan portion of S3 from Q Parallels, pp. 8-11 of our "reference text." Since Luke 3:7-9 contains cognates which are-- in the Greek-- identical word-per-word with the Matthean text, I shall forego discussion of these verses as redundant with the discussion in my last-- very long!-- entry.

This leaves us, according to Dr. Kloppenborg, with the Lucan S3 entry remainder in 3:10-14-- which Kloppenborg claims are dubious, but he cites the following as vindicating its placement in Q: I. Howard Marshall, Commentary on Luke, Paternoster Press, Exeter, United Kingdom, 1978; Alfred Plummer, The Gospel According to S. Luke, ICC, 4th Edition, T&T Clark, Edinburgh, Scotland, 1901; Heinz Schurmann, Das Lukasevangelium, Herder & Herder, Basel and Vienna, 1969; B.H. Streeter, The Four Gospels, Macmillan & Company, 1924 [with big doubts, Kloppenborg notes!]; Migaku Sato, "Q und Prophetie: Studien zur Gattuns- und Traditionsgeschichte der Quelle Q," Inauguraldissertaion Universitat Bern, 1984. Kloppenborg says all other scholars deny that this is in Q. To err on the side of 'safety,' I shall try to provide Aramaic cognates for key words in Luke 3:10-14, just in the same manner as I have done heretofore, trying for completeness in reconstruction yet realizing here that there may be some problems with the 'originality' of the text.

As far as the literary context in which this material occurs, we find John-Baptizer being asked questions by 'the crowd' about various ethical problems. There may be some conflation of these teachings with those of the Jesus Movement, but one is left with the strong impression-- partially corroborated by a reading of Josephus ANTIQUITIES OF THE JEWS 18:5:2, to wit as follows:

"...John, that was called the BAPTIST; for Herod slew him, who was a good man,

and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness owards one

another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism; for that the washing

[with water] would be acceptable to him, if they made use of it, not in order to the

putting away [or the remission] of some sins [only], but for the purification of the

body; supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness."

--- William Whiston's translation,

from The Works of Josephus,

Hendrickson Publishers,

Peabody, Massachusetts,

1987.

Consistent with these virtues, John teaches the 'crowds' to share, not to exloit one another, not to extort wages; since he gives 'Rabbinical' teaching to soldiers, who are likely to be Gentiles, one is inclined to wonder whether the outreach of John-Baptizer was in part to the non-Jewish community. This is only speculation on my part! But the Nunc Dimittis, Luke 2:29-32, with its proclamation that the Messiah is one who will be a PhOs eis apokalupsin ethnOn--"Light/Illumination in uncovering the hiddenness of the Gentiles" [translation mine]-- is frequently said to be a 'Baptist' document. If this is a valid claim, then it jibes generally with the thesis I am presenting here in this subtext, that John may have preached to Roman soldiers [the text does not indicate they were Zealots or insurgents referring to John], which to me may be taken as a beginning of a trend away from the exclusively-Jewish orientation of John-Baptizer's forbearers. Perhaps-- if this point may be pushed a little further-- we see this in the first part of S2, where John says that the Jews can no longer count on having a safe inheritance from Father Abraham, for God is able to bring up children from [cobble]stones [Matthew 3:9; Luke 3:8.] The evidence is not certain, but it seems possible that John 'opened the doors of salvation' to Gentiles as well as Jews-- a radical thought which may have had some impact on the subsequent Jesus Movement.

At any rate, here, below, are the key words for the Koine Greek words in Luke 3:10-14---

Luke 3:10--

• "Crowd," Greek: hochloi, noun, masculine, nominative, plural; the CAL print-out was singularly not helpful, but in reference to the Old Syriac Gospels-- both Sinaiticus and Curetonianus-- mention k^n^$^), which R. Payne Smith defines-- p. 219-- as "a gathering together [of waters]"; "a multitude [of people]"; "a congregation, assembly"; "a company [of monks]"; this corresponds to Marcus Jastrow, p. 652, k^n^$^), a "gathering, people"; Michael Sokoloff, p. 264, presents a verbal noun k^n^$^w^[t], meaning "assembling'; this word seems likely as a candidate for 'crowd' here.
• "Ask," Greek: epErOtOn, verb, indicative, active, imperfect, third person plural; CAL print-out has two likely words for use here: 1. b^(^y, which according to Jastrow p. 180, means a. "to search"; b. "to ask"; "inquire"; c. "to ask, want, desire; require"; d. "to beg leave to say; to remark; assert"; Sokoloff, pp. 107-108, shows this word meaning "to ask, wish, search for, require, state"; 2. $^)^l, cf. Jastrow p. 1507, with meanings: a. "to ask, inquire, beg"; b. "to borrow"; Sokoloff at pp. 532-533 has this meaning "to ask, inquire, desire, borrow"; according to CAL, $^)^l is "passim," i.e. "universal," so it seems to be a more-natural choice at this juncture.
• "Do," Greek: poiEsOmen, verb, subjunctive, active, aorist, third person plural; for Aramaic, CAL provides a 'mixed bag' of 74 pages print-out, yet with only one word that really seems germane to the semantics at this point: (^b^d, which in Jastrow at page 1035 is said to mean: 1. "to do, labor; make to act"; 2. "to do, fare, prosper"; 3. "to spend time"; a noun-form with the same letters means "servant, slave"; Sokoloff, pp.391-393, renders this word with the meanings "to do, make, act, designate, determine, spend time, be, become"; the noun-form "slave, servant," is also mentioned.

Luke 3:11--

• "Answer," Greek: apokritheis, verb, participle, depondent, passive, aorist, nominative singular masculine; Aramaic from CAL generates two prospects of differing merit: 1. t^w^b, which CAL indicates in Jewish Galilean Literary Aramaic means "to answer," [using the pa'el!], but Jastrow only links this with a Hebraism; 2. (^n^y, which CAL indicates in all Aramaic dialects means "to respond" and Jastrow, p. 1094, indicates has the meanings a. "to tarry, be detained, be late"; b. "to afflict, oppress"; "give answer"; c. "to violate"; d. "afflict oneself, fast"; Sokoloff, p. 412, gives the first meaning of (^n^y as "to answer, respond." Given the choice available, (^n^y seems to be the most-natural 'fit' in context here. But the 'fit' is not loose!
• "Two," Greek: duo, number, cardinal, indeclinable; Aramaic from CAL, the universal symbol for two is said to be t^r^y^n; Jastrow, page 1698, cites t^r^y etc., with this meaning, while Sokoloff has for this cognate t^r^y^y^n , t^r^y^y and others. The gist seems to be that the basic cognate does not alter across diallects of Aramaic.
• "Tunic (Kloppenborg's translation)/Shirt (TEV) / Cloak (semantic domain), Greek: chitOnas, noun, masculine, plural, accusative; Aramaic from CAL was singularly unhelpful; but at "shirt," the TEV expression here, CAL had t^w^t^b, corresponding to Jastrow p. 1659, t^w^t^b, "sheet, shirt." This is the likeliest choice, almost the only word of the lot presented that makes 'sense' in context.
• "Share," Greek: metadotO, verb, imperative, active, 2 aorist, third person singular; Aramaic from CAL has limited options; actually the only word which seems to have any prospects is p^l^g, which universally in Aramaic means "to divide"; Jastrow pp. 1175-1176 renders this word to mean 1. "to divide, share" a. "divided, at heart"; b."differing in opinions"; 2. pa'el means "to divide, distribute, assign a share'; Sokoloff, pp. 433-434, defines this as "to be divided, share, be at variance, be in doubt, divide, distribute." This word thus would seem to be an acceptable candidate in the context here.
• "Food," Greek: brOmata, noun, neuter, accusative, plural; Aramaic in CAL print-out is six pages long, but the first entry, )^k^l is the best in quality; Jastrow , p. 25 cites )^w^k^l^) as 1. "edible food"; 2. "digested food found in entrails"; "excrements"; 3. "an eye disease"; Sokoloff, p. 38, lists )^k^l simply as "food."
• "None," Greek: mE, particle of negation; echonti, verb, participle, active, present, dative singular masculine, meaning "to [a] holding"; Aramaic from CAL generated essentially nothing; contextual study of Old Syriac Gospels and Aramaic overall leads me to believe that the negation l^ and an additional ^h [for "it'] renders about the sense we desire, for so we read it in Sinaiticus, Curetonianus and Peshitta; we also find such in the Targums.
• "Likewise," Greek: omiOs, adverb; Aramaic from CAL has Syriac expression h^k^w^t; Jastrow, page 350, cites h^k^n, "thus"; Sokoloff, p. 165, has this expression meaning "so, in this manner." I think this word will certainly suffice for the purposes to which we must put it.

Luke 3:12--

• "Tax-Collectors," Greek: telOnai, noun, masculine, nominative, plural; Aramaic from CAL is useless; checking the Old Syriac Gospels at loc. cit. reveals a word m^k^s^), which R. Payne Smith defines as "tribute, impost, toll, tax"; whereas the root m^k^s/m^k^s^) means "publican, collector, tax-collector"; Jastrow has no word per se for tax-collector like this, but does have cognates for m^k^s, cf. pp. 783-784; but note that Sokoloff, p. 308, at m^k^s, meaning #3, defines this word as "tax-collector"; otherwise he has it mean "tax."
• "Baptize," Greek: baptisthEnai, verb, infinitive, aorist, passive; Aramaic in CAL is deficient of good, Jewish Aramaic equivalents for baptism, although there are plenty of Syriacisms from ecclesiastical experience with baptism. Here, the Old Syriac Gospels are already colored by this ecclesiastical tradition and the word in Syriac for "baptism" m^(^m^d in Jastrow only seems to refer to "standing up [at a funeral procession]"; this may not be the context in which the baptism-of-John is cast. This led me to do the full complement of research for this piece, not that I should not do so per word anyway. Correspondingly, I checked the Hatch and Redpath Concordance to the Septuagint in order to learn: 1. whether baptizein is present in the LXX; 2. to what Semitic root[s] it may be associated. I learned that this Greek word is associated with the Hebrew T^b^l, cognate with the Aramaicism in Jastrow at p. 517, meaning 1. "to dip"; 2. "to immerse, to bathe for purification"; " to season"; "to take luncheon"; "to be immersed, made clean"; this latter word would appear to be most-relevant for describing the baptism of John-Baptizer.
• "Teacher," Greek: didaskale, noun, masculine, vocative, singular; Aramaic from CAL says that r^b, universally meaning "chief," and in Jewish Literary Aramaic Galilean, Jewish Literary Aramaic Targumic, Babylonian Jewish Aramaic, and Syriac, this word means "teacher." Jastrow, at p. 1438, says r^b means 1. "superior, master"; 2. "teacher"; as a feminine noun it means "mistress"; Sokoloff devotes several pages to r^b entries, at first defining the word as "great, large, important, older, master, teacher, chief." This aappears to be the correct word here.

Luke 3:13--

• "Collect," Greek: diatetagmenon, verb, participle, passive, perfect, accusative neuter singular; the Aramaic from CAL is quite helpful, 9 pages of copy with several germane listings. The first notable listing is g^l^y, which Jastrow says --p. 206-- means 1. "to rake"; 2. "to collect"; Sokoloff-- p. 119-- has "to collect" for this. Next we have a minor entry, but one also witnessed in Jastrow, at pp. 650-651, k^n^p, which according to Jastrow means "to press, crowd, gather." Then we have l^q^T, which at page 718 Jastrow means "to pick up, gather"; Sokoloff-- p. 286-- defines this usage as "to gather, pick up, glean." Of these usages, we are left with several apparently good choices; I must confess that I do not know enough about the sociolinguistics of use in the various speech communities where these words come to play in order to make an optimum decision as to which one is the best word for 'the job' at hand. So using Bayesian logic, I shall declare the likely probability for using all three words-- as far as I know-- equal!
• "Entitle," Greek: prassete, verb, imperative, active, present, second person plural; Aramaic from CAL has but one listing, z^k^y, which universally in Aramaic dialects means "to be innocent"; Jastrow, p.399, holds that the pa'lel of this word means "to entitle, give possession-to"; Sokoloff at p. 177 defines this word as "to be innocent, worthy, gain possession, give charity." It is clear that this is a very broad word, yet with a semantic domain covering the meaning intended by the context here.

Luke 3:14--

• "Soldiers," Greek: strateuomenoi, verb, participle, middle, present, nominative masculine plural; Aramaic from CAL shows 3 pages with )^s^T^r^T^y^w^T as a Syriacism for "soldier," to which on p. 92 Jastrow has )^s^T^r^T^w^T, a transliteration into the Aramaic alphabet of the Greek stratiOtEs, "soldier," "Roman soldier." This is deeply unsatisfying because it would not cover the contingency of a Zealot or Nationalist insurgent of other sort who might come to John. But it is very very odd-- even Hebrew seemed to lack words in the O.T. for INDIVIDUAL soldier, although there were words for BANDS of soldiers. Perhaps a parallel expression like the Hebrew AISH TSABA--"man of the army" was the custom in those times. The Aramaic for this would have been ENOSHA D-CHEYL. But this is sheer sheer guesswork on my part.
• "Extort," Greek: diaseisEte, verb, subjunctive, active, aorist, second person plural; the Aramaic in the CAL list is almost entirely Syriac, and thus minimally informative. I did check by reconstructive method the Old Syriac Gospels-- which for Wilson's translation at this verse has "oppress" instead of "extort," the Aramaic word for which is -- at root-- (^$^q, which Jastrow, at page 1126, reports as an Aramaic word with Hebrew parallel meaning "to wrong," especially "to withhold what is due a fellowman; to deny a debt." Additional Aramaic meanings include : "to pervert," and "to be outrageously dear." Sokoloff -- p.420-- has this verb only meaning "t flee." This word thus appears to have fair viability in the present language context.
• "Falsely-Denounce," Greek: sukophantEsEte, verb, subjunctive, active, aorist, third person plural; the Aramaic in the CAL print-out is partly helpful; it is important to recognize that what is being asked for is "false witness," if one will permit the term, and not just "falseness" per se. To that end, CAL reports that (^l^y^l^h in Targumic Jewish Literary Aramaic means a "false charge." Making a false charge -- we may infer-- would be l^(^b^d (^l^y^l^h. We might also have recourse to the Targum Onkelos at Exodus 20:16 with the expression for "make false witness" i.e. n^q^b^y^l w^l^) y^t^m^l^l (^m^n^) m^n q^d^m y^w^y d^l^m^) ... "You shall not cry out and not be uttering words [of accusation] whence it is proven from you previously to be vain/false..." The key words making "false witness" are q^b^l and m^l^l and l^m^), i.e. "cry-out/condemn," "utter-word[s]," and "vanity/falsity." From these Targumic words we should be able to cobble together a valid 'reading' of this meaning into the context. If this will not 'do,' then we may certainly suffice to use the material already presented in the CAL list, all the while realitzing the hypothetical nature of every aspect of this work.
• "Content," Greek: arkeisthe, verb, imperative, , passive, present, second person plural; Aramaic from CAL is brief, but it does not need to be longer than its two pages for me to select $^l^m, see Jastrow 1586, word with meanings "to be perfect, complete, finished, spent"; Sokoloff has this as a cognatie for "peace, well-being, contentment" at p. 554.
• "Wage," Greek: opsOniois, noun, neuter, dative, plural; Aramaic from CAL illustrates that there is-- at least from the 1st century standpoint-- no solid word for "wage" as we know it in Jewish Aramaic. The closest aporoximation is the word )^g^r, which in the universal Aramaic sense has the meaning "to hire"; in Palestinian, it means "to rent"; in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, it means "to rent out, to lease," " to be hired out." Jastrow includes the sense of "wages" for the noun-form of this word at p. 14, but it is said that the CAL philology is more-to-be-trusted as being based on modern, exhaustive research using computerized databases.

This concludes my componential analysis of Luke 3:10-14, the 'second part' of S3 from Kloppenborg's Q Parallels. This is plodding work, and I think it will take me the rest of my lifetime to complete the work I have cut-out-for-myself on Q. I am trying to be careful in my work, but there are upper limits to just how much detail I will permit myself on a particular verse or word.

I do want the reader to know-- if there are any readers to this blog-- that I am trying to follow the reconstructive linguistic method by way of pragmatic componential analysis. I have read Linguistic Reconstruction: An Introduction to Theory and Method, by Anthony Fox, Oxford University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom, 1995, and I believe conservative work can be done using semantics on a word-per-word basis for the reconstruction. Eugene Nida is a great mentor for me, but John Lyons, in his Linguistic Semantics: An Introduction, has instructed me to be cautious about uncritical, facile 'overuse' of componential analysis as a way to get at meanings-of-words. Therefore, I feel properly chastened to esteem myself pragmatic in my search for the meanings of these words.

It must always be in the work I am doing the element of guesswork, of hypothesis. Those who exalt the text do have something concrete in their hands which is palpable and from which behavioral operations can be performed. But the work I am doing is like archeology-- reconstructing a vision of what conditions were like before all the 'new construction' appeared and disturbed the ground, leaving traces telling telling telling but indirect. The 'archeology' of my work is no less scientific than many a scientist forced to rebuild a picture and theory of a past which no longer exists. Forensic scientists, geologists, and paleo-ecologists are all compelled to resolve such problems as best they can, using critical reason, the comparative method, and Bayesian logic. I can use such scholar's tools to reason through the thickets of retrospective analysis that will have been necessary to make this project 'work.'