Tag Archives: Fourth Gospel

Resurrected The True Children of Abraham Debate

אן אתון בני אברהם עבידו כאברהם עבד

En aton b‘ney Abraham, `abedu ki-Abraham `abad.
“If you are Abraham’s children, do as Abraham did!”

This was a discussion I originally put together way back in my undergraduate days when I was studying under Mahlon H. Smith at Rutgers. I still have yet to actually expand it to a full publishable article, but I realized that a large number of sites used to link to the old, incomplete version as it is.

In short, it shows a possible underlying Aramaic discussion between Jesus and “the Pharisees” in the Dialogues layer of the Fourth Gospel that exhibits some serious Aramaic wordplay which was misinterpreted, in part, by the final redactor.

One day I may clean it up enough to publish, but here it is for now:

Peace,
-Steve