Talk:Biblical Aramaic

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Since when does Biblical Aramaic have anything to do with the New Testament? (Unless you mean the single verse by Jesus on the cross quoted in Aramiac?) Dovi 06:54, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

I'm currently working on a rewrite of the Aramaic language article. I think we shall need to rewrite a family of related articles:

• Articles on Aramaic languages (e.g. Mandaic language).
• Broader themes in Aramaic, like:
  • Biblical Aramaic, referring to the Aramaic of the Hebrew Bible only.
  • The 'Aramaic of Jesus', dealing with various, difficult issues about his language and Aramaic words and phrases found in the New Testament.
  • An article titled 'Jewish Aramaic', or some such, to deal with the Aramaic of Targum, Midrash and Talmud.

I feel that it would be more helpful to have a single article on Aramaic that deals with the broad historical and linguistic details, and then have these seperate articles for more information on specific areas of interest.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Are there any good suggestions for the names for 'Aramaic of Jesus' and 'Jewish Aramaic'?

Gareth Hughes 20:48, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Why did you revert?

User:Garzo why exactly did you rev my edit? Do you not like other people contributing to wikipedia? the edit —the preceding unsigned comment is by 67.165.96.26 (talk • contribs) 17:51, 13 December 2005

It's wrong: the word is in Hebrew. --Gareth Hughes 18:23, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Um, no it's not. The word 'bamachaze' is aramaic. Check the commentaries if you like. I have a chumash right here in front of me, and it says so quite clearly. With a discussion of why it's in aramaic as well. 67.165.96.26 21:11, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm not reading a commentary, I'm reading a critical edition of the text. The final letter of the word is he. In Aramaic, the word could be spelt either with a he or an 'aleph, so it could be Aramaic. However, because it is one word in a Hebrew context, and the spelling is that found in Hebrew, it is taken to be a Hebrew word. There is no textual evidence that this is Aramaic, if it were so, I could tell you that there is considerably less Hebrew in the Bible than is generally thought. --Gareth Hughes 21:21, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Your argument is more thought out then I expected, but it seems to me that it boils down to: I don't know, it could go either way, I just don't have evidence to say it's aramaic, so it's assumed to be hebrew.

On the other hand I have sources who not only say explicitly that's it's aramaic, but give a very specific reason why it's one aramaic word in the sentence. And the sources are not modern ones, but go back to times when aramaic was spoken as a living language, so would tend to trust them more about this.

I think a compromise such as this might work: "The Zohar says .... is aramaic ..... but modern textual analysis can not confirm this."

Re 'considerably less Hebrew' Just because one word of a certain type is aramaic, doesn't make all similar structured words aramaic - especially since the word was not casually aramaic, but was deliberately written that way. But I am curious about words that you consider on the fence regarding this. 67.165.96.26 22:20, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

I would suggest having only the clear, recognized examples in the main text, and then interesting suggestions that touch upon the Aramaic/Hebrew question, such as this one, in another section to follow it. E.g. a section on "Biblical Aramaic in the Jewish tradition" could refer to this statement from the Zohar (though there should be an exact reference).

Remember that although there can certainly be important linguistic insights within the Zohar, it is not a book that generally reflects or is meant to reflect conventional linguistics.Dovi 07:31, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree, Dovi, that the Zohar is a critical linguistic commentary. 67.165.96.26 misunderstands my argument. Here's an example, "The book is on the table". It's reasonable to say that that's an English sentence: it's unreasonable to say that the last word is the French word table. In the verse in question, there is one word that, although having a standard Hebrew spelling, also has a non-standard Aramaic spelling. Now, as the rest of the sentence is in Hebrew, I think it only reasnable to state the whole sentence is in Hebrew: the evidence is overwhelming in favour of this. Obviously, for spiritual reasons, the Zohar wants to make a point, but that point is not factually correct. If any information on this is included, it should be mentioned way down the page as the Zohar's unique interpretation. --Gareth Hughes 10:56, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Translation of "Matthew 27:51" into Aramaic - not the verse

If possible, can someone direct me to what the word and numbers for "Matthew 27:51" would look like in Aramaic? We don't need the actual verse ... only the reference. Thank you.65.100.181.100 19:03, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

This article is about the Aramaic language found in the Hebrew Bible, not the New Testament. The most important version of the Bible, including the New Testament, in Aramaic is the Peshitta (which is in the Syriac variety of Aramaic). In the Peshitta, the heading for the Gospel according to Matthew is ܐܘܢܓܠܝܘܢ ܩܕܝܫܐ ܟܪܘܙܘܬܐ ܕܡܬܝ, which is transliterated as Ewangeliyāun qadišā kāruzuṯā d-Mattay. This is often simply shortened to ܡܬܝ (Mattay, Matthew). The number 27 is usually written ܟܙ, and the number 51 is written ܢܐ. Therefore, Matthew 27.51 would be written ܡܬܝ ܟܙ.ܢܐ. Get back to me if you need any further help understanding this. — Gareth Hughes 21:46, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

This article needs some help

I added in the needed citations so someone can take down the warning message. But I think this article still needs a lot of work especially the section on Aramaic and Hebrew. I'm not sure how much of that info fits under the section that wouldn't be better handled by referencing the main Aramaic article. But, I didn't want to make major changes without discussion because I am fairly new to this process. I also cleaned up a bit by making the distinction between disputed and undisputed instances and modifying the introduction. Alpha0r (talk) 23:34, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Chaldaic

"Chaldaic" comes to this page, which does not use the word. Is it simply a synonym of "Biblical Aramaic"? Would there be any harm in clarifying? --81.83.204.128 (talk) 18:18, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Aramaic vs Hebrew: Differences

The article states, "Aramaic attaches the definitive construct state at the end of a substantive." Can the author kindly clarify what he means? Is the author alleging that the formation of the construct differs in Aramaic vs in Hebrew??? Hebrew changes the ends of nouns to indicate construct. So what is the alleged difference relative to Aramaic? (EnochBethany (talk) 17:50, 7 February 2012 (UTC))

Hebrew and Aramaic both have three states for nouns. 1. The basic form; 2. The construct, which is a form with most of the vowels reduced as far as the phonology permits, used as the first element in a genitive construction and before possessive suffixes; 3. The definite form (which can't occur as a construct, rule against 'double definition' similar to that in the modern Celtic languages). In Hebrew a noun is made definite by prefixing the definite article ha- which geminates (doubles and hardens) the initial consonant of the noun where this is possible. In Aramaic OTOH, a noun is made definite by adding a suffix -ā written with an aleph. This extension will often lead to reduction of vowels earlier in the word. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.84.69.4 (talk) 04:48, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Proverbs 31

Proverbs 31:2 is also said to use Aramaic bar for "son" [1]. Should this be added to the list of possible Aramaic usages in the Hebrew Bible? --Amble (talk) 20:29, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Odd reasons

Under "Similarities", the reasons are odd. Three refer to the written languages only. The other three refer to points common to all Semitic languages. Actual agreement does exist. Both have simplified the grammar of the noun. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C4:7C87:4F00:C94B:311A:670C:1118 (talk) 12:57, 30 July 2020 (UTC)