Luke 14:5 – ‘son’ or ‘donkey’?
The Aramaic sources of Luke says ‘son’ (ܒܪܗ/b’reh), but the Greek source texts say ‘donkey’ (όνος/onos), specifically a burro, which is a donkey used to carry goods around. Which is correct?
Well, in Aramaic, they are two completely different words:
- ܚܡܪܐ (donkey) sounds like h’marah
- ܒܪܗ (son) sounds like b’reh
These could not be mixed up or confused with each other.
However, in Greek, the two words look and sound similar:
- ονος (donkey) sounds like oh-nos
- υιός (son) sounds like ee-oss
Indeed, the two Greek words not only sound similar (with the same number of syllables, the same ending, and the start both being vowel-sounds), but they have the same number of letters; and with some poor penmanship, the υ could easily appear closed and look like ο, and if written quickly, a ν and ι could even be mistaken.
So there are two possibilities:
- It should read ‘donkey’, but the Aramaic translator working from the Greek source texts either misheard or misread ονος (donkey) as υιός (son). Since the word ‘son’ still works in the passage, the error apparently went unnoticed.
- It should read ‘son’. A Greek copyist accidentally misread υιός (son) as ονος (donkey) and copied down the wrong word, which later spread to other Greek copies. Thankfully, the Aramaic preserves the original correct meaning.
Which is correct? We’re not sure, but we’ve decided to go with ‘burro’, the name for a donkey used as a working pack animal, since Luke was likely originally written in Greek and probably had its greater distribution in Greek for many years before it was translated into Aramaic.