The pinnacle of the gospel story may be Jesus’ dramatic statement, “You are Petros and on this petra I will build my church.” The saying seems to contain an obvious Greek wordplay, indicating that Jesus spoke in Greek. However, it is possible that “Petros…petra” is a Hebrew wordplay.
Remember Shiloh!
Without paying attention to ancient Jewish exegesis one can easily miss the full impact of Jesus’ statement, “den of thieves.” Was Jesus solely addressing the vendors, or was he aiming at bigger game?
Jesus’ Twin Parables
Conducting research on the Gospels, the late Robert L. Lindsey discovered Jesus’ teaching format: incident, teaching discourse and two concluding parables. In this article he discusses Jesus’ double parables.
Pieces to the Synoptic Puzzle: Papias and Luke 1:1-4
Despite a rather turbulent transmission process, the Synoptic Gospels retain an astonishing amount of authentic and reliable material.
New Testament Canon
While God had used individual writers to record the books themselves, the actual acceptance of those books as being from God was subject to a long transition, a process of testing.
Reconstructing the Words of Jesus
If we keep in mind that Jesus and his disciples and hearers were not speaking Greek but rather Hebrew or Aramaic, or both, then we can see that we will only arrive at Jesus’ original words by translating the Greek texts of speeches in the synoptic Gospels back into their Semitic original.
The Sons of His Will
Christmas brings many carols and cards containing the words from Luke 2:14, “Goodwill to men” and “Peace to men of goodwill.” The angels praised God with words that in English may sound like a politician wishing us to “Have a nice day.” Most of us sense that these words reflect something deeper, but why did the angels use such seemingly innocuous words?
An Introduction to Synoptic Studies
The late Dr. Robert Lindsey, pioneer translator of the Gospels into modern Hebrew, synoptic researcher and pastor of Jerusalem’s Narkis Street Congregation, resided in Israel for over forty years. His discoveries challenge many conclusions of New Testament scholarship from the past two hundred years. Lindsey created a new approach to the study of the Synoptic Gospels. Here, Lindsey provides an introduction to the field of synoptic studies and the “Synoptic Problem.”
Scholarly Assumptions about the Historical Jesus
Many scholars today feel that it is impossible to know what the historical Jesus really said.
Mary and Martha: The Rest of the Story
In Robert L. Lindsey’s theory of gospel transmission, the Hebrew version of Jesus’ biography and its Greek translation have both been lost. Although none of the synoptic Gospels preserves the original text in its entirety, together they do preserve all, or nearly all, of the stories in the original work.
Sidebar: A Conjectured Process of Gospel Transmission Outlined by Robert Lindsey
The stages of transmission from the earliest Hebrew biography of Jesus to the canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke.
Discovering Longer Gospel Stories
Research by Robert L. Lindsey has helped clarify the process by which gospel texts were preserved and transmitted. Luke desired, he said in his prologue, to present to Theophilus an “orderly” account. Such ordering is to be noted in Matthew and Mark, as well. These attempts at ordering help us understand why so many of the synoptic gospel stories appear in a different chronological order from gospel to gospel.
The Syndicated Donkey
Randall Buth may have discovered a significant idiom in the Greek text of Luke. This idiom could help us in determining the original language of Jesus’ biography. In Luke 19:33, did the donkey that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday have more that one owner as the Greek text states?
Discovering the Hebrew Undertext of the Synoptic Gospels
One may contend that there existed a basic text of Jesus’ life story written in Hebrew. One arrives at this assumption not merely on the basis of the church fathers’ writings, but because the Greek texts of the synoptic gospels show so much evidence of being “translation Greek,” that is, Greek that contains Hebrew idioms and sentence structures.
Has a Gospel in Hebrew Been Found?
From time to time, one hears reports of the discovery of a portion of the New Testament written in Hebrew or Aramaic. To date, such reports have proven false. There is not a single extant Hebrew-language or Aramaic-language manuscript from the early Christian era of any of the New Testament books.