Page 45 - BV1

better understand the arguments Christians "This is my blood of the new covenant which
used to make their point. was poured out for many for the ATONE-
MENT of sins."
Surprisingly, upon recent scrupulous analysis,
the language used in the Hebrew Gospel of "Jesus said: 'Truly I say to you, this night be-
Matthew in Shem Tob's treatise did not match fore the cock-crow you will DENY me three
the contemporary Hebrew of his period. times.' Peter said to him: 'even if it is possible
that I will to die with you, I will not DENY
Indeed, according to scholars, it did prove to you....' Then Jesus came with them to the VIL-
be written in exactly the same dialect of He- LAGE of Geshemonim and said: 'Sit now until
brew as found in other documents dating to the I go there and pray.'"
first century AD, including the Dead Sea
Scrolls and other books preserved by Jews In Hebrew, "atonement" is "kaparah "; "deny"
throughout the ages. is "kaphar"; and, "village" is "kephar". These
puns would have been completely lost in any
George Howard, the scholar who headed the other language. Thus, if the text had been
examination process of the Gospel text in translated from Greek into Hebrew as modern
Shem-Tob's "Even Bohan," concludes that he, Hebrew versions of the New Testament have,
"was astounded to discover that its core was different words would have been used and the
an original Hebrew composition, not a transla- puns lost.
tion [from the Greek]."
According to the lingustics expert, George
Howard bases his argument on several charac- Howard, another characteristic of Shem-Tob's
teristics in the text. For instance, many literary Hebrew Matthew which indicates that it is not
elements in the Hebrew Matthew "work" in a translation but an original composition in
Hebrew but not in Greek or Latin. A play on Hebrew is the use of the divine name of God.
words, as found in Matthew 18:27, could not
have been translated from another language. The unpronounceable name of God is written
with four Hebrew consonants: YHWH. Mod-
For example, the Shem-Tob text reads: "Then ern scholars pronounce it and write it as "Yah-
his master had pity on him and forgave him weh". In ancient times, however, it was only
everything." The word for "had pity" in He- pronounced on the Day of Atonement by the
brew is "hamal," and for "forgave", "mahal." High Priest in the Holy of Holies of the Tem-
This play on words would be completely lost ple. No one else was to utter the holy name of
when translated into Greek or Latin, but not if God.
preserved in an unaltered Hebrew original
text. Jews have thus always read and translated
these four consonants in prayer as "Adonai,"
In addition to the Hebrew puns preserved in a general word meaning "the Lord." In Shem-
Shem-Tob's Gospel of Matthew, numerous Tob's Hebrew Matthew, a common abbrevia-
Hebrew word-connections that intensify the tion for YHWH appears fifteen times. The ab-
text were also found. Matthew 26:28, 34-36 breviation "ha" stands for "ha-shem"
is only one striking example: (meaning "the name" in Hebrew). This is gen-
erally used to refer to the four consonants of
the ancient biblical name of God.

45