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Some Observations on the Aramaic Acts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 November 2011
Extract
Professor C. C. Torrey's recent monograph on The Composition and Date of Acts has placed in the hands of New Testament scholars a new and fascinating instrument for exegesis. By his demonstration of a document in Aramaic, underlying Acts 1 1b–15 35 and translated by Luke with painful fidelity into Greek, he has opened up a whole new field for the criticism of the book of Acts. Things which no sober critic would have dared to suggest on the basis of the Greek text alone become not only possible or plausible but even certain on the basis of the Aramaic. A few results of a reading of these chapters in the light of the new theory are here presented.
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- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1918
References
1 P. 23.
2 P. 60.
3 P. 60.
4 See Case, Evolution of Early Christianity, p. 135, for a statement of the underlying symbolism of the Pentecostal narrative.
5 Torrey, p. 61, regards the καί before συναλιζόμενος in 1 4 as representing a redundant Aramaic 
.
6 P. 59.
7 Acts 15 8, 15 et saepe illustrate the common Aramaic usage to denote comparison. Acts 7 17 may well reflect the temporal use of 
meaning “when”: καθὼς δὲ ἤγγιζεν ὁ χρόνος, κτλ. Acts 11 29 shows a specialized form of the comparative sense to denote “in proportion as, to the degree that”: τῶν δὲ μαθητῶν καθὼς εὐπορεῖτό τις ὤρισαν ἔκαστος, κτλ.
8 Torrey's explanation of ἐν ὑμῖν as really a direct object, ἐν representing the Aramaic 
often used in such cases, is inevitable when once it has been suggested.
9 Pp. 317–319.
10 P. 5.
11 P. 75.
12 P. 58.
13 Acts of the Apostles, Introd., p. xxxii, n. 1.
14 P. 232.
15 P. 245.
16 P. 246.
17 Pp. 241–244.
18 P. 24.
19 So Torrey, Translations from the Aramaic Gospels, in the volume of Studies in the History of Religions dedicated to Professor Toy, p. 316: “It is obvious … that this whole chapter is translated.”.
20 “Late in the year 49, or early in the year 50,” according to Torrey, p. 68.
21 P. 135.
22 Unless indeed μὲν οὖν συνελθόντες is meant to indicate a transition and should be translated: “They, having gone with him,” or, Aramaic tenses being vague, “as they were going with him.” But Torrey, p. 24, takes it as “those who were present.”.