Birth of the Synoptic Gospels

Rating:
Summary: A superb overview of the linguistic roots of the gospels.
Review: If you're tired of all the speculations about who Jesus "really was" and the glib dismissals of the gospels' historicity based on our era's reluctance to consider any information or data that can't be tested outside of a lab, this book is enlightening.

Taking the Dead Sea Scrolls as his point of departure, the author (now deceased) shows how a "reverse" translation of the gospels, (particularly Matthew and Mark), from their supposedly original Greek into the Hebrew and Aramaic dialects of the first century, strongly suggests that both works must have been painstaking translations themselves.

Because Greek and Hebrew are so vastly different, the author argues that a Greek original of the gospels would never translate into a straightforward Hebrew version--without a lot of revision. An yet his own translations come out word for word as excellent first-century Hebrew testaments, matching the style and sensibility of the Dead Sea Scroll writings.

This factor argues, in Carmignac's opinion, for a much earlier dating of the synoptics. Indeed, he sets the compositions of Matthew and Mark both within a decade of Jesus' death.