четвъртък, 21 февруари 2013 г.
Biblical Aramaic
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the use of Aramaic in the Christian Bible, see Aramaic of Jesus.
Biblical Aramaic is the form of the Aramaic language that is used in the books of Daniel, Ezra and a few other places in the Hebrew Bible and should not be confused with the Aramaic paraphrases, explanations, and expansions of the Jewish scriptures known as targumim.
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[edit]Biblical Aramaic and Imperial Aramaic
Biblical Aramaic's affinity to other types of Aramaic has been hotly debated largely due to its implications on dating the Book of Daniel. Scholars fall into three camps. In 1929, Rowley argued that Biblical Aramaic must come from later than the 6th century BCE and was more similar to theTargums than the Imperial Aramaic documents available at his time.[1] Others have argued that Biblical Aramaic most closely resembles the 5th century Elephantine papyri and is therefore a good representative of typical Imperial Aramaic.[2] KA Kitchen takes a middle position, noting that Biblical Aramaic is most similar to Imperial Aramaic between 600–330BC but that in no way means it could not have been written as late as 170BCE. Thus, Kitchen posits that the nature of Biblical Aramaic has no impact on dating.[3]
[edit]Aramaic and Hebrew
Biblical Hebrew is the main language of the Hebrew Bible. Aramaic only accounts for about 250 verses out of a total of over 23,000. Biblical Aramaic is closely related to Hebrew as both are in the Northwest Semitic language family. Some obvious similarities and differences are listed below.[4]
[edit]Similarities
- Same Aramaic square script (which was adopted to write Hebrew in place of the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet found in earlier inscriptions).
- The system of vocalization used is the same for the portions of the Bible written in Hebrew and those written in Aramaic
- Verb systems are based on triconsonantal roots.
- Similar functions of the verbal conjugations.
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