Biblical Hebrew Forum

[yochanan bitan <ButhFam AT compuserve.com>]

jack kilmon wrote:
>That is why I did not want to filter this proposition through the
>"anti-Essene hypothesis hypothesis" and am interested in whether
>the Aramaic of the DSS texts contains indicators of being
>non-Palestinian and could have come from Syria.

the place to start are three articles:
Muraoka, Takamitsu. 1974. The Aramaic of the Old Targum of Job from Qumran
Cave XI. Journal of Jewish Studies 25: 425-443.
Cook, Edward M. 1992. Qumran Aramaic and Aramaic Dialectology. In Studies
in Qumran Aramaic, ed. Takamitsu Muraoka, Supplement 3:1-21. Louvain:
Peeters.
Cook, Edward M. 1994. A New Perspective on the Language of Onkelos and
Jonathan. In The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context, ed. D.
R. G. Beattie:142-156. Sheffield: JSOT Press.

most of the DSS aramaic is old judean, not syrian. it would be best to
think in terms of multilingualism when approaching the whole problem.
monolingual assumptions are inadequate. 

yisge shlamax
randall buth