#0, Who is this guy, Rabbulas?
Posted by Biga on Mar-20-2002 at 05:51 PM
Hello akhay,I read second times yet that the Peshitta is translated by Rabbulas, a bishop at Edessa. Where this myth is coming from?
cheers,
Gabor
#1, RE: Who is this guy, Rabbulas?
Posted by Paul Younan on Mar-20-2002 at 09:24 PM
In response to message #0
Shlama Akhi,>I read second times yet that
>the Peshitta is translated by
>Rabbulas, a bishop at Edessa.
>Where this myth is coming
>from?
The myth originated from a fool named Francis C. Burkitt who was born in the year 1864. The reason I call him a fool is a good one. He really was a fool.
Rabbula was a bishop of the SOC in the 5th century during and after the Christological wars at Ephesus and Chalcedon. He was a bitter enemy of the COE, which nicknamed Rabbula "The Tyrant of Edessa."
The COE reveres the Peshitta as the authoritative Word of God. This would be unthinkable if the Peshitta were the work of Rabbula, who was a great adversary of the COE and openly denounced them as heretics!
Burkitt’s theory was once generally accepted, but now scholars are realizing that the Peshitta must have been in existence before Rabbula’s episcopate, because it was the received text of both the two sects into which the Aramaic Church became divided. Since this division took place in Rabbula’s time and since Rabbula was the leader of one of these sects (the SOC), it is impossible to suppose that the Peshitta was his work- the COE would never have adopted it as their received New Testament text if it was.
I love this quote from Bruce Metzger:
"The question who it was that produced the Peshitta version of the New Testament will perhaps never be answered. That it was not Rabbula has been proved by Voobus's researches . . . In any case, however, in view of the adoption of the same version of the Scriptures by both the Eastern (Nestorian) and Western (Jacobite) branches of Syrian Christendom, we must conclude that it had attained a considerable degree of status before the division of the Syrian Church in AD 431." (Metzger, The Early Versions of the New Testament (New York: Claredon, 1977), pp. 59-60.)
Ahhhh, I love it. Let them keep wondering.
Fk^rwbw 0ml4
https://www.peshitta.org">Peshitta.org
#2, RE: Who is this guy, Rabbulas?
Posted by Biga on Mar-21-2002 at 06:46 PM
In response to message #1
Thanks a lot, akhi Paul!I will insert it to my Hungarian Aramaic Origin FAQ (made for questions not answered in my book) 
p.s. I launch new question because I hope you don't forget the mail about aramaic samples 
(only joke, I was really curious about this fool guy)