Biblical Prospector: Faith and Faithfulness (Part 9)

This is the ninth in a series of studies on the topic of faith and faithfulness. (If you are coming to this page from a search engine, I recommend this link for a table of contents of the topics covered in this series.)

I am aware the the approach that I am taking on this topic is tedious. It isn't easy comparing Bible texts between different languages (languages that I don't know, or don't know very well) and translations versions, but I find that looking at translation patterns across languages reveals some issues that would be hard to detect in any other way. Specifically, I am seeing some evidence of consistency in the vocabularies of the Aramaic, Greek and Latin as used in the Old and New Testament texts; some of these consistencies disappear in translations to modern languages. Why does the English (or Spanish, French, Spanish, German, etc.) vocabulary change in the transition between Old and New Testament when the Greek, Aramaic and Latin vocabulary do not?

First, lets look at three different faith texts in the New Testament. In the following picture, each text is in English (KJV), Aramaic (Syriac), Aramaic (Hebrew transliteration), and a modern Hebrew translation from Greek. The faith word is highlighted in blue. (This will probably be difficult to follow without some familiarity with the Hebrew alphabet or a willingness to compare unfamiliar symbols to see if they are the same or similar.)

In each of these texts, the modern Hebrew word that is used is emunah (אמונה). The Aramaic word has appears to be a cognate of the Hebrew. The definitions of the Aramaic word can be seen here and here. Here is a portion of the definition that the second link shows.

Notice that the definition says "In the O.T., firmness, truth, faithfulness... N.T. and later, faith, the Christian faith, religion, doctrine, creed." The texts that we just looked at are quoting text from the Old Testamant (but neither the Greek or Aramaic is an exact quote of the Septuagint or Targums). Is the language that is used in the sense of the O.T., since it is a quote, or the N.T.? When did the change in meaning happen? Why?

In this study, I would like to lay the foundation for looking at New Testament faith texts in the Aramaic Peshitta. I am re-doing some of the comparisons of these texts in Aramaic, so I don't have all the evidence before my as I am writing this study. However, based on my earlier studies on this topic I am expecting that the Aramaic word used in the Peshitta that corresponds to pistis (faith) will be the same word as used in the Aramaic translations— the Targums— for emunah (אמונה – H530) in the Hebrew Old Testament. Modern Hebrew translations of the New Testament use emunah to translate pistis; this study will help justify the assumption that Old Testament emunah and New Testament pistis are the same thing.

The King James Version translates emunah in the following ways (and counts): faithfulness 18, truth 13, faithfully 5, office 5, faithful 3, faith 1, stability 1, steady 1, truly 1, verily 1. If we can establish that (1) emunah and pistis are corresponding words in Old Testament Hebrew and Greek texts, and (2) that the Targums and Peshitta use the same Aramaic word in the texts that use emunah and pistis in Hebrew and Greek, and (3) that emunah primarily means faithfulness— then we can be more confident that pistis means faithfulness, at least in some instances.

Following are Old Testament texts that use emunah in the Hebrew and pistis in the Greek Septuagint. After the reference for each text is the Hebrew (right) emunah from the text and the Aramaic (left) word that translates the emunah. Below that is picture showing the Hebrew for the text followed by the Aramaic translation (targum). The Aramaic word in the image that translates the emunah in the Hebrew is highlighted. If you care to do some comparisons, you will see that it is the same as in the New Testament texts that we looked at above.

The text and pictures are taken from Aramaic Targum Search. The Hebrew (green) and Aramaic (orange) root consonants are highlighted.

1 Sam. 26:23