The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

WlLCOX The Aramaic Background of the New Testament 371
instead that the term should be limited to 'syntactical peculiarities that
are not reflective of Semitic syntax, but used to render Semitic constructions
into Greek in one of the translation styles in the Septuagint'. 19
The issues which we are dealing with are quite different. In the
present study the aim is to detect expressions which, in NT books,
may reasonably be traced to influence of underlying Aramaic or
Hebrew material, oral or written. Schmidt's aim seems to be to find
expressions which do not reflect Semitic syntax but which the LXX at
times uses to translate Semitic constructions. In their New Testament
context these expressions most probably would not translate any real
Semitic material; their presence would only serve to link the style of
the LXX with that of the New Testament passage in question. He also
seems to misunderstand the reasoning behind our preliminary exclusion
from consideration as a (true) Semitism any word, phrase or
expression which occurs with reasonable frequency in the LXX. This
was done because, prior to the discovery of the Babatha texts and the
comparative material that they provide, it was hard to show that certain
expressions, Aramaic or Hebrew in essence, but found in the
Greek of the New Testament, were not there because of influence of
the LXX: it was only because we could not prove decisively that it was
not due to the LXX that we excluded it. The fact that Zech. 5.9 (LXX)
uses a participle as a simple indicative, does not make that use in Acts
10.19 a septuagintalism. The use is so uncommon in the LXX and as it
is certainly not an allusion to Zech 5.9, there is no realistic way in
which we can see it as affecting the actual Greek of Acts. 20
2. Midrashic and Historical Factors in the Context in the
New Testament
We come now to another line of enquiry. It would seem reasonable to
look for some kind of Aramaic and/or Hebrew influence in parts of
the New Testament where material may be found which is either
(a) derived from or linked with known midrashic or halakic material,
19. D.D. Schmidt, 'Semitisms and Septuagintalisms in the Book of Revelation',
NTS 37 (1991), pp. 592-603 (594).
20. Wilcox, 'Semitisms', pp. 979, 982; see also The Semitisms of Acts, 58-68,
121-123. The ANRW article was published in 1984, before the Babatha papyri
became generally available for study (1990). We were therefore more cautious with
regard to 'septuagintalisms' at that time.