Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yigal Levin" <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>]

And here's another one:

Yigal

--------------------------------------------------------------

 Feb. 23, 2004
Linguists hope for Aramaic revival
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
"Aramaic is in danger of disappearing," said Moshe Bar-Asher, president of 
the Academy of Hebrew Language in Jerusalem. 

Today, Aramaic is spoken at home by about 500,000 people - mainly Syrian 
Orthodox and other Christians - in parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, 
India, Europe, Australia, and a few cities in the United States, including 
Chicago. 

A few thousand Israelis who immigrated from other parts of the Middle East 
still speak the language, but are largely not passing it on to their 
children. 

Most Jews who learn the language study it only to read the Talmud and other 
religious texts written in Aramaic. Part of the Kaddish is recited in 
Aramaic, and Jewish marriage and divorce contracts are still often written in 
the language. 

In Syria, once the core of indigenous Christian Aramaic speakers, the 
language is still heard in three villages perched on cliff sides north of 
Damascus in the Qalamoun Mountains. About 10,000 people in those villages 
speak the language, said George Rizkallah, a 63-year-old retired Syrian 
teacher. But the numbers are dwindling fast. 

Some say spoken Aramaic may vanish in just a few decades. 

Linguists hope for a boost from Mel Gibson's new film The Passion of the 
Christ, performed entirely in Aramaic and Latin. The film is set to open 
Wednesday in American theaters. 

Aramaic became a common language for much of the Middle East and parts of 
Asia, reaching its widest influence when it was adopted by the Persian empire 
around 500 BCE. It was a relatively simple language, with just 22 letters, 
and a community of scribes and intellectuals helped spread it in a largely 
illiterate world, said Bar-Asher. 

Aramaic is one of the few languages that has been spoken continuously for 
thousands of years. It first appeared in written records around the 10th 
century BCE, though it was likely already being spoken earlier. 

It is a Semitic language and has similarities with Hebrew and Arabic. Water 
is moyeh in Aramaic, mayim in Hebrew, and miye in Arabic. 

Carpenter is nagouro in Aramaic, nagar in Hebrew, and najar in Arabic. 

The most popular theory on its origin states the language was first spoken by 
nomads called Arameans, who migrated from the barren Arabian peninsula to the 
lush farmlands of Mesopotamia and finally settled around Damascus, modern 
Syria's capital, in the 13th century BCE. 

Texts in Aramaic have been found in places as distant from each other as in 
India and Egypt. Jews returning from exile in Babylon around 500 BCE helped 
spread the language to the eastern Mediterranean, where it largely supplanted 
Hebrew. 

Scholars think Jesus might have known Hebrew - which by that time was 
reserved mainly for use in synagogues and spoken by upper classes - and some 
Greek, but Aramaic was the language of his native Galilee. 

The New Testament records Jesus's last words on the cross in Aramaic: "Eloi, 
Eloi, lama sabachthani?" St. Mark, most likely writing in Greek, adds, 
"...which means, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?'" (Mark 15:34). 

Michael Sokoloff, a professor of Hebrew and Semitic languages at Bar-Ilan 
University, said it is believed that parts of the Gospels were originally 
written in Aramaic, but that only Greek writings have ever been found.
Aramaic was largely replaced by Arabic during the Arab and Islamic conquest 
of the 7th century. 

These days, an elder from the Syrian Orthodox Jerusalem congregation laments 
that he's got few people to speak to in Aramaic besides the monks. Parts of 
the liturgy have to be said in Arabic, and a nun who sings the Lord's Prayer 
says the words are just about the only ones she's able to recite in Aramaic. 

Church services are in Arabic, elderly Aramaic speakers are dying and young 
people are moving away in search of jobs. 

Rizkallah has appealed to the Syrian government and international 
organizations to help preserve and spread the language. 

Sokoloff is helping write a comprehensive Aramaic dictionary. He said it will 
take years because of the large amounts of literature to comb through. He 
noted that a similar project for another ancient language, Akkadian, has been 
ongoing since the 1920s. 

Gibson's film, depicting Jesus's final hours, is shot entirely in Latin and 
Aramaic with subtitles. The entire cast learned some Aramaic, according to 
the movie's Web site. 

The script was translated into first century Aramaic for the Jewish 
characters and "street Latin" for the Roman characters by Father William 
Fulco, director of ancient Mediterranean studies at Loyola Marymount 
University in Los Angeles. 

Sami Barsoum, 69, a leader of the Syrian Orthodox community in Jerusalem, is 
one of the few who still speaks Aramaic fluently here. The community offers 
Aramaic in summer school, but there's little interest and fewer than half the 
600 members speak the language. 

"Maybe the new generation will wake up and continue," he said. (AP)