Proofs of an article published in the Bulletin of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies 43 (2010), 53-72.

The hypothesis that the Hebrew language had been fully replaced by Aramaic as a spoken language in the time of Jesus has often been accepted among New Testament scholars without further question. However, few today have any detailed knowledge of how and why this hypothesis came into existence in the nineteenth century and on what grounds it was established. Since the question of language use is considered to be of minor importance, students of the New Testament today readily accept the answers to the question provided to them by textbooks and introductions without doubting their factual correctness. In consequence, unlike in the early period of Aramaic research, the widespread acceptance of the “exclusive Aramaic hypothesis” today is increasingly based on second-hand knowledge: while relatively few scholars continue to inves tigate the linguistic, archeological and historical evidence pertaining to the language question, most others would confijine themselves to the reading of scholarly literature, reiterating the “established results” of earlier generations. This wide acceptance of established theories leads to a strangely asymmetrical situation where any claim of Aramaic prevalence or even exclusivity is accepted by biblical scholars without hesitation, while the claim of contin ued use of the Hebrew language, let alone a prevalence of Hebrew as a spo ken language, is opposed with vigor, to the point that accusations of “linguistic Zionism” have been brought into the dis cussion. The burden of proof seems to rest fully on the “Hebrew” side of the discussion, while the “Aramaic” side is based fijirmly on the grounds of “common knowledge.” A fresh look into the historical origins of the “Aramaic hypothesis” might therefore help to develop a better understanding of the reasons and causes that led to the establishment of the current status quo and provide a possible way out of an unnecessary stalemate in the question of language use at the time of Jesus.

H. Gzella (ed.), Languages from the World of the Bible, 2011

A new era in the study of Samaritan Hebrew and Samaritan Aramaic (henceforth: sa) has opened with the research by Z. Ben-Ḥayyim, whose main achievements in these areas are presented in the five volumes of his series The Literary and Oral Tradition of Hebrew and Aramaic amongst the Samaritans.1 The linguistic highpoint of the series is its last volume, the Grammar of Samari-tan Hebrew.2 Had the series continued, we would have undoubtedly merited another apex in the form of a grammar of Samaritan Aramaic. Nonetheless, several studies have been carried out on sa, and they contribute greatly to our knowledge of this dialect of Aramaic. Among the highly important contributions of Ben-Ḥayyim himself in this field, several deserve special mention: (a) the third volume of the above-mentioned series in which the oral recitation of the sa hymns and prayers is fully presented (henceforth: lot iii/b); (b) an edition of the Samaritan midrashic chronicle known as The Book of Asaṭir;3 and (c) an edition of the Samaritan Midrash Tibat Marqe.4 All these three pioneering editions are accompanied by a Hebrew translation of the Aramaic source and by valuable linguistic notes. The outstanding successor to this school is Abraham Tal, the author of the short grammar under review here. In a number of publications, he has also made a substantial contribution to Samaritan studies in general and to Samaritan languages and philology in particular. Among his many studies in this large field of research, two publications are worthy of note: (a) the critical edition of the Samaritan Targum of the Pentateuch;5 (b) the Dictionary of Samaritan Aramaic.6 He also prepared a new translated and annotated edition

This chapter introduces various local forms of Aramaic in the Graeco-Roman Near East which had become written prestige languages some time after the fall of the Achaemenid Empire. It covers Qumran, Nabataean, Palmyrene, Eastern Mesopotamian and Arsacid Aramaic, since they all exhibit a consid.erable influence from the Achaemenid chancellery language and share a common cultural frømework. By assessing the shared retentions and innovations, it becomes possible to outline principles of a føirly complex dialectøl \andscape characterized by diversity, close contact and extensive multilingualism. In this environment, Aramaic was used for a number of different purposes: in the Western and Eastern peripheries, that is, North Arabia and Parthia, it seems to have been confined

Reviews in Religion & Theology, 2018

Biblical Aramaic: A Reader and Handbook (hereafter Aramaic Reader) is an expanded version of the authors' previous Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia: A Reader's Edition (hereafter, Reader's BHS) with the same publisher. After a brief introduction, the book consists of two main parts: the Aramaic portions of all of the Biblical Aramaic text with detailed annotation, and vocabulary and morphology lists for consultation, learning and review. Like the Reader's BHS, it comes in an attractive, hardcover binding, with thick, white paper preventing the otherwise inevitable bleed-through in other Bibles. The introduction covers a few key matters to orient students to the Aramaic language. First,

The spectrum of Neo-Aramaic languages and dialects, spoken in an arch of languageislets that stretch from southwestern Syria to southwestern Iran, exhibits rich lexical repositories inherited from early layers of the Aramaic language. Within this wealthy lexical legacy, some genuine Aramaic lexical items are not attested in any of the literary Aramaic sources, hence it is only by virtue of these modern lexical manifestations that the existence of the ancient Aramaic antecedents of these words can be inferred or reconstructed. Such historical lacunae concern also meanings that must be of considerable antiquity, yet these meanings, pertaining to well-known Aramaic words, have no evidence in literary Aramaic, having surfaced only in the modern era. This article discusses ten selected cases of pre-modern Aramaic words and meanings that were discovered by etymological and comparative examination of their modern reflexes in NorthEastern Neo-Aramaic (nena), Western Neo-Aramaic and Ṭuroyo.

AI

Thi arlide gü'es an overview on (he sources, grammar and vocabulary of the oldest attested variety of Aramaic in alphabetic script from 9 th to 7 th ct. Be, i.e. Old Aramaic.

Based on certain linguistic features, the varieties of Aramaic attested after the Persian period are usually divided into a Western and an Eastern branch. It is, however, less easy to pinpoint the origin of these two branches, since already the first textual witnesses of Aramaic exhibit a considerable amount of variation. This paper attempts to reconsider some traits often associated with Eastern Aramaic (less clearly defined than its Western counterpart) from a diachronic point of view and relates them to the distinctive features of Imperial Aramaic. Whereas some of them clearly antedate the fall of the Persian Empire, many others reflect later developments.

HENOCH 36/2 (2014), 208-21 - The two articles under discussion show the author’s view on Aramaic dialectology. Under captivating, religion-sensitive titles that link the research on Aramaic to the language spoken by Jesus, Paul Kahle attempts to accommodate new discoveries – especially his own discoveries – into a comprehensive, elegant reconstruction of the history of Aramaic and its dialects, a theory on the Babylonian origin of Targum Onqelos and a research agenda that basically corresponds to the research activities carried out by his pupils and himself. His description is largely based on the distinction between written dialects – which, however, reflect spoken varieties of Aramaic – and written literary standards. The attention paid to this distinction is probably rooted in the linguistic thought of the time when the articles were written and has proven to be crucial in later discussion on Aramaic, as can be seen, e.g., in Greenfield’s concept of “Standard Literary Aramaic” or in more recent discussions on the relationship between Official Aramaic and Middle and Late Aramaic varieties. This attempt at an overall description of the Aramaic complex and a reconstruction of the relationships of the various dialects is at the same time the best achievement and the limit of Kahle’s views on Aramaic. It was not difficult for his opponents to criticize a theory based on hypotheses, built in their turn on cultural, external criteria rather than on the discussion of linguistic data, on the contents of the texts rather than on the languages they are expressed in.

H. Murre-van den Berg’s article “Classical Syriac, Neo-Aramaic, and Arabic in the Church of the East and the Chaldean Church between 1500 and 1800” (pp. 335–351) is an important contribution to the history of the Syriac literature and the culture of Christian Aramaeans in the modern era. Apart from the “Introduction” and the “Concluding Remarks,” her essay is divided in two parts: “The Use of Classical Syriac, Neo-Aramaic, and Arabic” and “The Function of the Languages.” ...

Au-delà de l'arabe standard. Moyen arabe et arabe mixte dans les sources médiévales, modernes et contemporaines - Atti del III Convegno AIMA. Proceedings of the 3rd AIMA Symposium

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