Aramaic Peshitta: What is your position concerning the Aramaic Peshitta?
We consider the Aramaic Peshitta, the Aramaic version of the Bible, often called the Syriac, to be a valuable supplementary tool like the Greek Septuagint, Latin Vulgate, or Aramaic Targums (paraphrases of the Tanach Scriptures widely used in the First and Second Centuries). Textual critics of the Bible make extensive use of the Peshitta, dating from the Fourth Century, in determining what the original reading of a Hebrew or Greek text was. They also use the Septuagint and Vulgate for the same purpose. The Aramaic Peshitta includes one of the earliest translations of the Apostolic Scriptures that was made. Bruce M. Metzger notes in The Early Versions of the New Testament: Their Origin, Transmission, and Limitations that Until the beginning of the twentieth century it was commonly held that the Peshitta Syriac translation was one of the earliest versions, if not the earliest, of the New Testament to be made. The constant tradition among Syrian Christians has been that it was the work of
