Syriac Translation (Early 2nd century)

Syriac and Greek sit close enough to be cousins, yet far enough apart to make translation messy. When the first Syriac Christians translated the Greek New Testament (early 2nd century), they didn’t produce a mirror-image copy. They produced something more alive—half literal, half idiomatic, shaped by a Semitic mindset rather than a Greek one.

The Old Syriac is not a word-for-word translation of the Greek. It’s meaning-for-meaning, with occasional literal streaks, and it preserves several readings that differ from later Greek manuscripts.

Syriac vs. Greek: Did they match exactly?

They didn’t. The Old Syriac Gospels (Sinaiticus and Curetonian) show that translators often aimed to communicate the sense of the Greek text rather than reproduce its grammar or word order.

A few reasons:

• Syriac is Semitic, like Hebrew and Aramaic, and its natural sentence structure pushes the text in its own direction.

• Greek idioms often sound bizarre in Syriac if translated mechanically.

• The early church didn’t yet have a fixation on “exact syllable uniformity.” They cared that meaning survived, not every grammatical wrinkle.

So when we compare Old Syriac readings with the later Greek families—Alexandrian, Western, Byzantine—we see shifts that belong to the translator’s hand and the translator’s Greek manuscript, which was early and not identical to later forms.

Were there real textual variants?

Some Syriac readings reflect:

1. early Greek variants that no longer survive

2. harmonizations—places where the Syriac smooths out differences between Gospel passages

3. Semitic rephrasing that clarifies or sharpens the meaning

4. shorter or longer readings because the translator likely used a Greek manuscript that predates the Alexandrian–Byzantine split

Syriac didn’t emerge from a “standardized” Greek text. It grew from whatever Greek copies were circulating in Edessa and Antioch in the early 2nd century—texts sometimes rougher, sometimes freer, sometimes older than anything we have.

A few concrete examples

1. Matthew 1:16 – genealogy wording

Old Syriac Sinaiticus shortens the phrase about Joseph compared to Greek manuscripts.

Not a corruption—just a reflection of an early Greek line.

2. Matthew 12:47 – missing verse

The Old Syriac omits a verse found in later Greek manuscripts (“Someone told him, ‘Your mother and brothers are outside…’”).

This reflects a Greek manuscript without that line—a shorter early tradition.

3. Luke 24:36 – “Peace be with you”

Some Syriac witnesses lack Jesus’ greeting found in later Greek copies.

Again, this traces to a Greek base text that didn’t have the phrase.

4. John 12:15 – wording of the prophecy

The Syriac uses an Aramaic-like phrasing of Zechariah’s prophecy that is smoother in Syriac but not identical to any major Greek family.

These aren’t accidents. They show the Syriac translators were handling early Greek material—sometimes cleaner, sometimes messier, always historically illuminating.

Literal or idiomatic?

Early Syriac translations blend both.

You can think of them as “70% meaning-for-meaning, 30% literal.”

• When Greek syntax can be transplanted into Syriac without sounding alien, the translators keep it.

• When Greek idioms would sound absurd or unclear, they rephrase naturally.

• When a Greek word has no good Syriac equivalent, they paraphrase.

This isn’t sloppy or careless. It’s faithful translation performed in a Semitic cultural environment where clarity carried more weight than exact grammatical mimicry.

The Old Syriac feels like someone translating for their church—not for a scholar’s microscope.

The deeper implication

The existence of Syriac variants in the 2nd century proves something important, something that cuts directly against modern “perfect translation” claims:

Textual diversity isn’t a sign of corruption; it’s the normal condition of the early church.

Syriac Christians heard the gospel through a Semitic lens. Greek Christians heard it in their own rhythm. Egyptian Christians heard it in Coptic phrasing. None of this frightened the early believers.

They trusted the message, not the exact inventory of particles and conjunctions.