Was Timothy’s father an Aramean?
Question:
In Was Timothy's father a non-believer? you said, "In the end, I think all you can state is that Timothy's father was of Greek nationality." But Acts 16:1 (translated from Aramaic Peshitta, based on Younan) says, "And he arrived at the medintha [city] Derbe and at Lostra. Now there was there a certain talmida [student] whose name (was) Timotheos, the son of a certain Yehudian woman-- a mahaymina [believer/ faithful one]-- and his father was an Aramean."
Answer:
The New Testament was written in Greek. An argument based on how the Greek text was translated into a different language carries no weight. Aramaic Peshitta was not a language until the fourth century A.D. I know that it is popular among Messianic Jews to claim that Aramaic Peshitta was the original language of the Bible, but the evidence is so strong against it, that the claim is just imaginary. See Problems With Peshitta Primacy. The Peshitta manuscripts only date from the fifth century; whereas the Greek text is traced back to the first century.
In the original text, it states that Timothy's father was a Hellenos, which is the Greek word for Greek.
