Archive for the ‘Aramaic’ Category

Aramaic

Posted on February 2nd, 2013by jake
In Aramaic | Leave a Comment »

Aramaic, the language that Jesus and his followers are believed to of spoken is in danger of extinction. The ancient language has connections to both Hebrew and Arabic, butunlike Hebrew and Arabic, Aramaic speakers are dwindling.

The 3,000-year-old language was once common throughout the entire Middle East and was used for trade, government and divine worship from the Holy Land to India and China.

As a key language used in Israel from 539 BC to 70 AD, experts believe it was likely to have been spoken by Jesus.

As well as the belief that Jesus spoke the language, it is the language of the biblical books of Daniel and Ezra as well as the Talmud and parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Now speakers of Aramaic are scattered across the globe, only found in small pockets of unlikely places like Chicago. The plight of Aramaic is not a modern phenomenon however. Its decline began centuries ago.

The language lost its standing in the Middle East in the 7th Century AD when Muslim Muslim armies from Arabia conquered the area, establishing Arabic as the key tongue. Aramaic survived in remote areas such as the Kurdish areas of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria.

via: The Daily Mail

Aramaic – making a comeback?

Posted on June 25th, 2009by Michelle
In Aramaic, Education | Leave a Comment »

Aramaic scriptFirst, a confession. I did not think that anyone still spoke Aramaic, the language scholars say was spoken by Jesus. Sure, I’d heard that the controversial movie The Passion of the Christ was mostly in Aramaic, but it never connected in my brain that anyone would still actually speak it.

This article, however, proved me wrong. The world’s oldest living tongue, Aramaic is listed by Unesco (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) as an endangered language and as such efforts are being made to preserve and promote it.

With similarities to both Arabic and Hebrew, Aramaic is spoken mostly in the Middle East, principally in a few villages north of Damascus, Syria, in the form of Western Neo-Aramaic. The Syrian government has set up the Aramaic Language Academy in one of the villages to assist in the continuation of the language.

Linguistic experts say that Syria is doing well in fostering this part of its heritage. “Aramaic is actually pretty healthy in Maaloula,” said Professor Geoffrey Kahn, who teaches semitic philology at Cambridge University. “It’s the eastern Aramaic dialects in Turkey, Iraq and Iran that are really endangered.”

Listen to the Lord’s Prayer being spoken in Aramaic here. And for more articles on Aramaic, see here.