HISTORICAL BACKGROUNDS OF THE HOLY BIBLE, EASTERN TEXT
World Wars I and II brought to Western scholars an ancient language and an ancient Christian people who both politically and religiously have played an important part in the history of the Bible. These people are the remnants of the Assyrian whose ancestors were the builders of a great empire that played a dominant part in the history of the Bible. Their culture and language exerted a tremendous influence on all peoples and races in the Near East. The discovery of these people, their ancient documents, Biblical customs, and manners was a great revelation to European governments, as well as to scholars generally.
The miracle of miracles is the survival of the Aramaic language of the prophets, of Jesus, his disciples, and the early Christians as a vernacular and literary tongue through all the vicissitudes of the centuries down to the present time. It is as if this Aramaic language were a precious bit of amber which has embedded in it, and thus preserved throughout the ages some of the ancient biblical customs, idioms and truth which otherwise would have been lost.
Secluded in the mountainous stronghold of Kurdistan and Mesopotamia, near the region known as the Garden of Eden, and remaining as a little island in a vast Moslem ocean, these ancient Christians escaped, by a miracle being trampled under foot by the conquering Moslem armies and all the changes that have revolutionized the world. Their language is almost exactly in the form spoken by Jesus and his disciples two thousand years ago. They have jealously treasured their Christian documents, the unaltered life, thought, customs and traditions of people, who in the time of Christ and in the period before Him, laid the foundation for the Aramaic (Syriac) culture and the Jewish and Christian faiths.
George M. Lamsa was born of an Assyrian mother who spoke only the Aramaic language. He grew up with the idioms and truths found only in that language which is little changed since the first century. Dr. Lamsa was the first to explain and demonstrate that Aramaic Bibles are superior sources of Biblical truth than Latin or Greek based texts.
Even today these ancient Christians, Lamsa's people, understand what Jesus meant when he said, "If your hand offends you, cut it off; if your eye offends you, pluck it out; if your foot offends you, cut it off". Jesus meant: "If you have a habit of stealing, stop it". "If you have a habit of envying, stop it". "If you have a habit of trespassing on other's property, stop it". These sayings are understood because these idioms have been in general use throughout the centuries. The idioms arise out of the fact the Aramaic collapses into one word, both mental and physical action, with either or both meanings acceptable.
This explains why no Christian in the East has ever cut off his arm or plucked out his eyes. None of Jesus' disciples and his followers amputated parts of their bodies. They used the mental meaning. In other parts of the world many Christians who misunderstood the Aramaic idiom, have cut off hands, fingers and feet, or inflicted other injuries upon their bodies to follow the misunderstood injunction of Jesus.
No foreigner, however learned or studious, could understand or interpret these idioms in the New or Old Testaments any more than a foreigner can understand English idioms. This is not all, for in Aramaic or biblical Hebrew some of the words are a bundle of meanings, many of which require several words to describe them. At times a dot with a word could alter the meaning completely. For example, the same word which means a child or a baby also means a wicked man or a bandit. The child or baby has two dots with the word, but the wicked man or the bandit has only one dot. Consequently, the word "wicked" erroneously has been rendered baby or child. The word which means a wise man also means a stupid man. One must be familiar with the dots. History shows that a misplaced dot at times has been the cause for murders and disputes.
Dr. Lamsa was trained at the Archbishop of Canterbury College in Iran and Turkey under the strict care of scholarly and brilliant Cambridge and Oxford men. He was awarded the highest honors and degrees that that college conferred and received the honored title of "Rabbi". He studied extensively in American schools including the Episcopal Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia, and pursued endless years of study and research in the field of Biblical scholarship based on the Aramaic. His numerous volumes and translations have been enthusiastically received throughout the East. His translations of the New Testament, in 1940, is based on the oldest surviving texts (sources) in existence, that were preserved in Turkey and Iran, that were preserved in Turkey and Iran by the ancient Christians commonly called "Nestorians". Lamsa is the first man from the East to start Aramaic research and to point out that the Scriptures were originally written in Aramaic and not in Greek, and that the "Peshitta" is an original.
Lamsa's translations are based on the nine surviving, ancient, original Aramaic texts, which have never been revised or tampered with. He spent more than thirty years on the translation of the New and Old Testaments. Lamsa spoke eight other languages and served as translator on numerous occasions for governments and important institutions.
The Aramaic Bible Society appears to have been divinely chosen to be the medium of officially presenting to America and to the world not only this major prophet but the works of the Yonan Codex Foundation and it's continuing work with another ancient Aramaic document, the Khaboris Codex, another ancient Aramaic New Testament manuscript under the aegis of Dr. Dan MacDougald, Jr., and The Laws of Living Institute of Albany, Georgia.