Peshitta

Overview

The term Peshitta does not appear in the text of Scripture. It comes from the history of the Bible's translation into other languages and designates the best-known Bible translation in Syriac. Churches that carry on the Syriac tradition, such as the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Assyrian Church of the East, and the Maronite Church, still use it today in worship and Scripture reading.

Name and Background

In Syriac, "Peshitta" is understood to mean "simple," "plain," or "common." The name was given to distinguish it from other Syriac translations and is reported to appear in sources from around the ninth century. Syriac, an Aramaic language used chiefly in the region of Edessa (present-day Şanlıurfa in southeastern Türkiye), was a major language of early Eastern Christianity.

• Old Testament: Scholars generally regard it as translated directly from the Hebrew text. Its date is estimated at roughly the first to third centuries, though this is difficult to establish with certainty. Opinions also differ on whether the translators were Jews or Christians.
• New Testament: Earlier Syriac texts were already in use, namely the Diatessaron, Tatian's harmony of the Gospels, and the Old Syriac Gospels. The Peshitta New Testament is thought to have been standardized around the early fifth century. It has traditionally been associated with Rabbula, bishop of Edessa, but modern scholarship questions this connection.

Contents and Characteristics

The Peshitta New Testament originally contained twenty-two books. It lacks five books, 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, and Revelation, reflecting the understanding of the canon in the Syriac-speaking church of the time. The missing books are sometimes supplied from other, later Syriac translations and used alongside it. Depending on the manuscript, the Old Testament may also include the Apocrypha (books that Protestants do not accept as canonical).

Significance for Biblical Studies

The Peshitta may partly reflect Hebrew textual traditions that predate the fixing of the Masoretic Text. For this reason it serves, together with the Septuagint, as a resource for Old Testament textual criticism, and it is also used as a witness to the early text of the Greek New Testament. It is sometimes said to have played a role in the Syriac-speaking world comparable to that of the Latin Vulgate in the Western church. It spread with the missionary work of the Syriac-speaking churches to many regions of the East, including southern India.

Interpretation and Debate

Pointing to the fact that Jesus and his disciples spoke Aramaic, some traditions within the Assyrian Church of the East, as well as George Lamsa, who worked in the United States, have argued that the Peshitta New Testament is the original from which the Greek New Testament derives, or close to that original. Lamsa is known for publishing an English Bible based on the Peshitta.

Most scholars, however, regard the Peshitta New Testament as a translation from Greek. They cite the existence of earlier Syriac translations, traces of Greek syntax, and the omission of five books. It has also been noted that the Syriac of the Peshitta is not the same as the Aramaic spoken in Galilee in Jesus' day. Accordingly, the claim that the Peshitta "preserves the words of Jesus in their original language" is not the mainstream scholarly view. The question of the original language of the New Testament is treated in the article Languages of the Bible.

In the Korean Church

Because Korean Bibles are translated from the original Hebrew and Greek texts, they do not make direct use of the Peshitta. It is covered in seminary courses on the history of Bible translation and on textual criticism, and otherwise is mentioned mainly as a reference when Aramaic words are explained.