Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Numberup AT worldnet.att.net]

It would be more accurate to call "Syriac" a dialect of Aramaic, East Aramaic 
to be
exact.  There is an excellent disquisition on Aramaic in The Anchor Bible 
Dictionary,
volume 4.

Some Aramaic speakers refer to themselves as "Ashuri" or Assyrian, having 
descended
from people who once lived in ancient Assyria, Babylon, or Persia, and that 
dialect is
preserved in some of the liturgy of the Assyrian (Catholic Church of the East)
religion. (See the Introduction to George Lamsa's Peshitta translation of the 
Bible.)

Solomon Landers
Memra Institute for Biblical Research
http://www.memrain.org

gs02wmr AT panther.Gsu.EDU wrote:

> <snip>
> >From what I've studied, Syriac was originally a dialect derived from the
> Syrian Semitic parlance prior to the 7th Century. "Aramaic" is simply a
> Semitic dialect of Syriac as well as 'Qaysi' from the Quraysh(tribe of
> Muhammad) which later turned into what is called the Arabic language
> today.  Learning it for scholarly purposes is understandable, but it is a
> very ancient way of speaking Arabic. It is the "Latin" of the Arab world.
>