To: heb_roots_chr@hebroots.org
From: jstrimm@home.com
Subject: Someone Scrambled my Scriptures

The ORIGINAL Order of the New Testament Books

HELP. Someone Scrambled my Scriptures!

Or

Rome's Replacement Rearrangement

Just as the manuscript order of the books of the Tanak (OT),
(followed by Judaism) does not agree with the ordering of the same
books in the Christian "Old Testament" as printed today, so also does
the manuscript order of the NT differ.

The ancient manuscript order of the books of the "New Testament" has
first the "Gospels" then "Acts" followed by the Jewish Epistles
(Ya'akov (James); 1 & 2 Kefa (Peter); 1, 2 & 3 Yochanan (John) and
Y'hudah (Jude)) followed by the Pauline epistles which are followed
by Revelation.

This original order was rearranged by Rome in the Latin Vulgate in
which the Pauline epistles were given first place and the Jewish
epistles given second place. This gave Romans a more prominent place
in the NT as part of Rome's bid for power. Thus Rome effectively
displaced and replaced the Jews by displacing the Jewish epistles and
replacing them with the Pauline Epistles beginning with "Romans".

Up until the 4th Century all of the "Church Fathers" who list the NT
books do so by placing the Jewish Epistles (sometimes called
the "Catholic (Latin: Universal) Epistles") first, followed by the
Pauline Epistles. The ancient Aramaic manuscripts always follow this
order as well. This is because Rome had no legal authority over
those in the Parthean Empire outside its borders, where the Aramaic
retained its position as the original, standard text.

The original manuscript order had an important significance. It
agreed with the precept that the message was to the Jews first and
then to the Goyim (Gentiles). It also agrees with the concept that
Ya'akov, Kefa and Yochanan were emissaries that come BEFORE Paul
(Gal. 1:17) and with the concept that Kefa, Ya'akov and Yochanan
served as three pillars which lend authority upon which Paul's
message was built (Gal. 2:9) and not vice-versa. The reader of the NT
was intended to read the "Jewish" epistles FIRST and then to read the
Pauline epistles already having understood the Jewish epistles. The
NT reader was intended to read Ya'akov's (James') admonition
concerning faith and works (Ya'akov 2) as well as Kefa's warnings
about Paul being difficult to understand and often twisted (2Kefa
3:15-16) etc. before ever attempting to understand the writings of
Paul.

In fact when Westcott and Hort published their critical edition of
the Greek NT in 1881 they returned to the original order of the books
saying in their introduction:

We have followed recent editors in abandoning the Hieronymic
Order familiar in modern Europe through the influence of the
Latin Vulgate, in favour of the order most highly recommended
by various Greek authority of the fourth century.
(Introduction to the New Testament in the Original Greek,
pp. 320-321)

(obviously I do not agree that the Greek was the original)

So the ancient Aramaic places the Jewish Epistles first, and the
Ancient Greek places the Jewish Epistles first and Rome actually
rearranged the Scriptures to place the Pauline Epistles beginning
with Romans in front and pushed the Jewish Epistles behind them when
creating the Latin Vulgate which served as the Roman Catholic
Standard text. This Roman Replacement Rearrangement became adopted
by many Greek printed editions, the King James Version, virtually all
English versions which followed, and even all Messianic Editions
until the HRV. Even the Jewish New Testament and Complete Jewish
Bible (which restores the order of the Tanak books) adopts Rome's
replacement rearrangement of scrambled Scriptures.

( The HRV follows the ancient manuscript order (which agrees also
with the order of the ancient Aramaic manuscripts) in placing
the "Jewish epistles" immediately after Acts and placing the Pauline
Epistles AFTER them.)

CONCLUSION

The New Testament, like the Tanak was originally written in Hebrew and
Aramaic, the native languages of first century Jews and Syrians. The
native tounge of both Jerusalem and Antioch. This is testified to by
many of the ancient "Church Fathers" as well as many modern scholars.
Even Paul, who was an anti-helenist wrote in Hebrew and Aramaic to
core groups of Jewish leaders at local assemblies throughout the world
who then translated them into Greek, Latin etc. for the populace.
Contrary to popular myth there are in fact old and ancient Hebrew and
Aramaic manuscripts and the oldest complete Aramaic manuscripts is
about the same age as the oldest Greek manuscript. Moreover there is
a plethora of internal evidence demonstration the originality of the
Hebrew and Aramaic over the Greek. The Tanak quotes as they appear in
the Hebrew and Aramaic NT mss. Demonstrate that these texts could not
have simply been translated from the Greek NT. Moreover there are
many instances where the Greek translator seems to have mistranslated
ambiguous Hebrew/Aramaic words or misread them. Many cases of
Synoptic and Johnian Variation can be traced back to these issues.
There are also many cases where the Greek translator seems to have
mistaken a question for a statement (a common translation error when
translating Hebrew and/or Aramaic into other languages. Finally the
Hebrew and Aramaic are filled with puns, wordplays and alliteration
again demonstrating that they are the result of composition rather
than translation from Greek.

THE END

To find out more about the Hebraic-Roots Version, the first Messianic
translation translated not from the Greek manuscripts, but from the
Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts.

Shake Helenism's biggest hold on Messianic Judaism: The Greek NT

James Trimm
Hebraic-Roots Version (HRV) Messianic Version NT
http://www.nazarene.net/hrv

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