T H E A R A M A I C B A C KG R O U N D O F

MARK 9:11: A RESPONSE TO

J. K . A I T K E N

Traditional exegetes have found Mark 9:11–13 extremely

diYcult. The Son of man saying at Mark 9:12 has been at the
centre of this. Throughout the Gospels, it is obvious that the

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term 3 u31" toA 2nqr0pou refers to Jesus, and to Jesus alone. In
this passage, however, the context may be thought to imply
a reference to John the Baptist instead. Some scholars have
accordingly suggested that this was the original reference, but
they have not given a satisfactory account of Mark’s text.1 In
a recent book, I oVered a reconstruction of all three verses in
the original Aramaic, and I argued that this is essential to the
task of seeing what Jesus originally meant.2 In particular, I
suggested that the idiomatic use of (a)vn(a) rb has two levels of
meaning, and that it can be seen in this instance to include both
John the Baptist and Jesus.
In a recent article in this journal, J. K. Aitken took up an
important point which arises from my reconstruction of the
disciples’ presentation of the view of the scribes. I suggested that
de8 at Mark 9:11 represented the Aramaic word dytu. One of the
points which I made was that there was no Aramaic word with
the same semantic area as de8. Aitken argued that there was such
a word, namely some form of $yrc.3 Aitken’s arguments are
important for two reasons. One is that the same question arises
elsewhere, notably in the major prediction of Jesus’ death and
resurrection at Mark 8:31//Matt. 16:21//Luke 9:21. Secondly,
Aitken’s comments raise significant questions of method. The
purpose of this article4 is accordingly to show that Aitken is
1
W. Wink, John the Baptist in the Gospel Tradition (SNTSMS 7; Cambridge:
CUP, 1968), p. 14: J. Taylor, ‘The Coming of Elijah, Mt 17,10-13 and Mk
9,11-13. The Development of the Texts’, RB 98 (1991), pp. 107–19, at 117; J. E.
Taylor, The Immerser: John the Baptist within Second Temple Judaism (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), p. 281.
2
P. M. Casey, Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel (SNTSMS 102; Cambridge,
CUP, 1998), pp. 111–37.
3
J. K. Aitken, ‘The proposed Aramaic background to Mark 9:11’, JTS, ns, 53
(2002), pp. 75–80.
4
This article was written as part of my work for a Leverhulme Major
Research Fellowship, awarded for the study of the Son of man problem. I am

ß Oxford University Press 2004

[Journal of Theological Studies, NS, Vol. 55, Pt. 1, April 2004]
 A R A M A I C B A C KG R O U N D O F M A R K 9 : 1 1 93
mistaken, and, in so doing, to clarify the methodology of doing
these reconstructions. I therefore begin with my proposed
reconstruction of Mark 9:11, but I do not discuss the other two
verses here, nor do I repeat my earlier discussion of other
aspects of Mark 9:11.
?!ymdql ataml dytu hylad ayrps !yrmwa hml [!yrmaw hl !ylavw 11
And (they were) asking him and saying, ‘Why do (the) scribes say that

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Elijah is going to come first?’
The disciples’ question presupposes Jewish expectation that
Elijah would come. Both known examples of this expectation
(Sir. 48:10; 4Q558) take up the text of Mal. 3:23–4, in which it
is quite clear that Elijah will come before the day of the Lord.
I suggested that dytu is the Aramaic word which caused a
translator to use de8, and I oVered the following arguments.
The word dytu means ‘ready, prepared’, and it is extant in Aramaic
before the time of Jesus at Daniel 3:15, where Shadrach, Meshach and
Abednego will be let oV if they are ‘ready’, ‘prepared’ to worship
Nebuchadnezzar’s image (LXX and Theod. 7cete 3to0mw" for !wkytya
!ydytu). In its take-up of Malachi, the Geniza text of Sirach 48:10 has
!wkn, the semantic area of which includes ‘ready’. In later Aramaic,
dytu is used idiomatically to indicate the future, even the remote
future. It was therefore very suitable to indicate the future event of
Elijah’s coming, and its use in the peshitta of Sirach 48:10 illustrates
what a suitable word it is to take up in Aramaic the prophecy of Malachi
3:23–4 . . . . The translator has taken the same kind of option as the
translator of Daniel 2:28–9 LXX & Theod., where de8 is part of an
explicitative translation of an Aramaic imperfect. He has indicated the
certainty of the scribes that the scriptural prediction will be fulfilled,
and thereby correctly represented them.5
This is the proposal which was rejected by Aitken. Aitken first
of all approves of Mastin’s suggestion that I should have used
an imperfect rather than dytu.6 Neither scholar oVers an
alternative reconstruction at this point, but they presumably7

extremely grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for this fellowship, which is enabling
me to complete a very large piece of research.
5
Casey, Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel, p. 123.
6
Aitken, ‘Proposed Aramaic background to Mark 9:11’, p. 76, referring to
B. A. Mastin, review of Casey, Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel, JTS, ns, 51
(2000), pp. 654–63, at p. 657.
7
Both scholars write ‘verbs’ in the plural, but they do not indicate which other
verb they mean.
94 M AU R I C E C A S E Y
mean the imperfect of ata, so that their reconstruction of Mark
9:11 would presumably be as follows:
?!ymdql atay hylad ayrps !yrmwa hml [!yrmaw hl !ylavw 11
And (they were) asking him and saying, ‘Why do (the) scribes say that
Elijah will come first?’
This is not as probable as what I suggested, and the arguments
of Mastin and Aitken have no validity at all. Firstly, they ignore

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the reasons, repeated above, for seeing what a suitable word
dytu was for the scribes to use in predicting Elijah’s coming and
for the disciples to repeat. Moreover, we can now add the use of
dytu by Jesus identifying John the Baptist as Elijah at Matt.
11:14, where the translator preferred the more literalistic
m0llwn.8 Secondly, Mastin objects that the idea of necessity is
not conveyed at Dan. 3:15, and in partly repeating this Aitken
seems to consider it an objection that the idea of necessity is not
conveyed with dytu in my reconstruction. Both versions of this
argument are faulty in method: they presuppose that I should
have translated de8 back into Aramaic, so as to produce a sentence
identical in meaning to Mark’s Greek sentence. This is not
possible however, because there is no suYciently literal
equivalent of de8 in Aramaic, and in any case we should not
be translating anything back into Aramaic. We should be
reconstructing Aramaic which could have given rise to Mark’s
Greek. This is especially clear in this passage, because taken as a
whole Mark 9:11–13 does not make proper sense in Greek. This
is why we have to look for something which Aramaic speakers
might use which would cause a translator to put de8.
The overlap between the usage of dytu and de8 is further
indicated by the Syriac versions. There are 21 examples of the
exact form de8 in the Synoptic Gospels, so we may consider
extant renderings of this word by sin cur pesh hark.9 On many
occasions, the versions use )Lw or qdz.. Neither word was
available for the scribes and disciples to use, but both were
reasonable renderings in Syriac at a later time. It is all the more
striking that, with both words available and in use, dYtO is
nonetheless the rendering of de8 at Mark 8:31 sin pesh: 13:7 sin
pesh: 13:10 pesh: Matt. 16:21 cur pesh: 24:6 sin: Luke 9:22 sin

8
P. M. Casey, An Aramaic Approach to Q. Sources for the Gospels of Matthew
and Luke (SNTS.MS 122; Cambridge: CUP, 2002), pp. 105–7, 118–29.
9
I use the edition of G. A. Kiraz, Comparative Edition of the Syriac Gospels,
Aligning the Sinaiticus, Curetonianus, Peshı̂ttâ and Harklean Versions, 4 vols.
(NTTS XXI; Leiden: Brill, 1996).
 A R A M A I C B A C KG R O U N D O F M A R K 9 : 1 1 95
cur pesh: 17:25 sin cur pesh: 21:9 sin cur pesh: 22:37 sin cur:
24:7 sin cur pesh. This is clear evidence of the overlap in usage
perceived by some translators who had the diYcult task of
translating de8 into a Semitic language.
The only positive argument given by Mastin and Aitken
for preferring the imperfect is the comparative example of Dan.
2:28–9, on which Mastin quotes my comment that ‘de8 is part of
an explicitative (sic) translation of an Aramaic imperfect.’10 This

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use of ‘sic’ implies less familiarity with the work of our
colleagues in the field of Translation Studies than is desirable for
work of this kind. I did explain this conventional technical term
for the benefit of readers who had not read themselves into
Translation Studies. I described ‘explicitative translations’ as
‘translations which try to clarify the meaning of the text’. After
examples taken from scholars working in Translation Studies, I
cited Mark 5:41 as ‘a similar attempt . . . to clarify the translation
of the Aramaic <wq atyl~ by means of the addition so1 l0gw.’11
All three examples of de8 gen0sqai for the Aramaic awhl at Dan.
2:28–9 are of the same general kind. The translators have tried
to clarify the future force of the imperfect awhl for their target
audience by using the term de8, a familar term to the target
audience and one which has no literal equivalent in the original
Aramaic. This is the point of the comparison for Mark 9:11,
where de8 makes good sense only as part of an explicitative
translation too. Despite his ‘sic’, Mastin’s argument, followed
thus far by Aitken, presupposes that de8 at Mark 9:11 must be an
explicitative translation of exactly the same thing as at Dan. 2:28–
9. There is no justification for this assumption. At Dan. 6:16
Theod., o2 de8 parall0xai translates hynvhl al, so de8 has been
used to bring out the meaning of the infinitive. A similar
situation arose in translating from Hebrew. For example, at Lev.
5:17, An o2 de8 poie8n represents hnyfut al rva, so de8 has been
used to bring out the meaning of an imperfect: at 4 Kdoms 4:13,
t0 de8 poi8sai soi represents $l twful hm, so de8 has been used
to bring out the meaning of another infinitive. In considering
what may have caused a translator to use de8 or any other
diYcult word, we must never copy one selected example. We
must be informed by all available examples, but the number of
these is generally so few that we must not be constrained by
them. We should also consider carefully what may have been
said, and the semantic areas of words and the idiomatic uses of

10
Mastin, loc. cit., quoting Casey, Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel, p. 123.
11
Casey, Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel, pp. 101–2.
96 M AU R I C E C A S E Y
both languages, in deciding what the most probable reconstruc-
tion may be.
Aitken concludes, ‘Casey’s approach to translation requires
Aramaic infinitives to correspond to the Greek infinitives’.
This is not true. Firstly, because I posited the participle rbu
for the infinitive parapore0esqai at Mark 2:23, and elsewhere
posited the imperfect twmy underlying the infinitive 2poktanq8nai
in the prediction which gave rise to Mark 8:31.12 Secondly,

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because this is an approach which I have never adhered to, and
which is contrary to the principles of translation which I
discussed.13 It is especially unfortunate that Aitken should create
a methodologically faulty rule out of a perfectly respectable habit
at a point like this. Most of the Greek infinitives in the passages
which I have reconstructed are used so like Aramaic infinitives
that my habit of positing Aramaic infinitives in these passages
is perfectly sound. The general similarity between Greek and
Aramaic infinitives naturally leads to this correspondence in
translation elsewhere (e.g. e2pe8n for rmaml Dan. 2:9 Theod.;
e2pe8n LXX and gnwr0sai Theod. for hywjhl Dan. 2:10; 2xagage8n
LXX and 2pol0sai Theod. for hdbwhl Dan. 2:12; sunapol0sqai
LXX and 2nele8n Theod for hlflqthl Dan. 2:13, etc.).
It remains possible that the scribes and disciples used the
simple imperfect of the verb ata rather than dytu followed by
an infinitive. The reasons given above, however, make it more
probable that it was dytu which gave rise to de8, and none of
the comments of Mastin or Aitken should be thought to have
undermined this probability. If they did use atay, scribes will in
any case have referred to their own certainty that the scripturally
prophesied coming of Elijah would take place before the final
coming of the kingdom, disciples will have correctly reported
this, and the translator will have reasonably rendered his source
by using de8 in an explicitative translation. What is important
about the arguments of Mastin and Aitken is that they are faulty
in method. They do not make any significant diVerence to the
historicity of the incident, nor to our interpretation of what the
participants meant.
Aitken proceeds to argue that there was a real Aramaic
equivalent to de8. ‘In Aramaic there do exist, however, the noun
a'kyr>c,
i which can be found in clauses to mean ‘‘it is necessary’’

12
Casey, Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel, pp. 138–9; ‘General, Generic and
Indefinite: the Use of the Term ‘Son of Man’ in Aramaic Sources and in the
Teaching of Jesus’, JSNT 29, 1987, pp. 21–56, at 43–6.
13
Casey, Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel, pp. 93–107.
 A R A M A I C B A C KG R O U N D O F M A R K 9 : 1 1 97
(e.g. b.Ber 10a, 21a), and (in the Talmud) the corresponding
verb % ;r>c ‘‘to need’’.’14 Several of the unsatisfactory features of
Aitken’s argument appear in this sentence. Firstly, Aitken does
not properly present the evidence from late sources. B.Ber 10a
and 21a are very long sections, and it is not satisfactory simply
to refer to one Hebrew or Aramaic word in them without any
indication of its context or how to find it. I cannot find akyrc at
b.Ber 10a. With such a vague reference, I cannot see what has

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gone wrong. Secondly, akyrc does occur right at the end of
b.Ber 21a, and at the beginning of 21b. It is part of a detailed
discussion of what happens if someone has already said the
Tefillah, and might say it again. In the first case, he is on his
own, and he starts a second time because he has forgotten that
he has said it already: the judgement is that he stops when he
realizes this. Another judgement is that, if, after he has said the
Tefillah, he enters a congregation who say it, he says it again
if he has something new. This is followed by the one word
‘sentence’ akyrcw. This is explained by arguing that both
judgements were needed, because otherwise a faulty analogy
might have been drawn from one case to the other, with an
incorrect result. This is surely not the equivalent of the
impersonal de8 telling us what must take place in the future. It
does not matter that some translators, faced with the diYcult
task of rendering this one word into English, may use the
English word ‘necessary’. In this case, the Soncino translation
has ‘And both these rulings are required’, and at the top of
21b ‘Therefore both are necessary’.15 Jastrow translates such
expressions, ‘and it was necessary (to teach both cases)’.16 The
free and explicitative nature of these translations reflects the fact
that we have no natural equivalent of this use of akyrc in
English either: it does nothing to equate this use of akyrc with
the impersonal de8 telling us what must take place in the future.
Thirdly, these texts are in the wrong dialect, and both
Talmuds are too late in date. This is important in this instance,
because the early evidence produced by Aitken is unsatisfactory,
as we shall see, and there are no known examples in Syriac. We
are therefore dealing with relatively late developments, and we
14
Aitken, ‘Proposed Aramaic background to Mark 9:11’, pp. 76–7.
15
Hebrew-English Edition of the Babylonian Talmud, Berakoth, translated
into English with notes, glossary, and indexes by Maurice Simon, under the
Editorship of Rabbi Dr. I. Epstein (London: Soncino, 1960).
16
M. Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi,
and the Midrashic Literature, 2 vols. (London, 1886–1903; repr. New York:
Pardes, 1950), vol. 2, pp. 1301–2.
98 M AU R I C E C A S E Y
must be very cautious before we predate any of this to the time
of Jesus. Fourthly, ‘the corresponding verb % ;r>c ‘‘to need’’’ is
part of Aitken’s imprecise handling of the semantic area of these
terms. That there was a verb ‘to need’ does not entail an
impersonal use equivalent to the Greek de8.
Aitken does not properly present evidence from the
Yerushalmi either. Examples include y.Shev 4,4/4(35b).17 This
is part of a very complex discussion about what is forbidden

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in the sabbatical year. The discussion reaches the question of
pollinating date-palms:
yrv hbwr awhw lyawh rmat alv hdwbu ayhv ynpm <ylqd !ybykrm !ya
.rwsa rmym $yrc !k <wpl awh
They do not pollinate date-palms because this is work. So that you
may not say, ‘Since [the loss from not pollinating the trees] is great, it
[sc. pollinating them] is permitted’, for this reason one has to state
‘forbidden’.
Here the question at issue is that a small detail of the Law might
not be observed for economic reasons. The term $yrc is used in
the very abbreviated language of the Talmud’s legal discourse to
explain why they have had to write down explicitly that this
small detail is forbidden, when it should have been obvious that
it was work. The phrase rmym $(y)rc !k <wpl occurs in other
legal contexts of this kind (e.g. y. Pea 7,7/2 (20c): y.Kil 8,1/11
(31b)). This need for careful statement of the Law surely does
not justify regarding $yrc as the Aramaic equivalent of de8.
What it does do is to illustrate the extension of meaning of $yrc
in legal texts long after the time of Jesus.
Other texts are philologically somewhat nearer to de8. For
example, at y.MQ 3,5/44 (83a), there is a discussion arising from
the death of two sons of R.Mana’s brother R.Hanina. They
asked R.Jose whether he (apparently R.Mana) should overturn
his bed, and whether he should sleep in an overturned bed. In
each case R.Jose answered $yrc al. This evidently means that
it is not necessary for him to do so. The Sitz im Leben of this
discussion is however still that of legal discussions where there
may be thought to be some reason for doubt. We have still not
got a proper equivalent of de8. It is of no help to Aitken that in

17
I quote Leiden Or. 4720 from the synoptic edition of the Yerushalmi:
P. Schäfer and H-J. Becker with G. Reeg et al. (eds.), Synopse zum Talmud
Yerushalmi. ymlvwryh dwmltl syspwnys , 7 vols. (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul
Siebeck], 1991–2001).
 A R A M A I C B A C KG R O U N D O F M A R K 9 : 1 1 99
texts of such late date words from the $rc root are common.
When we have surveyed the earlier evidence, we shall see that
the examples which he most needs are likely to be later
developments.
Aitken goes on to note Hebrew cognates in late biblical and
rabbinic Hebrew texts. These suVer from the same problems,
and the inadequacy of the Aramaic evidence presented under-
mines the relevance of Hebrew, which may legitimately be used

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to support Aramaic evidence but not to replace it. For example,
Aitken brings forward Sir. 15:12 as an example of this word
denoting ‘necessity’.18 The Hebrew text of this verse is extant
only in two mediaeval manuscripts. In MS A, the second half of
the verse reads as follows:19
smj yvnab $rwc !ya yk . . .
. . . for He [sc. God] does not need men of violence.
Here the verb clearly means ‘to need’, and is not an equivalent of
the Greek impersonal de8. The B text does not have $rwc: it has
#pj yl instead. While the Masada fragments usually support
the B text in the verses for which they are extant, in this case the
Greek cre0an 7cei gives decisive support to the A text reading. It
also gives the correct meaning of $rwc.
Aitken turns finally to early Aramaic evidence. He begins
with !whykrc lk ‘all their needs’ at 4Q546 ii 4.20 He correctly
notes that here $rc ‘denotes ‘‘need’’ rather than serving
adverbially to express necessity’.21 It follows that this passage
is not evidence of an Aramaic equivalent of de8. Aitken’s second
passage is from a letter of Simeon son of Kosiba, a century or
so after the time of Jesus. Aitken quotes the phrase hnjna yd
hl !ykyrc, which clearly means ‘because we need him’.
Accordingly, this is not proper evidence of an Aramaic
equivalent of de8 either.
Aitken regards as his ‘best example’ 4Q197 fr. 3, a stunningly
small fragment apparently related to Tob. 5:12–14.22 Here the
c of the reconstructed word $yrc is not extant, and the
18
Aitken, ‘Proposed Aramaic background to Mark 9:11’, p. 77, n. 7.
19
For details of MSS etc., P. C. Beentjes, The Book of Ben Sira in Hebrew.
A Text Edition of all Extant Hebrew Manuscripts and a Synopsis of all Parallel
Hebrew Ben Sira Texts (VT.S LXVIII; Leiden: Brill, 1997).
20
For an edition of the text, see now E. Puech, (ed.), Qumrân Grotte 4. XXII.
Textes Araméens Première Partie. 4Q529-549 (DJD XXXI; Oxford: Clarendon,
2001), pp. 354–5.
21
Aitken, ‘Proposed Aramaic background to Mark 9:11’, p. 77.
22
Aitken, ‘Proposed Aramaic background to Mark 9:11’, pp. 78–9.
100 M AU R I C E C A S E Y
reconstructed r is really just a black more-or-less vertical line
near the edge of the fragment, too low to be a properly written
letter on the same line as the $. The supposed y is the left hand
part of a letter, possibly a letter most of which can no longer
be seen. The $ at the end of the reconstructed word is the only
letter on this line which is clear. There are no visible remains
of the supposedly next word $l. Why then did Fitzmyer
reconstruct $l $yrc?23 Because the Aramaic fragments are most

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closely related to the longer recension of the Greek, and a reads
T0 cre0an 7cei" ful8"; Something seems to have gone wrong here.
As we consider what, we must bear in mind Fitzmyer’s overall
verdict: ‘Although the Aramaic form of Tobit from Qumran
frequently agrees with the long recension of S and the La,
neither the Greek nor the Latin is a direct translation of such
an Aramaic Vorlage; the latter contains inverted phrases,
expanded expressions, and words not rightly understood by
either the Greek or Latin translator of these versions.’24 This is
presumably why Fitzmyer did not attempt the reconstruction of
whole lines round such a small fragment: that process may
reasonably be considered too uncertain to be fruitful.
The reading of a, cre0an 7cei", is not however uncertain at all.
It shows that the translator thought that the underlying text, for
which $l $yrc is indeed a natural conjecture, meant ‘you have
need’. If, therefore, he read $yrc or the like, he read it within
the semantic area of all early examples, similar to the English
‘need’, hence the Greek cre0an, not de8. At this point we must not
overestimate the significance of the Old Latin, ‘quid necesse est
te scire genus meum?’ The Old Latin was made from a Greek
text much like that of a. It illustrates the fact that translators
into languages such as Greek, Latin and English, all of which
have a word for ‘must’, will sometimes use these words when
translating from a source text which does not. We have seen this
illustrated by Septuagintal examples of de8. We need not
conjecture anything other than cre0an 7cei" as the source text
for ‘necesse est te’.
At this point, the Syriac versions are important again. I have
noted that there are 21 examples of the precise form de8 in
the Synoptic Gospels. If Aitken were right, some form of $yrc
would have been used by some of sin cur pesh hark at least some

23
J. A. Fitzmyer, ‘A.Tobit’, in M. Broshi, et al. (eds.), Qumran Cave 4 XIV.
Parabiblical Texts, Part 2 (DJD XIX; Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), p. 43, with
plate 6.
24
Fitzmyer, ‘Tobit’, p. 4.
 A R A M A I C B A C KG R O U N D O F M A R K 9 : 1 1 101
of the time, since it would be the closest equivalent. In fact,
however, there is not a single example. This is because words
from this root did not correspond to the semantic area of de8.
The semantic areas of Syriac words from this root are given
by Payne Smith.25 For $yrc, ptc. pass. of $rc, he has ‘pauper,
inops, egenus’: for ankrwc (m), ‘egestas, paupertas’: and for
atwkyrc (f), ‘egestas, inopia’. This is important, because it is
most unlikely that Aitken’s proposed usage would be normal in

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first-century Aramaic and fail to make it to Syriac. Payne-Smith
also gives examples of $yrc from the Gospels in Christian
Palestinian Syriac, where it represents cre0an with some form of
7cw (e.g. Matt. 3:14 sg., 6:8 pl.).
This brings us back to the absence of $yrc as an equivalent of
de8 in early sources. I have noted in particular that one or more
Greek translators thought de8 to be appropriate at Dan. 2:28–9
and 6:16, and that the same was true in the LXX translation
from Hebrew. There are other contexts where authors might
have used a word for ‘must’ to indicate the necessity of divine
action, if such a word were part of their vocabulary. Such
passages include Dan. 5:28 and 7:18 in Aramaic, and in Hebrew
the end of Dan. 8:25 and 1QpHab II,10. The point here is that
appropriate uses of $yrc are not absent from early sources
because these are not suYciently extensive. They are absent
from early sources because a meaning analogous to the Greek de8
had not been developed.
Aitken’s criticisms, and his attempt to argue that the Aramaic
equivalent for de8 was some form of $yrc, must therefore be
rejected. There was no such equivalent at the time of Jesus, and
developments in that direction were specific to Jewish legal
discussion at a later time. I hope that this article has shown how
careful we must be in assessing the evidence of the existence
and semantic area of Aramaic words at the time of Jesus. I have
shown elsewhere that we must use sources from after the time
of Jesus, contrary to some scholars’ dogmatic insistence that
we should use earlier sources only.26 This is basically
because there is not enough earlier Aramaic extant to form
a language, and virtually none of it is from first-century
Galilee. Equally, however, I have shown that we should

25
Payne-Smith, R. et al. (eds.), Thesaurus Syriacus, 2 vols. (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1879–1901).
26
Casey, Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel, pp. 89–93: Aramaic Approach to Q,
pp. 56–60: and above all ‘Aramaic Idiom and the Son of Man Problem: a
Response To Owen and Shepherd’, JSNT 25 (2002), pp. 3–32.
102 M AU R I C E C A S E Y
not follow the older scholarship in using later sources
indiscriminately. I hope that this article has particularly shown
how careful we must be in handling the extensive Aramaic
sources of later date.
Maurice Casey

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