George Lamsa
George Mamishisho Lamsa () (August 5, 1892 – September 22, 1975) was an Assyrian author. He was born in Mar Bishu in what is now the extreme east of Turkey. A native Aramaic speaker, he translated the Aramaic Peshitta Old and New Testaments into English. He popularized the claim of the Assyrian Church of the East that the New Testament was written in Aramaic and then translated into Greek, contrary to academic consensus. Life Lamsa fled from the Ottoman Empire during the 1910s during World War I, initially settling in South America. In the 1920s, he immigrated to the United States, where he lived for the rest of his life. He studied at the Episcopal Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia and at Dropsie College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. On September 22, 1975, he died in Turlock, California. History and views Lamsa was a member of the Assyrian Church of the East, a Syriac church that uses the Peshitta as its Bible. Some of the modern Assyrian people speak a modern form of the classical Syriac language called Northeastern Neo-Aramaic. The Peshitta was written in classical Syriac, a dialect of Middle Aramaic, which is in turn a Semitic language. The language spoken in the first century would have been Old Aramaic, like the Judeo-Aramaic language, while Ancient Aramaic like Biblical Aramaic was used in Old Testament times. Lamsa was a strong advocate of a belief traditionally held by part of that Church; that the Aramaic New Testament of the Peshitta was the original source text, and that the Greek texts were translated from it. According to Lamsa, "Aramaic was the colloquial and literary language of Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, from the fourth century B. C. to the ninth century A. D." This view of the Assyrian Church regarding the Language of the New Testament is rejected by mainstream scholarship, but Lamsa's views won support among some churches such as The Way. Lamsa further claimed that while most of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, the original was lost and the present Hebrew version, the Masoretic text, was re-translated from the Peshitta. Lamsa produced his own translation of the Bible in the form of The Holy Bible from Ancient Eastern Manuscripts, which is commonly called the Lamsa Bible. Translation of Matthew 19:24 with the word 'rope', instead of 'camel' The Aramaic word for 'camel' is written identically to the word for 'rope.' Matthew 19:24, according to Lamsa, is correctly translated as, 'It is easier for a rope to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God.' Translation of Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani A notable difference between Lamsa's translation and other versions of the New Testament occurs in the fourth of the Words of Jesus on the cross – Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani. That is regarded by more conservative scholars as a quotation in Aramaic of the opening of Psalm 22, which in English is "My God, my God, why