Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Joel C. Salomon" <joelcsalomon AT gmail.com>]

Something that might point to the era when Aramaic was more spoken in
Judea than Hebrew is the development of the Targumim.  These were
intended to be read along with the Hebrew text in the synagogue: the
reader would read a verse (in Hebrew) and the meturgaman would translate
it into Aramaic.  This was the custom during the Talmudic era; does
anyone have data as to when this began?

(Interestingly, the only Jewish communities I know of that preserved
this practice are the Yemenites, whose traditions maintain that their
ancestors did not follow Zerubavel or Ezra back to Israel but remained
in place since the first Exile.)

—Joel C. Salomon