Our Bible books were written in (at least) three ancient languages; Hebrew, Aramáic, koine Greek. This two-part topic is about Aramaic. Part 1 discusses Aramaic in Old Testament (OT) times, BC.
Noah and his family survived the Flood (Ge.7:13, 8:15-16). Ge.9:18 “The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Jápheth; and Ham was the father of Canáan.” Ge.10:22, “The sons of Shem were Elám, Asshúr, Arphaxad, Lud and Arám.” Aram and Canaan were grandsons of Noah.
Josephus Antiquities of the Jews 1:6:4 “Asshur lived at the city of Nineveh, and named his subjects Assyrians. Arphaxad named…the Chaldéans. Aram…called Syrians.”
Semític languages are named from Shem. The Aramaic language is named from Shem’s son Aram. Cambridge Bible “The people denoted by Aram were destined to exercise great influence. The Araméan language gradually prevailed over the other Semitic dialects, even Hebrew.”
Ge.10:24 Septúagint/LXX “Arphaxad begot Kaínan [not Canaan], Kainan begot Shélah; Shelah begot Éber.” The Hebrew people were named after Eber. Josephus ibid “Eber, from whom they originally called the Jews, Hebrews.” Eber was the great-grandson (or grandson) of Aram’s brother Arphaxad.
Much later, a language in the “Land of Canáan” Holy Land would be called Hebrew. Tel Aviv’s Bar-Ilan Univ: Daf Parashat Hashavua (No.112) “It’s clear from extant epigraphic material that Hebrew is a Canaaníte language.” Aramaic and Canaanite are classed as NW Semitic languages. Hebrew and Phoenícian are sub-classed as NW Semitic Canaanite languages. All four are primary-classed as Áfro-Asiátic languages. Aramaic would become widely used geographically in the Near East.
Wikipedia: Aramaic “Ancient Aram, now called Syria, is considered the linguistic epicenter of Aramaic, the [later] language of the Arameans who settled the area during the Bronze Age. Aramaic is a Semitic language. By around 1000 BC, the Arameans had a string of kingdoms in what is now part of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and the fringes of southern Mesopotamia [Ac.2:9, 7:2] and Anatólia [Turkey]. Aramaic rose to prominence under the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC), under whose influence Aramaic became a prestige language after being adopted as the língua fránca [common tongue] of the empire. Its use spread throughout Mesopotamia, the Levánt and parts of Asia Minor. At its height, Aramaic, having gradually replaced earlier Semitic languages, was spoken in several variants all over what is today Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, E. Arabia, Bahrain, Sinai, parts of SE and south central Turkey, and parts of NW Iran.” Aramaic became the language of Mesopotamia.
Wikipedia: History of Mesopotamia “Mesopotamia literally means ‘between the rivers’ in ancient Greek. The oldest known occurrence of the name Mesopotamia dates to the 4th century BC, when it was used to designate the land east of the Euphrates in north Syria. Later it was more generally applied to all the lands between the Euphrates and the Tigris, thereby incorporating not only parts of Syria but also almost all of Iraq and SE Turkey. The neighboring steppes to the west of the Euphrates and the western part of the Zágros Mountains are also often included under the wider term Mesopotamia. A further distinction is usually made between Upper or N. Mesopotamia and Lower or S. Mesopotamia. Upper Mesopotamia, also known as the Jazíra, is the area between the Euphrates and the Tigris from their sources down to Baghdad. Lower Mesopotamia is the area from Baghdad to the Persian Gulf.”
Prior to Aramaic, the main language of the ancient Near East was Akkádian, an East Semitic Afro-Asiatic language, now extinct. Holman Bible Dictionary: Akkadian “Akkadian was the international language of diplomacy & commerce in the Near East before 1000 BC.” Wikipedia: Akkadian Language “Its gradual replacement by Akkadian-influenced Old Aramaic among Mesopotamians.” The ancient Old Aramaic period was c 1000–700 BC. (Historians differ some in their period designations/dates.)
The OT term for “Aramaic language”, Aramíth Strongs h762 Hebrew (rendered “Syrian language” in the LXX), occurs 4 times: 2Ki.18:26, Is.36:11, Da.2:4, Ezr.4:7. The term for a Syrian/Aramean person is Arammíy h761, 11 occurrences. Aram h758 is both a man’s name and the Syrian region, occurring over 100 times. Mesopotamia/Arám Naharáyim h763 (Aram-of-the-two-rivers, rendered Mesopotamia in the LXX), occurs 6 times: Ge.24:10, De.23:4, Jdg.3:8, 10, 1Ch.19:6, Ps.60:1.
Ge.12:5 Abrám (born c 2100 BC) migrated to the land of Canaan from Harrán (Akkadian “Harránu”), which was in the region of Aram. Harran is in far south Turkey, 10 miles from the north Syrian border.
Abraham told his servant in Ge.24:2-4, “Don’t take a wife for my son from the Canaanites, among whom I live; but go to my country to my relatives and take a wife for Isaac”. v.10 “He went to Aram-of-the-two-rivers, the city of Nahór.” The city of Abraham’s brother Nahor was in N. Mesopotamian Syria, 400 miles distant. The servant brought back Rebekah for Isaac. Ge.25:20 “Isaac was 40 years old when he took Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuél the Aramean of Paddán-Arám, the sister of Labán the Aramean [Arammiy h761].” Bethuel, the son of Nahor, was Abraham’s nephew (Ge.22:20-23). Then Ge.28:5 “Isaac sent Jacob to Paddan-Aram,to Laban, son of Bethuel the Aramean.” Jacob later brought back his wives, daughters of Laban on the Syrian “plain of Aram”…to the land of Canaan.
Of the Israelites’ ancestor, De.26:5 “My father was a wandering Aramean”. Referring to the semi-nomad Abraham, or Jacob. Abraham and grandson Jacob (born c 1950 BC) had spent several years in Aram/Syria. Ge.14:13 Abram the “Hebrew” (Ibríy h5680) descended from Eber. The term “Hebrew”, Ibriy h5680, occurs 34 times in the OT. But that OT term always meant a people, not a language!
Circa 1865 BC, Laban and Jacob made a “heap of witness” at Mizpáh of Gilead, E. of the Jordan River (Jephtháh later lived there, Jg.11:34). Ge.31:44-47 “They took stones and made a heap, and ate there. Laban called it Jegár–sahaduthá, but Jacob called it Galéed.” Laban the Aramean called the memorial by a pre-Aramaic word, but Jacob called it by a pre-Hebrew word. Jacob had learned both developing dialects growing up in Canaan, pre-Hebrew and his mother Rebekah’s pre-Aramaic.
Later, God’s nation of ancient Israel knew the developing Old Hebrew dialect (and Phoenician) in the Land of Canaan. In 1954 AD, Solomon Birnbaum coined the term “Paleo-Hebrew alphabet” for the Old Hebrew. The Old Hebrew script would be used from c 1000–500 BC to record Biblical texts.
There’s no evidence that Old/Paleo Hebrew was spoken in Mesopotamia. Cambridge Bible Ge.11:1 “That Hebrew was the primitive language….has been disproved by the scientific comparative study of languages, and of Hebrew and the Semitic languages in particular.” The ‘Old Hebrew’ alphabet script became a Canaanite language of (south) Canaan. Is.19:18 “language of Canaan”, Israel’s language.
Historians say the Phoenician language was spoken in north Canaan. Phoenícia was a 150-mile coastal region. (cf. Mk.7:26 “the woman was a Syrian-Phoenician”.) Phoenicia included the cities of Tyre, Byblos, Sidón . Ge.10:15 Sidon was the firstborn son of Canaan. Old Hebrew and Phoenician were very similar; both contained the same 22 (consonantal) letters. Aramaic too has 22. Wikipedia: Paleo-Hebrew Alphabet “There is no difference between Paleo-Hebrew vs Phoenician letter shapes.”
Wikipedia: Old Aramaic “Emerging as the language of the city-states of the Arameans in the Levant in the early Iron Age [c 1000 BC]. From the 10th century BC, the alphabet seems to be based on the Phoenician alphabet. From 700 BC, different dialects emerged in Assyria, Babylonia, the Levant and Egypt. The Akkadian-influenced Aramaic of Assyria, and then Babylon, started to come to the fore.” Circa 800 BC, Aramaic was becoming the trade language of the Near East. It generally was spoken by Syrians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, etc., E. of the Euphrates. (cf. “Patriarchs’ Bronze Age Languages”.)
encyclopedia.com aramaic-language “Aramaic is the general name for various dialects often difficult to classify.”
Canaanite is the general name/class for the Hebrew, Phoenician, Moabite, Edomite, Ammonite dialects; these developed gradually and were ‘mutually intelligible’.
Presently, no Old Aramaic or Old Hebrew inscriptions have been discovered that predate 1000 BC; all are more recent! No evidence has been found yet as proof either script existed prior to 1000 BC.
Ancient Jews called their language Judahite (Jehudíth h3066), not “Hebrew” (Ibriy h5680). Jehudith occurs 6 times in the OT: 2Ki.18:26-28, Is.36:11-13, 2Ch.32:18, Ne.13:24. 2Ki.18:26-28 Jewish officials in Jerusalem wanted the threatening Assyrian commander Rabshakéh to speak to them in Aramaic (Aramith h762), not Judahite/Judean, so as not to frighten people on the wall. In King Hezekiah’s day, 700 BC, common Jews in Judah didn’t speak Aramaic. However, the Jewish officials understood Aramaic, the language of diplomacy in the Near East from c 800 BC (after Akkadian).
Nowhere in the OT is the language of Israelites/Jews called the ‘Hebrew language’! James F. Driscoll Hebrew Language and Literature “The name Hebrew [Hebraistí g1447, Greek] as applied to the language is quite recent in Biblical usage, occurring for the first time in the Greek Prologue of Ecclesiásticus [Wisdom of Sirách], about 130 BC.” Not occurring until that book in the Apócrypha.
In 721 BC, the northern kingdom of Israel was deported to Assyria. 2Ki.17:23-24 “Israel was exiled from their land to Assyria.” Aramaic-speaking foreigners from Babylon etc. were brought into north Israel. They’d assimilate as the “Samaritans”. (see the topic “Israelite Deportations By Assyria”.)
In 597 BC, the southern kingdom of Judah was taken captive to Babylon, the next empire. Je.10:11 is in Aramaic…Jeremiah was telling his Jewish people what to say to their Aramaic-speaking captors.
Aramaic was the lingua franca of both the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian (Chaldean) empires. Israelites and Jews learned to speak Aramaic in their places of captivity beyond the Euphrates. The Aramaic language was also called Cháldee (a misnomer?). Easton’s Bible Dictionary “Chaldee is the Aramaic dialect, as it is sometimes called, as distinguished from the Hebrew dialect.” Aramaic was also the official language of the Persian/Achaeménid Empire (559–333 BC), which followed. The period of Old Aramaic (c 1000–700 BC) evolved into the period of Imperial/Official Aramaic (c 700–300 BC).
Wikipedia: Biblical Aramaic “King Darius the Great declared Imperial Aramaic to be the official language of the western half of his empire in 500 BC, and it forms the basis of Biblical Aramaic.”
God inspired some scriptures of the OT from this time to be written in Aramaic. The following chapters were written in Aramaic: Da.2:4b-7:28, Ezr.4:8-6:18, 7:12-26.
Of the total verses comprising Daniel & Ezra, 56% are written in Hebrew, 44% in Aramaic. Jews then knew Aramaic. Da.2:4 “The Chaldeans spoke to King Nebuchadnézzar in Aramaic [Aramith h762].” Ezr.4:7 “The text of the letter was written in Aramaic [Aramith].” To Artaxérxes, king of Persia.
{Sidelight: The Divine Name or Tetragrámmaton YHVH (h3068) occurs 6,500 times in the OT. But the Name never occurs in any of the OT Aramaic chapters. It seems that Daniel and Ezra weren’t ‘sacred name’ advocates who thought that God’s (Old Hebrew) Name must be commonly used!}
The hand from God even wrote in Aramaic the “handwriting on the wall” (539 BC)! Da.5:24-28 “This is the written inscription: ‘MÉNE, MÉNE, TÉKEL, UPHÁRSIN.” The words are monetary weights. The wise men of Babylon spoke Aramaic, but Daniel could decipher the writing. Wikipedia: Belshazzar’s Feast “The Chaldean wise men are unable to…interpret it. As Aramaic was written with consonants alone, they may have lacked any context in which to make sense of them.”
Jews began returning to the Land of Canaan from captivity in 538 BC. They returned with Zerubabbél, Ezra, Nehemiah. These returnees brought the Aramaic language with them to the Land of Canaan.
By the time of Nehemiah (450 BC), many Israelites and Jews no longer knew Judahite. Ne.13:24 “As for their children…none of them was able to speak in the language of Judah [Jehudith h3066].”
The Holman Christian Standard Bible indicates they “could not speak Hebrew”. Benson Commentary Ne.13:24 “The language which the Jews then spoke was Chaldee; this language they learned in their captivity, and after their return never assumed their ancient Hebrew tongue.” Commoners didn’t resume the lip of Canaan or Judahite in Judea. Pulpit Commentary Ne.13:24 “All the children [450 BC] spoke a jargon half Ashdódite and half Aramaic.” (Áshdod was on the old Philistine coast.)
Ne.8:1-8 Ezra the priest-scribe read publically the Hebrew scriptures in Jerusalem on Rosh Hashánah. v.8 “They read from the book of the law of God, translating so the people could understand.” The returnees no longer could read the Judahite scriptures. Pulpit Commentary Ne.8:8 “They translated the Hebrew words into the popular Aramaic or Chaldee.” Ellicott Commentary “They naturally translated into the vernacular Aramaic dialect.” Aramaic was the trade language of the then Persian Empire.
Some Bible scholars think that Ezra translated (or redacted) OT books into Aramaic/Chaldee. Talmud: Sanhedrin 21b “In the times of Ezra, the Torah was given in Áshuri [Neo-Assyrian] script and Aramaic language.” Juanjo Gabina How Similar Was the Phoenician Language to the Hebrew Language? “The ‘Paleo-Hebrew’ language is a Canaanite Phoenician language with writing. As evidenced by the Samaritan Torah that preserves these ancient [Old Hebrew] texts. According to tradition, Ezra adopted the square script of the Aramaic alphabet instead of the Canaanite Phoenician, nicknamed the Paleo-Hebrew [1954 AD], during the post-exile restoration of Israel in the 5th century BC. When the Aramaic alphabet became the Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew parchments were written mainly in Aramaic characters.”
{{Sidelight: The Jewish philosopher Philo (c 20 BC – 50 AD) lived in Alexandria, Egypt. Philo On the Life of Moses 2:5:26 “In olden time [450 BC?] the laws were written in the Chaldean language, and for a long time they remained in the same condition as at first, not changing their language.” Then prior to 132 BC, Jewish scholars translated the OT into the old Greek version. ibid 2:7:38-40 “In the case of this translation of the law, exactly corresponding Greek words were employed to translate literally the appropriate Chaldáic words, being adapted with exceeding propriety to the matters which were to be explained. If Chaldeans were to learn the Greek language, and if Greeks were to learn Chaldean, and if each were to meet with those scriptures in both languages, namely, the Chaldaic and the translated version, they would admire and reverence them both as sisters, or rather as one and the same….to go along with the most pure spirit of Moses.” ibid 2:41:224 “The Passover is celebrated, which in the Chaldaic language is called páscha.” Philo On the Embassy to Gaius 1:4 “This nation of the suppliants is in the Chaldaic language called Israel.” Marg Mowczko The Septuagint “Philo refers to the original language of the Old Testament as Chaldean rather than Hebrew.” Ezra had translated the OT into Chaldee? (And Philo didn’t use the Greek term Hebraís, “Hebrew” g1446 noun, to refer to Aramaic.)}}
Omniglot: Paleo-Hebrew “By the 6th century BC the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet was gradually replaced by the Imperial Aramaic alphabet, which developed into the Hebrew square script.” The Ashuri script.
In 330 BC, Greece conquered the Persian Empire. Greek became the trade language for the Grecian Empire. No longer was it the Aramaic of the Persian Empire. Koine/common Greek, a (Hellénic) Indo-European language, was now spoken. Many Jews in the diáspora (dispersion) accepted Greek culture, becoming Héllenized and speaking Greek. Some continued to speak Aramaic. Most Jews in Judea kept speaking Aramaic. During this period, regional dialects of Imperial Aramaic began to emerge.
Most Jews everywhere no longer knew the lip of Canaan, Old Hebrew Judahite. So Jews translated all the OT scriptures into koine Greek. This old Greek version was completed before 132 BC. Literate Greek-speaking Jews in the diaspora could then read the OT text! The old Greek version later became our Septuagint/LXX. The LXX wouldn’t have been so needed if most Jews still knew Judahite.
The Grecian Empire lasted until the 1st century BC. The Roman Empire followed. The Greek language continued as the commercial language of the Roman Empire too. (Latin would become the language of the Roman army and higher administration.) Many Jews, Hellenists, spoke Greek.
This topic is continued and concluded in “Aramaic in the Bible (2) – New Testament”. It notes the Aramaic Tárgums, Aramaic words seen in the gospel accounts, and traces Aramaic to the present day.
Bible Topic Exposition 