03 Aramaic (Beyond Babel A Handbook of Biblical Hebrew and Related Languages).pdf

(97 KB) Pobierz
ARAMAIC
Frederick E. Greenspahn
Aramaic is unique among the languages relevant to biblical studies in
that, like Hebrew, it is found both within and beyond the canon. Not only
are several sections of the “Hebrew” Bible (most notably Daniel and Ezra)
written in Aramaic, but so are several important bodies of texts outside of
the Bible that are relevant to understanding it.
The name “Aramaic” comes from the Bible itself. It reports that the lead-
ers of Judah asked an Assyrian general who was besieging the city of
Jerusalem toward the end of the eighth century to speak to them in
)aÅ
raamît
rather than Judean (i.e., Hebrew) so that the general population would not
understand what was being said (2 Kgs 18:26 = Isa 36:11). The term is also
found in Dan 2:4 and Ezra 4:7, where it indicates the shift from Hebrew to
Aramaic that takes place in those verses, and in one of the papyri from Ele-
phantine.
1
Early Greek sources identify the language as “Syrian,”
2
except at
Dan 2:26, where the Old Greek uses the term “Chaldean.”
3
The name is taken from that of the Aramean people, who are first
mentioned by that name in the eleventh century
B
.
C
.
E
., when the Assyrian
emperor Tiglath-pileser I reports having encountered them during a mili-
tary campaign in Syria.
4
There they created several small kingdoms that
reached as far east as the Persian Gulf; several of these are mentioned in
the Bible, including Beth-rehob, Damascus, Geshur, Hamath, Maacah, Tob,
and Zobah.
1
A. Cowley,
Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C.
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1923),
no. 28, lines 4 and 6.
2
LXX
Dan 2:4; Job 42:17; and
Aristeas
11; this is the basis for the rabbinic pejo-
rative pun
léssôn sûrsî
(“clipped tongue,”
b. Sot†.
49b;
b. B. Qam.
82b–83a; and
y.
Sot†.
7:2 21c; cf.
Gen. Rab.
71:14).
3
Cf. also Jerome’s introduction to Daniel (PL 28:1357). Occasionally, one finds
the term “Hebrew” where the reference appears to be to Aramaic (e.g., John 19:13,
17 and, perhaps, Eusebius’s references to the sources used by Matthew,
Ecclesias-
tical History
3:39 §16, LCL 1:296–97).
4
Albert Kirk Grayson,
Assyrian Royal Inscriptions
(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz,
1976) part 2, “From Tiglath-Pileser I to Ashur-nasir-apli II,” pp. 13 (§34), 27 (§97),
and 23 (§83).
93
94
ARAMAIC
By the time that Israel’s monarchy fell in the early part of the sixth cen-
tury, Aramaic had become the lingua franca of the ancient Near East. That,
after all, is why the leaders of Judah could expect the Assyrian Rabshakeh
to use it to communicate with them. Further evidence of that role can be
seen in an Aramaic letter that was found at the Egyptian site of Saqqara,
which records the request of a Philistine city (probably Ekron) for Egyptian
assistance against the army of Babylon late in the seventh century
B
.
C
.
E
.
5
The Judeans who were taken captive by Nebuchadnezzar after the
Jerusalem temple was destroyed in 586
B
.
C
.
E
. adopted the Aramaic lan-
guage along with the Aramean script. (Hebrew was previously written in
Phoenician characters, which are sometimes called Paleo-Hebrew.) As a
result, biblical literature written after the exile is heavily influenced by Ara-
maic, and substantial sections of the books of Daniel and Ezra are actually
written in it. Later on, Aramaic was extensively used within the Jewish
community as well as among various Christian groups, most notably the
Syrian Orthodox and also the Samaritans, Mandeans, and Nabateans. It
continues in use within a handful of isolated communities to this day;
among these are some in Syria, Turkey, and Iraq, as well as Jews and
Christians from Kurdistan, virtually all of whom have now migrated to
Israel and the United States.
1. THE LANGUAGE
Aramaic is one of two major branches of Northwest Semitic. (The other
branch, which is called Canaanite, includes Hebrew as its most prominent
member.) Because of its long history and widespread usage, it is divided
into several dialects on the basis of chronological and geographical factors.
The oldest surviving Aramaic texts, which were written between the
tenth and seventh centuries
B
.
C
.
E
., are said to be in Old or Ancient Aramaic.
Sources from the sixth through the third century
B
.
C
.
E
. are said to be in
Official, Imperial, or Standard Literary Aramaic (the German term is
Reichs-
aramäisch)
because it manifests a degree of standardization as a result of
having been used for administrative purposes in the Persian Empire, which
eventually reached from Egypt to India. This is the dialect found in the
Bible, although Daniel is sometimes considered to reflect a later form of
the language.
6
The fall of Persia led to variation in the dialects of different regions.
This may account for the reference to Peter’s distinctive accent in Matt
5
KAI
§266; cf. Bezalel Porten, “The Identity of King Adon,”
BA
44 (1981): 36–52.
6
Among the book’s idiosyncrasies are its use of
himmôn
for the third masculine
plural pronoun where Ezra has
himmô
and the second- and third-person plural
pronominal suffixes
-kôn
and
-hôn
where Ezra has
-koom
and
-hoom
as well.
FREDERICK E
.
GREENSPAHN
95
26:73. Although Greek became increasingly important in Judea at this time,
Aramaic continued to play a prominent role in Jewish life and culture until
it was displaced by Arabic many centuries later. The language of this
period, which extends from the second century
B
.
C
.
E
. to the second cen-
tury
CE
, is designated Middle Aramaic. This is the form of Aramaic found
in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament. Some scholars also trace
the earliest layers of the targumim to the Pentateuch (Onqelos) and the
Prophets (Jonathan) to this time. Other dialects from this period are those
of the Nabatean Arab tribes and the cities of Palmyra (biblical Tadmor) and
Edessa in Syria, as well as Hatra, which is in Mesopotamia.
Texts from the second through the ninth centuries
C
.
E
. (or sometimes
later) are said to be in Late Aramaic. These include writings from the Jew-
ish communities of both Palestine (the Palestinian Talmud, various
midrashim, and several targumim) and Babylonia (the Babylonian Talmud)
as well as among the Christians and Samaritans in the West and the Man-
dean and Syrian communities in the East.
As mentioned above, Aramaic is still used to this day. The dialects of
these communities are called Modern Aramaic.
Among the distinguishing features of Aramaic are certain characteris-
tic words, such as
bar
rather than
been
for “son,”
qoodem
rather than
lipnê
for “before,” and the verbs
)th
instead of
bw)
for “come” and
slq
rather
than
(lh
for “ascend.” It also retains long
a,
which became long
o
in the
Canaanite languages. (This is, therefore, conventionally called the Canaan-
ite shift.) Thus the word for “good” appears as
t†a
a
b
in Aramaic rather than
t†ôb,
as in Hebrew.
Plural nouns are marked with the suffix
-n
in Aramaic where
Hebrew uses
-m.
The masculine ending was apparently
-ıin
and the fem-
inine
-aan,
although some feminine plurals end with
-aat.
In light of the
Canaanite shift, this latter suffix can be recognized as equivalent to the
Hebrew
-ôt.
Aramaic also uses a suffix
-aa
)
where Hebrew places the def-
inite article
ha-
at the beginning of words. Although some scholars
regard the Aramaic ending as a definite article, others think of it as cre-
ating a separate state (“determined” or “emphatic”), much like the
absolute and the construct. Over time, this suffix lost its force and came
to be used on almost all nouns. In a similar way, the masculine plural
suffix
-ee,
which was used for the construct in earlier dialects of Aramaic
(alongside the determined plural
-ayyaa
), came to be the standard deter-
mined ending in some later dialects.
Like biblical Hebrew, Aramaic verbs appear in two major tenses (or
aspects), one characterized by suffixes (“perfect”) and the other by prefixes
(“imperfect”), albeit with suffixes to mark the plural. These prefixes and
suffixes are very similar to those in Hebrew, though the vowels (at least as
attested in biblical Aramaic) are not the same.
96
ARAMAIC
perfect
1
2m
2f
3m
3f
singular
-eet
-t
(â)
-tî
—
-at
plural
-naa
)
-tûn
(or
tûm)
-teen
-û
-â
imperfect
singular
plural
)e-
nıi-
t-
t-ûn
t-în
t-aan
y-
y-ûn
t-
y-aan
The Aramaic conjugations (“stems”) are similar to those of Hebrew.
There is even a
qal
(pé(al ) passive participle, called
pé(îl
because it is
formed with the vowel
î.
However, unlike Hebrew, in biblical Aramaic
there is also a perfect passive, as in
siprîn pétîh˙û
(Dan 7:10), which means
“the books were opened.”
Aramaic does not have a prefixed
n
stem (nip(al ), although there are
a variety of conjugations beginning with
n
in rabbinic texts (e.g.,
nitpa(el
and
nup(al
). Instead, the passive is expressed by shifting the vowels to the
pattern
u-a
in the derived stems. (Because of the ways in which these are
realized, active and passive forms are sometimes identical.)
Like Hebrew, Aramaic uses the prefix
hit-
to express the reflexive,
adding it both to the stem in which the middle root letter is lengthened
(pa((ee
l
), as in the Hebrew
hitpa((el,
and to the basic (qal ) stem (hitpé(ee
l
).
In Middle Aramaic, this prefix was also added to the prefixed
h
stem
(hap(ee
l
), creating
)ethap(al
forms, which became
)ettap(al.
Over time, all
these stems came to function as passives, replacing the internal passive
forms described above. The
h
prefix on various derived forms also weak-
ened to an
)aa
lep,
a process that was already underway during the biblical
period, resulting in stems such as
)ap(ee
l
and
)itpa((ee
l.
7
On the other hand,
h
does not always elide in Aramaic as it does in imperfect and participial
forms of the Hebrew
hip(il
or when serving as a definite article on a word
that has a prefixed preposition.
Aside from these generally prevailing features, each dialect has dis-
tinctive traits (isoglosses) of its own. These are useful both for classifying
texts and for tracing the language’s history. For example, Old Aramaic
texts share several features with Hebrew that are not found in later strata
of the language. Particularly revealing is the use of
zayin, sßa
a
dê,
and
ssîn
to represent the consonants
Î, ˇ˛
,
and
ˇ
respectively; this is the same way
that they appear in Hebrew, though not how they are shown in most of
the language’s later forms. It is likely that the pronunciation of these
phonemes had not yet developed into the sounds that would eventually
7
Stephen Kaufman suggests that these were the original forms and that the
hit-
prefix is a Hebraism (“Languages [Aramaic],”
ABD
4:177).
FREDERICK E
.
GREENSPAHN
97
become characteristic of Aramaic. On the other hand, the original Semitic
consonant
sß
g
,
which appears as
sßa
a
dê
in Hebrew, is written with
qôp
in this
period, so that the word for “land” ()eresß in Heb.) is spelled
)rq
in early
Aramaic texts. Also, when there are two emphatic letters in a single word,
the first tends to dissimilate; thus, the word for “summer” (i.e.,
qayisß
)
occurs as
kysß
)
and the verb “to kill” (qt†
l
) as
kt†l.
Also found in this period is the particle
)iyaa
t,
which marks the direct
object. This is apparently the origin of the Hebrew
)et.
The later form
yaat
can already be seen in Dan 3:12. Finally, inscriptions from this period
demonstrate the use of the letters
hê, waaw,
and
yôd
to mark long vowels
(matres
lectionis),
especially at the end of words, as they often do in bib-
lical Hebrew, although it is not clear that Hebrew scribes borrowed this
idea from the Arameans.
8
Aramaic began to function as a lingua franca during the Neo-Assyrian
and Babylonian periods. It was at this time that several phonological fea-
tures that would become characteristic of Aramaic emerged. Among these
is the use of a prefix
m
for the
qal
(pé(al ) infinitive.
9
It is also in this period
that the changes in the representation of the letters mentioned above first
occurs. For example, the consonant
sß
g
was now written with an
(ayin
instead of a
qôp,
as it had been earlier, so that the word for “land” (Heb.
)eresß
), which was written
)rq
in Old Aramaic, now appears as
)r(.
(Remark-
ably, both forms appear in Jer 10:11.) Several other consonants that had
been represented in early Aramaic inscriptions the same way that they
occur in Hebrew also took on a distinctive spelling at this time. These
include
Î,
which appears as
daalet
in Aramaic rather than
zayin
as in
Hebrew, so that the word for “sacrifice” is
dbh˙
in Aramaic rather than
zbh˙;
ˇ˛
is now represented with
têt
in Aramaic rather than
sßa
a
dê
as in Hebrew,
yielding the Aramaic word
qyt†
(“summer”) in contrast to Hebrew
qysß;
and
Aramaic represents
ˇ
with
taaw
instead of
ssîn
as in Hebrew, so that the
Hebrew word
yssb
corresponds to the Aramaic
ytb.
Biblical Aramaic also tends to nasalize double consonants, presum-
ably as a result of dissimilation. Examples include forms of the root
yd(,
such as the second-person singular imperfect *tidda(, which became
tinda(,
and the noun
madda(,
which became
manda(.
(This last word,
which means “knowledge,” is the basis for the name Mandean, which is
used for a gnostic sect that claimed special, secret knowledge.) In simi-
lar fashion, the infinitive of the root
slq,
in which
laamed
often assimilates
8
Cf. Ziony Zevit,
Matres Lectionis in Ancient Hebrew Epigraphs
(Cambridge,
Mass.: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1980), 4.
9
This is anticipated in the ninth-century inscription from Tell Fekheriye, the sig-
nificance of which is discussed below.

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin