Don't smirk. This funny name comes with excellent scholarship.
He noted quite helpfully several characteristic ways Jesus spoke. These he called Jesus' "prefered ways" of speaking. He held that
"The idiom underlying the sayings of Jesus is to be defined as part of the western branch of the Aramaic family of languages ... More precisely, it should be said that the mother-tongue of Jesus was a Galilean version of western Aramaic." (New Testament Theology: The Proclamation of Jesus. Charles Scribner & Sons, New York, 1971, pp. 3-4).
He cites as exemplars for study, Mark 5:41 ("Talitha Koum(i)") [also Mt. 5:17b in rabbinic tradition] -- which is "Little girl, arise!," the Psalmic cry from the cross ("Eli, Eli, lamasabacthani") -- "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Mt. 27:46 and Mark 15:34), and a number of other individual words, and Aramaisms (idiomatic expressions from that tongue underlying the Greek translation of them) used by the Lord Jesus.
Jeremias argues, "This evidence shows yet again how untenable is the theory that Hebrew was used as an everyday language in Palestine, and especially in Judaea, in the time of Jesus. That is not to deny that Jesus knew Hebrew. The report in Luke 4:16-19 that He read the Hebrew lection from the prophets (haptara) in the synagogue service presupposes this" (ibid., 7-8). Jeremias quickly adds:
"... In view of the number of Hebraisms [He used], we must reckon with the possibility that Jesus spoke the words of institution in the sacred language" (ibid., 8).
The Lord Jesus characteristically used the divine passive. Here he spoke of God without mentioning His Name, or titles, as Rabbinic Jews did customarily to show reverence for the Lord. If you did not mention the divine name, you could not abuse it. This shows a verbal caution known in the Bible as "the fear of the Lord," which is the beginning of wisdom.
Of those customs in which the Pharisees and Saduccees adopted conventions which conformed to the principles of the Word, the Lord Jesus followed custom. An example of the divine passive would be the phrase "born from above" (or the Gk. "gennaethe anothen") found in John 3. Here, "from above" specifies the direction of heaven, where God's throne is. But it never directly mentions the Lord of that throne.
This is called in language patterns a "circumlocution," meaning literally, to "speak around." Jeremias notes that the Lord Jesus 'had no hesitation in using the word, "God,"' but that he characteristically chose alternatives when He deemed such overt mentions unnecessary, or if the mention of His Name was not wholly appropriate to the occasion. Most often, He spoke of God's feelings and actions in paraphrases.
Some of the more common circumlocutions He employed include the substitution of "heaven" for "God." These included references to "the kingdom," " the kingdom of heaven," simply "He" without specifying God further; sometimes, as when speaking of the author of Scripture, He simply refered to the voice of the Lord in the Scripture, as in "It is written," or "It says."
The easiest use of language for such terms comes from Greek rather than Aramaic, but the circumlocutive pattern remains. This is an Aramaic linguistic custom which underlies the Greek text.
Jeremias, who has quite a long list of dominical circumlocutions, explains their importance directly:
"The great number and variety of circumlocutions for God which occur in the sayings of Jesus is striking. even when we note that some of them occur only once or twice ... even more notable than the number and variety of these circumlocutions is the strong preference [of Jesus] for one of them, the 'divine passive' [voice]. A great many of the sayings of Jesus only make their full impression when we realize that the passive is a veiled hint at an action on the part of God. Thus, e.g. Matt. 5:4 might appropriately be rendered, "Blessed are those who mourn, for there is One who will comfort them."
Interestingly, "there is a limited section of the literature of Palestnian Judaism of the time of Jesus in which the 'divine passive' is firmly established: apocalytpic literature. It occurs frequently for the first time in the book of the prophet Daniel ... it can be said that the divine passive remains one of the characteristics of the apocalyptic, even if that is not exclusively its domain."
In other words, the particulars of the speech of Jesus, his peculiar use of "Abba," (Father) and his special preference for the divine passive [and several other features] are consistent with his favorite self-reference, as the Son of Man. The Lord Jesus did not only see Himself as the Danielic Person called by this title, his linguistic patterns show that his identity as the Son of Man were so deeply rooted that even the more minor details of his speech patterns show this.
This is utterly consistent throughout the Gospels and does not change. This means that the most "early" (Palestianian and Semitic) features of the Gospel accounts already show Jesus as a fully human and fully divine Person from the apocalyptic portion of the First Testament. This explains just why the earliest embedded Aramaic-based poems -- which formed the dominical and apostolic "pattern of sound words" (the catechism of the earliest Church) -- all begin with an extremely high Christology. This Christology was rooted in the linguistic features and deeds of Jesus IN THE FUTURE and in the resurrection.
This Christology originated with Jesus Himself, not with the apostles. More to the point, it originated with Daniel, or the One who gave Daniel his prophecy. Hebrews tells us that Jesus was enabled to endure the suffering of the cross "For the joy set before Him." This refers to His future, more particularly, his resurrection and ascension future as the Danielic Son of Man, who ascends to the throne of God, and sits down at the Right Hand of Power.
Jesus kept his eyes fixed squarely on this prophecy of reward for the Messiah's earthly ministry, and all his deeds and speech patterns show this. This self-identity formed the basis of the original, ecclesiastical pattern of teaching. That is why both sets of features show up in the Greek text -- both with Jesus and with the apostolic teachings -- as underlying Semitic features we call "Aramaisms."
Notably, Daniel chapters 2-7 were written originally in Aramaic, not Hebrew, like the rest of the Older Testament (minus a very small part of Nehemiah). Daniel's book, as it were, prophecies the -- how do I say this -- "biblical Aramaicity" of the personal identity of the Messiah, which comes from an "Aramaic thought-structured" book. And the Son of Man appears in chapter 7.
Much more can be adduced in favor of this position, so I plan to continue to expand upon this post, if the Lord wills.
This much I can say: the Gospel accounts show a kind of meticulous accuracy in the least details of our Lord's speech habits, which confirm his identity as the glorified, divine Son of Man, and show that the high Christology of Daniel is that Christology which appears in the apostolic, catechetical pattern for the whole Church.
So that pattern has both a prophetic element embedded within it (from Daniel) and an historical element since we learn of the Son of Man much more fully in the Gospel accounts themselves. Thus, when Jesus turned water into wine at a wedding in Cana, John summarizes this as the first time at which he "revealed his glory." The Gospel of John begins with Jesus as "the light of men," a picture utterly consistent with the Danielic Son of Man, and with His Glorious Person in the resurrection.
Thus do the Gospel accounts progressively show forth, as it were, hint after hint (like the pieces of a puzzle coming together) of His full revelation as the Son of Man, which shines forth fully only at the end. The apocalyptic counterpart to Daniel in the NT, the Book of Revelation, thus portrays Christ as the King of Kings, and High Priest after the order of Melchizedek, which offices are consummate in the glorified Son of Man, who walks amidst the churches.
None of this undoes the fact that all Scripture is inspired of God, and useful to His people for its intended purpose. Instead, I contend, God has left a deliberate trail (actually several) throughout the Old and New Testaments, that we might know the Lord Jesus historically and personally, and see Him as He viewed Himself (truthfully), in light of the Holy Scripture.
The "Aramaic trail" from at least Daniel forward lands squarely in the Gospel accounts, follows through Acts in the earliest sermons (Chapters 1-12), and in the history of the church councils, and in the ministry of Paul (esp. with respect to his letters). The embedded Danielic Christology of the sounds words eventually finds its culmination in the Lord Jesus as seen in the Revelation.
Because of its prophetic and historical roots, it forms a way for us to see just how the Gospels came to portray him as they do. In other words, it forms the skeleton of any real effort to develop a biblical form of NT criticism. This, for obvious reasons could never be divorced from the whole Bible, which I bid everyone regard this as another form of argumentation for the position known as "Theonomy," in which all of the Bible is for all of life.
This includes all of historiography. So I will briefly answer the historiographic question which a group from certain quarters keeps proposing: Who is the Historical Jesus?
The answer from the biblical-historical method is this: Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of Man, One greater than Solomon, the King of glory, the Son of the Living God. He is the historical Jesus, the One for whom you have long been searching.
Quest over. Or else just beginning.
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