Burning Hearts
Luke 24:32
“They asked each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?’”
For many years now, many churches (such as those within the modern Charismatic movement and seperately the Church of Latter Day Saints) believe that this passage in Luke describes a “sign of the spirit,” known as the “burning heart” or “burning bosom,” where the Holy Spirit descends upon a man and creates this sensation usually described as “tingly and warm” in the hollow of their chest. Strangely enough, the testimony in Acts, and the descriptions in 1st Corinthians do not mention such a thing. If it such a common occurance and an important sign, why would Luke have not mentioned it in his first work (The Gospel of Luke) and Paul passed it by?
In the Aramaic of the Syriac Peshitta, the word in question was rendered as יַקִיר. The strange nature of this reading, is that יַקִיר does not mean “burning,” but “heavy” or “slow.” “Burning” would be the word יַקִיד, which lends a new clue to the solution of this puzzle. Lining these two words up side by side, we see a possible source of confusion:
יַקִיר
יַקִיד
The words יַקִיר and יַקִיד are only seperated by the slightest of penstrokes. In most Syriac Aramaic scripts, this difference is a very important dot which appears below the letter dâlath ܕ while above the letter rish ܪ, otherwise they are identical. In “Hebrew” Aramaic scripts, dâlath דּ is determined by an angled stroke, where rish ר has a slightly rounded quality to its edge.
In Aramaic, a “heavy heart” makes more sense than a “burning heart” because the heart or לֶבָא is an idiom for the mind. To have a “heavy heart” or a “slow heart” means to be slow in thinking, unlike the idiom in English where having a “heavy heart” means to be stricken with grief or sorrow. Idioms are notoriously difficult to prove in the context of an ancient language (and rightfully so). For example, the works of George M. Lamsa are riddled with many “idioms” that simply did not exist in the language of Jesus’ day, and even more that Lamsa (as a native speaker, naturally extending semantic meaning) simply made up.
Earlier, in verse 25 of the same pericope, we find the following words which may serve as an explicit definition that the author understood such an idiom to exist:
Luke 24:25
“He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!”
In this narrative, Jesus had appeared to his disciples post-mortem, and started to teach them from the scripture. In their “slowness of heart” to understand his lesson, he repremanded them as a parent repremands their child. Unfortunately, for them, the moment that they realized who they were speaking with, according to the story, he disappeared. Taking a look at Luke 24:32 in the Syriac Peshitta we see that יַקִיר, was also chosen to render the Aramaic of this verse.
Applying this newfound information to the passage, we come up with the following reading:
Luke 24:25-32
He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how heavy of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?”
And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus acted as if he were going farther. But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them.
When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.
They asked each other, “Were not our hearts heavy within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”
Now this is exceedingly surprising to find within the Gospel of Luke.
Now with all of this evidence in mind, we can see that there is a parallel that is seemingly missed by the Greek texts of the New Testament by the simple confusion of two look-alike letters. Furthermore the nature of this being found in Luke points once again to Lukes knowledge of Aramaic, and is strong evidence that Luke was writing in or, at the very least, was using an Aramaic source.
Sources:
- Black, M.. An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts, 3rd ed. (p. 254).
- Torrey, C. C.. Our Translated Gospels. (p. 106).