Was any NT book first written in a Semitic language?

[otseng]

From another thread:

Myself, I'm leaning towards some of the books of the New Testament were not originally written in Greek, but in either Hebrew or Aramaic.

If you'll forgive the digression, I had a discussion a while ago with someone that was convinced that the Gospels were originally written in Aramaic.

Were any of the New Testament books first written in Aramaic/Hebrew before being translated to Greek?

[Tcg]

Paul being fluent in Hebrew does not guarantee that he could write the language. He may have been capable of doing so, but documentation that he could speak Hebrew is not documentation that he could read and/or write it.

If Paul couldn't read or write the Hebrew language, who could?

You are missing my point. The fact that there is documentation that he could speak Hebrew is not evidence that he could read or write Hebrew. He very well may have been able to, but evidence that he could speak it is not evidence he could read or write it.


Tcg

[Difflugia]

Another possibility is Matthew wrote both a Hebrew version and a Greek version.

Irenaeus knew a disciple of an apostle. Origen and Eusebius had access to documents of the writings of those who knew the apostles or their disciples and knew the tradition that had been handed down by the early church about it. All three men consistently agree that Matthew wrote both a Hebrew and Greek Gospel.

http://hebrewgospel.com/Matthew%20Two%2 ... idence.php

If we're just discussing the claim by the early church that Matthew wrote in Hebrew, I think the most parsimonious explanation is that Papias was talking about a different document than our Matthew. Irenaeus thought a different work was Matthew and mistakenly applied Papias's statement to it. After that, everyone after simply took Irenaeus at his word.

Papias never quotes Matthew, so without Irenaeus (and later tradition), we don't know what writing he had in front of him. You can read the Fragments of Papias (extracted from Irenaeus and Eusebius) here. The statement about Matthew is in paragraph VI. The bit I mentioned earlier about the death of Judas is in paragraph III. When Irenaeus makes the same claim (about halfway down in the right column), he pretty much just repeated what Papias wrote. I just think they had a different Matthew. It's not even clear to me that Papias even had (or had even read) "Matthew," but he was just repeating a tradition himself.

The book mentioned in the footnote has also been scanned into Google Books. It has a whole chapter devoted to "Statements of Ancient Writers In Support of the Hebrew Original of St Matthew's Gospel" (as a spoiler, he thinks Matthew wrote in Greek and only in Greek). In short:

The report as to St Matthew having written in Hebrew, which, as we have seen, first appears in the writings of Papias, is repeated over and over again by the ancient fathers of the Church. This was naturally to be expected. "Writers," says Bolingbroke, "copy one another; and the mistake that was committed, or the falsehood that was invented by one, is adopted by hundreds."

[brianbbs67]

Paul being fluent in Hebrew does not guarantee that he could write the language. He may have been capable of doing so, but documentation that he could speak Hebrew is not documentation that he could read and/or write it.

If Paul couldn't read or write the Hebrew language, who could?

You are missing my point. The fact that there is documentation that he could speak Hebrew is not evidence that he could read or write Hebrew. He very well may have been able to, but evidence that he could speak it is not evidence he could read or write it.


Tcg

Paul was a Pharisee. In his words, a pharisee's pharisee. I am very confident he could read and write in Hebrew.