Zechariah 12:10--Pierced Whom?

Interlocutor:
"They shall look at him [whom] they pierced"
(Aramaic John/Yoch
19:37 quoting Zech)

Now if we take a look at the texts the Greeks had
available to quote
from,
there's...

"They shall look upon me (ET) whom ..." (Hebrew
Zech 12:10)
"They shall look upon me ..." (Greek Zech 12:10)
"They shall look upon me at him ..." (Aramaic
Peshitta Zech 12:10)
"They shall look at him ..." (Aramaic John/Yoch
19:37 quoting Zech)
"They shall look at him ..." (Greek John/Yoch
19:37 quoting Zech)

It's clear that the Greek John must have been a
translation of the
Aramaic
John/Yochanan.

RESPONSE:

It is far from clear that the Greek John is a translation of an Aramaic John/Yochanan. Besides the burden of proof being upon you to provide evidence of an Aramaic John preceding the "Greek" John, there are a number of possibilities that you are overlooking in trying to set forth your argument. For instance, the NJB reads: "They will mourn for the one whom they have pierced . . ." The Zech 12:10 footnote in the NJB then informs us:

"We preserve the MT reading by making a clear break after 'to me'. Theodotion understood 'to the one whom they have pierced', and this reading is followed by John (Jn 19:37)."

David Aune adds:

"Jellicoe (Septuagint, 87) claims that the citation from Zech 12:10 in Rev 1:7 [and also in Jn 19:37] reflects a Theodotiontic reading, perhaps more accurately described as a proto-Theodotiontic reading. Justin reads 'and your people will see [OYETAI] and will recognize whom they have pierced [EIS hON EXEKENTHSAN]'(Dial. 14.8); cf. 1 Apol. 52.12: 'and then they will see the one whom they pierced [EIS hON EXEKENTHSAN]'; this is identical with the Lucianic text" (Revelation 1-5, p. 56).

The point is that John is not the only person to have read the Hebrew text in the way that he did. On the other hand, another possibility is mentioned by Gerald Borchert in his commentary on John:

"The Johannine renderings of these Old Testament texts [Zech 12:10, etc.] are not exact quotations as though he had a copy of the Hebrew or Greek Scriptures in front of him, but in substance they certainly represent accurately the meanings of those cited texts" (John 12-21, p. 279).

Finally, the Expositor's Greek Testament observes:

"John gives a more accurate translation: OYONTAI EIS hON EXEKENTHSAN: 'They shall look on Him whom (EKEINON hON) they pierced'. The same rendering is adopted in the Greek versions of Aquila, Theodotion and Symmachus, and is also found in Ignatius, Ep. Trall., 10; Justin, I. Apol., i. 77; and cf. Rev. 1:7, and Barnabas, Ep., 7" (p. 860).