![]() Afterwards John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon his breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching in Rome and laying the foundation of the Church. ![]() Catholic apologists, theologians, and Scripture scholars of the second through fifth centuries provide us with a wealth of information on this subject. Since we have no autographs of this or any other New Testament book, it’s wise to look at what the early Church had to say on the subject. In fact, the evidence is quite to the contrary. Your Fundamentalist friend is wrong to assert there is no evidence to support the idea of an Aramaic original. Yes, there may be a presumption of that, but not actually a proof. From the mere fact of Greek manuscripts we can’t conclude that the originals must have been written in Greek. After all, the earliest manuscripts we have of any of the books of the New Testament are in Greek, yet not a single manuscript is an original. It is an argument from silence and can be used just as effectively against the idea that the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Greek, since there are likewise no extant originals of the Gospel in Greek. He reasoned that, since there is no evidence of an Aramaic or Hebrew original of Matthew’s Gospel, it is futile to argue that the work originally appeared in Aramaic and was subsequently translated into Greek (as most patristics scholars hold). This peculiar argument against the long-standing belief that Aramaic (or Hebrew) was the language in which Matthew originally composed his Gospel was first raised in the 16th century by the Dutch theologian and patristics scholar Desiderius Erasmus. ![]()
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