It’s an Idiom, Idiot! (2)

Now in those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying,  Matthew 3:1  NASB

Saying – Yesterday we discovered that the Hebrew expression le ʾmōr is not really a word to be translated.  It is the Hebraic substitution for quotation marks.  Now, when we look at the Greek text of Matthew, we find the same Hebrew expression.  Greek, of course, also has no punctuation, but in this case, what Matthew writes is not Greek.  It is Hebrew.  The same idiomatic expression we found in Genesis 9:8 (and throughout the Tanakh) is here, written in Greek but really a Hebraic articulation.  And once more we see that the NASB represents the word literally.  You might have read these verses in the past, thinking to yourself, “Oh, well, it’s just an extraneous repetition.”  But now you know better.  It isn’t a repetition at all.  It’s a clear indication that Matthew is not thinking in Greek!  He’s thinking Hebrew, translated into Greek.  This example, along with many others, is a pretty good indication that Matthew might have been originally written in Hebrew.  It certainly indicates that his intended audience was Hebrew speaking.  So, le ʾmōr might seem like an extraneous repetition in the Tanakh, but here, in Matthew, it tells us something very important.  We need to read Matthew as Jews!

We learn something else from this little “extra” word.  We learn that each of the Gospel writers penned their accounts according to the linguistic expectations of the intended audience.  Luke doesn’t use this Hebraic expression.  Nor does John, although they both use a different idiomatic construction to draw attention to the intensity of statements (an expression that is typically Greek).  If we’re going to understand what these writers intended, we will have to identify their audience and the language the audience expected to hear.  We might find that John’s gospel doesn’t have quite the same characteristics as his letters or his recounting of the vision on Patmos.  We might discover that Paul switches back and forth between Greek paradigms and Hebrew paradigms.  One thing is for sure: we must know that cultural and linguistic background before we can draw any conclusions about what these men wrote.  And, of course, that means having a sharp eye for later Christian doctrine disguised as original text (like capitalizing “Holy Spirit” or “Son”).

Alter and Kaplan help us read the Tankah in idiomatic Hebrew.  I am not sure if there is an English translation of the apostolic material that does the same.  What that means is that I have to be very careful, very attentive, and very aware of Hebraic expressions that are transformed into Greek.  I have to pay attention to the cadence, the syntax, the choice of vocabulary, and, of course, the idioms.  Otherwise, I am likely to think that Paul or John or Mark or Matthew is writing to me, in my linguistic paradigm.

I’m just saying.

Topical Index: saying, le ʾmōr, légōn, Greek, Hebrew, idioms, punctuation, Matthew 3:1