The origins of the Biblical Aramaic reading tradition (original) (raw)
Related papers
Resolving conflicts between the ktiv and qre dialects in Biblical Aramaic
2022
NOTE: link to video recording (Vimeo) under '2 Files' above. Biblical Aramaic is a hybrid, built out of multiple written and spoken forms of Aramaic. How did the readers who fixed the Biblical Aramaic reading tradition determine the normative pronunciation of every word? Examining the way in which they solved grammatical conflicts showed that the reading tradition was constructed by moving from the smallest linguistic units to larger ones. In this process, the readers took care to respect the purely consonantal features of the written text, while taking liberties with non-consonantal features such as vowel letters.
Studia Orientalia Electronica, 2019
For nearly a thousand years, the texts of the Hebrew Bible were transmitted both in writing, as consonantal texts lacking much of the information about their pronunciation, and orally, as an accompanying reading tradition which supplied this information. During this period of oral transmission , sound changes affected the reading tradition. This paper identifies a number of sound changes that took place in the reading tradition by comparing their effects on Biblical Hebrew to those on Biblical Aramaic, the related but distinct language of a small part of the biblical corpus. Sound changes that affect both languages equally probably took place in the reading tradition, while those that are limited to one language probably preceded this shared oral transmission. Drawing this distinction allows us to reconstruct the pronunciation of Biblical Aramaic as it was fixed in the reading tradition, highlighting several morphological discrepancies between the dialect underlying it and that of the consonantal texts.
Textual History of the Hebrew Bible, 2016
The version of the Bible known as Christian Palestinian Aramaic (CPA) and also designated Palestinian Syriac is the Palestinian Aramaic dialect of Judea and Sinai. This dialect was most prevalent between the fifth and eighth centuries, but it continued to serve as a liturgical language for the Christian Melkite community into the thirteenth century. The written dialect is transmitted through the translation of Greek literature such as the Old and New Testament as well as patristic texts. Furthermore, some inscriptional relics that have been preserved in churches and monasteries (mosaics, stones, graffiti). The inscriptional testimonies are helpful for the localization of CPA’s geographical distribution. What makes the CPA Bible material unique and important is that it comprises textual witnesses of the first (fifth to eighth centuries) and the second (tenth to thirteenth centuries) periods for the Old Testament. They were transmitted in their original manuscripts without ever being copied, thus reflecting the original fourth-century written dialect. The reading and publication of the early period manuscripts has been partially hindered by the fact that they are only extant in the form of palimpsests, overwritten in Arabic, Georgian, Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac. It has been less helpful that Syriac lexemes, forms, and syntactical constructions have been read into the first palimpsest publications, disguising important textual variants for Bible critics.
Targum Onqelos and the Biblical Aramaic reading tradition
2018
The language of Targum Onqelos continues to defy classification. Isoglosses typical for Western Aramaic occur besides typical Eastern Aramaic features. A majority of scholars attribute this mixture to the text’s supposed transmission history, positing that it was written in Palestine and edited in Babylonia, but this remains uncertain. This talk will consider the question starting from a similarly unclassified dialect of Aramaic, which has largely escaped attention by hiding in plain sight: that of the Biblical Aramaic reading tradition, which reflects a different dialect than the Biblical Aramaic consonantal text. This dialect does not match any known form of Aramaic; a number of characteristic isoglosses show that it is close to the language of Targum Onqelos, yet not identical to it. The closest match is found with a small number of texts attributed to leading Pharisaic and Rabbinic figures from first-century CE Palestine, a setting that is also plausible on dialectological grounds. Given the linguistic similarities between the dialects of the Biblical Aramaic reading tradition and Targum Onqelos, this supports the Palestinian origin of the latter and provides us with new insights into the origin of both texts in the transformational period in Jewish history surrounding the destruction of the Second Temple.
Traces of Aramaic Dialectal Variation in Late Biblical Hebrew
This paper discusses some uses of the particle lmh in Late Biblical Hebrew and suggests that its varying uses reflect an Aramaic calque which can best be explained in light of the different syntax of this particle in East and West Aramaic dialects.
Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, 2013
This review was published by RBL 2006 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp. But although we can establish that the language has in general little significance for the literary history, there is one well-known exception. In the books of Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah, Daniel, Esther, and Ecclesiastes, there is one linguistic level that differs clearly from Standard Biblical Hebrew (SBH). We are indebted to A. Hurvitz in particular for his valuable research into Late Biblical Hebrew (LBH). He has gathered together the morphological, syntactical, phraseological, and lexematic characteristics of this linguistic stage and has described its difference from SBH, as well as the features it shares with Qumran Hebrew and Mishnaic Hebrew. The influence of Aramaic on LBH emerged clearly. Hurvitz used this finding to show that the language of the Priestly Code is SBH, not LBH. On the basis of this result, he considers it possible to maintain that the Priestly Code was composed in the preexilic period.
The Bible and Interpretation: Aramaic
A holistic approach to Aramaic can uncover a shared backdrop of distinct cultural and religious traditions, help to trace their origins in the absence of other historical or archeological information, and enable one to appreciate the rich texture of certain words and expressions in the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament.