Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Jack Kilmon" <jkilmon AT historian.net>]

From: fred burlingame 
Sent: Monday, December 27, 2010 10:14 AM
To: Jack Kilmon 
Cc: Hebrew 
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] FYI: Aramaic study


Hello Jack:

I trust you are having a nice day 3 of christmas.

I don't mind the falstaff implication of me here ....; though i disagree 
....; in any event, i have received much education here; and for that i am 
grateful.

And the response to your learned comments:

1. I am not in ארץ ישראל . So, I don't know the haredim. But .... do you know 
that the government sponsors the haredim; excuses the haredim from work and 
military service. America government also enjoys a large group of people that 
the government sponsors; excuses from work and military service. Do you tag 
this latter group as fringe element of society? I am sure they and their 
government would disagree, in both instances.

I am going to clip my lengthy response (below) to your previous post since 
the moderator disallowed it on the list but you received it separately.  I 
tried to respond to you and Randall at once.  I will break it up into 
sections and post it sequentially.  I fear, however, that this issue, 
unrelated as it is to the grammar and structure of BH is coming swiftly to a 
conclusion.  The Haredim are irrelevant to this discussion and your placing 
them in the 2nd century in your previous post was confusing.

2. The haredim may well be experts in and consumers of aramaic. But the 
existential question you have deflected. And that remains, does the biblical 
hebrew language ("BH") rest comfortably entombed for millennia with the 
patriarchs here?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_the_Patriarchs

Had I not made it clear that I know of no scholar who claims Hebrew became a 
"dead" language.  Rather than repeat myself, please read my previous posts.

3. Or ..... does BH continue as a language in common use every saturday 
morning across ארץ ישראל , in its synagogues? Permit me to suggest the 
affirmative answer to that question you have avoided. Permit me to also 
suggest that every day התורה is consumed by and amongst the haredim (and a 
lot of other people) silently and with sound ....and exclusively in BH.

I don't think anyone who is a lurker on these exchanges will agree I have 
avoided any questions at all.  Just up the street last Saturday many ENGLISH 
SPEAKING Jews who do not know Hebrew listened to a Torah reading in Hebrew 
just as in the 2nd temple period when many Aramaic speaking Jews heard a 
Torah reading in the Lashon haKodesh which was thereafter explained to them 
in their own Aramaic.  Please keep the Haredim out of this.

4. Your nice reproduction of the encyclopedia judaica excerpt focuses on my 
point exactly. The well respected, well credentialed universities and 
publishing houses all across america and elsewhere announce continuously the 
death, funeral and pleasant burial of BH.

There you go again.  The Encyclopedia Judaica does not "announce" that at 
all.  Hebrew continued to be used by the literate and the priests and in 
pockets like the DSS Yahad.  The illiterate class (over 05% of the 
population) spoke Aramaic.


 My question was, is and continues to be .... does this nice conclusion of 
the mainstream err? .... Surely, the august oxford english dictionary 
recognizes the error ... its error; others' error in this regard. The Oxford 
English Dictionary has receded from the 400 b.c., death, funeral and burial 
of BH ...; and has moved the funeral date forwards to 200 a.d. ... What's 
next? ... The next edition eases the date out to 750 a.d.? The mainstream 
universities also recognized the flat earth as a bald fact for centuries ...; 
and then, ooops ...

5. I was not present in ארץ ישראל in 10 a.d. The mainstream conclusion that: 
since aramaic speaking peoples surrounded the land from the east; and greek 
speaking peoples surrounded the land from the west ....;  BH was naturally 
abandoned and buried. And that conclusion sounds reasonable enough. But the 
same circumstances exist today. Arabic speaking peoples surround the land; 
and yet for some strange reason, the israelis insist on speaking modern 
hebrew on the street and BH in the synagogue. Imagine that. It seems to me an 
inference arises that the hebrew resistance to assimilation now, represents 
but a continuation of the tradition then, even in 10 ... a.d.

regards,

fred burlingame

You continue with this "buried" business.  Here is the first sequence I 
earlier posted from the Encyclopedia Judaica:

Aramaic Displaces Hebrew. 

Aramaic was destined to become Israel's vernacular tongue; but before this 
could come about it was necessary that the national independence should be 
destroyed and the people removed from their own home. These events prepared 
the way for that great change by which the Jewish nation parted with its 
national tongue and replaced it, in some districts entirely by Aramaic, in 
others by the adoption of Aramaized-Hebrew forms. The immediate causes of 
this linguistic metamorphosis are no longer historically evident. The event 
of the Exile itself was by no means a decisive factor, for the prophets that 
spoke to the people during the Exile and after the Return in the time of 
Cyrus, spoke in their own Hebrew tongue. The single Aramaic sentence in Jer. 
x. 11 was intended for the information of non-Jews. But, although the living 
words of prophet and poet still resounded in the time-honored language, and 
although Hebrew literature during this period may be said to have actually 
flourished, nevertheless among the large masses of the Jewish people a 
linguistic change was in progress. The Aramaic, already the vernacular of 
international intercourse in Asia Minor in the time of Assyrian and 
Babylonian domination, took hold more and more of the Jewish populations of 
Palestine and of Babylonia, bereft as they were of their own national 
consciousness. Under the Achæmenidæ, Aramaic became the official tongue in 
the provinces between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean (see Ezra iv. 7); 
therefore the Jews could still less resist the growing importance and spread 
of this language. Hebrew disappeared from their daily intercourse and from 
their homes; and Nehemiah—this is the only certain information respecting the 
process of linguistic change—once expressed his disapproval of the fact that 
the children of those living in mixed marriage" could no longer "speak in the 
Jews' language" (Neh. xiii. 24). 

How long this process of Aramaization lasted is not known. About the year 300 
B.C. Aramaic makes its appearance in Jewish literature. The author of 
Chronicles uses a source in which not only documents concerning the history 
of the Second Temple are reproduced in the original Aramaic (Ezra iv. 8-22; 
v. 1-6, 12; vii. 12-26), but the connecting narrative itself is written in 
Aramaic (Ezra iv. 23, v. 5, vi. 13-18). In the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, 
the authorof the Book of Daniel begins his narrative in Hebrew, but when he 
introduces the Babylonian sages and scholars as speaking Aramaic to the king, 
as if only awaiting this opportunity, he continues his history in Aramaic 
(Dan. ii. 4, vii. 28).[Other explanations have been attempted in order to 
account for the appearance of both Aramaic and Hebrew in Daniel and Ezra. 
Prof. Paul Haupt supposes that Daniel was originally written in Hebrew, that 
portions of it were lost, and that these portions were supplied later from an 
Aramaic translation. See A. Kamphausen, "The Book of Daniel" ("S. B. O. T."), 
p. 16; J. Marquart, "Fundamente der Israel. und Jüd. Gesch." p. 72.—G.]The 
employment of the two languages in these Biblical books well illustrates 
their use in those circles in which and for which the books were written. In 
point of fact, at the time of the Second Temple, both languages were in 
common use in Palestine: the Hebrew in the academies and in the circles of 
the learned, the Aramaic among the lower classes in the intercourse of daily 
life. But the Aramaic continued to spread, and became the customary popular 
idiom; not, however, to the complete exclusion of the Hebrew. Nevertheless, 
while Hebrew survived in the schools and among the learned—being rooted, as 
it were, in the national mind—it was continuously exposed to the influence of 
Aramaic. Under this influence a new form of Hebrew was developed, which has 
been preserved in the tannaitic literature embodying the traditions of the 
last two or three centuries before the common era. So that even in those 
fields where Hebrew remained the dominant tongue, it was closely pressed by 
Aramaic. There is extant an almost unique halakic utterance in Aramaic 
('Eduy. viii. 4) of Yose b. Joezer, a contemporary of the author of Daniel. 
Legal forms for various public documents, such as marriage-contracts, bills 
of divorce, etc., were then drawn up in Aramaic. Official messages from 
Jerusalem to the provinces were couched in the same language. The "List of 
the Fast-Days" (nullMegillat Ta'anit), edited before the destruction of the 
Temple, was written in Aramaic. Josephus considers Aramaic so thoroughly 
identical with Hebrew that he quotes Aramaic words as Hebrew ("Ant." iii. 10, 
§ 6), and describes the language in which Titus' proposals to the 
Jerusalemites were made (which certainly were in Aramaic) as Hebrew ("B. J." 
vi. 2, § 1). It was in Aramaic that Josephus had written his book on the 
"Jewish War," as he himself informs us in the introduction, before he wrote 
it in Greek. That he meant the Aramaic is evident from the reason he assigns, 
namely, that he desired to make this first attempt intelligible to the 
Parthians, Babylonians, Arabs, the Jews living beyond the Euphrates, and the 
inhabitants of Adiabene. That the Babylonian diaspora was linguistically 
Aramaized is shown by the fact that Hillel loved to frame his maxims in that 
language. 

The Targum, the Aramaic Version of the Scriptures. 

The oldest literary monument of the Aramaization of Israel would be the 
Tarcum, the Aramaic version of the Scriptures, were it not that this received 
its final revision in a somewhat later age. The Targum, as an institution, 
reaches back to the earliest centuries of the Second Temple. Ezra may not 
have been, as tradition alleges, the inaugurator of the Targum; but it could 
not have been much after his day that the necessity made itself felt for the 
supplementing of the public reading of the Hebrew text of Scripture in the 
synagogue by a translation of it into the Aramaic vernacular. The tannaitic 
Halakah speaks of the Targum as an institution closely connected with the 
public Bible-reading, and one of long-established standing. But, just as the 
translation of the Scripture lesson for the benefit of the assembled people 
in the synagogue had to be in Aramaic, so all addresses and homilies hinging 
upon the Scripture had to be in the same language. Thus Jesus and his nearest 
disciples spoke Aramaic and taught in it (see Dalman, "Die Worte Jesu"). 

When the Second Temple was destroyed, and the last remains of national 
independence had perished, the Jewish people, thus entering upon a new phase 
of historical life, had become almost completely an Aramaic-speaking people. 
A small section of the diaspora spoke Greek; in the Arabian peninsula Jewish 
tribes had formed who spoke Arabic; and in different countries there were 
small Jewish communities that still spoke the ancient language of their home; 
but the great mass of the Jewish population in Palestine and in Babylonia 
spoke Aramaic. It was likewise the language of that majority of the Jewish 
race that was of historical importance—those with whom Jewish law and 
tradition survived and developed. The Greek-speaking Jews succumbed more and 
more to the influence of Christianity, while the Jews who spoke other 
languages were soon lost in the obscurity of an existence without any history 
whatever. 

Language of Amoraim. 

In these centuries, in which Israel's national language became superseded by 
the Aramaic, the literature of Tradition arose, in which Aramaic was 
predominant by the side of Hebrew; it was a species of bilingual literature, 
expressing the double idioms of the circles in which it originated. In the 
academies —which, on the destruction of Jerusalem, became the true foci of 
Jewish intellectual life—the Hebrew language, in its new form (Mishnaic 
Hebrew), became the language of instruction and of religious debate. With but 
few exceptions, all literary material, written and oral, of the tannaitic 
age, whether of a halakic or non-halakic description, was handed down in 
Hebrew. Hence the whole tannaitic literature is strongly distinguished from 
the post-tannaitic by this Hebrew garb. The Hebrew language was also the 
language of prayer, both of the authorized ritual prayers and of private 
devotion, as handed down in the cases of individual sages and pious men. 
According to a tannaitic Halakah (Tosef. Ḥag., beginning; compare Bab. Suk. 
42a), every father was bound to teach his child Hebrew as soon as it began to 
speak. It is no doubt true that there was a knowledge of Hebrew in 
non-scholarly circles of the Jewish people besides that of the Aramaic 
vernacular; indeed, attempts were not lacking to depose Aramaic altogether as 
the language of daily intercourse, and to restore Hebrew in its stead. In the 
house of the patriarch Judah I., the female house-servant spoke Hebrew (Meg. 
18a). The same Judah is reported to have said that in theland of Israel the 
use of the Syriac (Aramaic) language was unjustifiable; people should speak 
either Hebrew or Greek (Soṭah 49b; B. Ḳ. 83a). This remained of course only a 
pious wish, exactly as that deliverance of Joseph, the Babylonian amora in 
the fourth century, who said that in Babylon the Aramaic language should no 
longer be used, but instead the Hebrew or the Persian (ib.). 

When the Mishnah of Judah I. provided new subject-matter for the studies in 
the academies of Palestine and Babylonia, the Aramaic language was not slow 
in penetrating likewise to those seats of Jewish scholarship. As shown in the 
two Talmuds—those faithful "minutes" of the debates, lectures, and 
deliberations of the colleges—the Amoraim partially adhered to the Hebrew 
form of expression for their propositions and explanations: but the debates 
and lectures in the academies, together with the deliberations and 
discussions of their members, were, as a rule, in Aramaic; and even the 
terminology of their exegeses and dialectics was Aramaized. The older 
collections of haggadic Midrash also evidence the fact that the language of 
the synagogue addresses and of the Scripture explanation in the amoraic time 
was, for the greater part, Aramaic. As a justification for the preponderance 
thus given to Aramaic within a field formerly reserved for Hebrew, Johanan, 
the great amora of Palestine, said: "Let not the Syriac (Aramaic) language be 
despised in thine eyes; for in all three portions of sacred Scripture—in the 
Law, the Prophets, and the Holy Writings—this language is employed." He then 
quoted the Aramaic fragments in Gen. xxxi. 47; Jer. x. 11; and Dan. ii. (Yer. 
Soṭah vii. 21c). The same idea is probably intended to be conveyed by Rab, 
the great amora of Babylonia, when he says that Adam, the first man, spoke 
Aramaic, which, therefore, was not inferior to Hebrew in point of antiquity 
(Sanh. 38b). But the same Johanan felt it his duty to oppose the possibility 
that Aramaic should ever become the language of prayer, by declaring that "He 
who recites his prayers in the Aramaic tongue, will receive no assistance 
from the angels in waiting; for they understand no Aramaic" (Shab. 12a; Soṭah 
33a). This utterance, however, did not prevent the Ḳaddish-prayer—said at the 
close of the public addresses, and later of more general employment—from 
being recited in amoraic times in the Aramaic language, or the insertion, 
later, of other Aramaic portions in the prayer-ritual. 



Jack Kilmon