Page:Jewish Encyclopedia Volume 2.pdf/106

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THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

Aramaic Language

Arama

is

the author of the following

works



(1)

Urim we-Tumim " (Light and Perfection), a philosophical commentary on Isaiah and Jeremiah, pub"

by Menaliein Jacob ben Eliezer Judah, Venice, (3) "Me'ii- Iyyob " (The Illuminator of Job), commentary on Job written in lolHi, and published, lished

1603;

togetlier with the text, at Salonica, 1517; (3) " MenTehillot " (The Illuminator of the Psalms), commentary on the Psalms, written in 1512, and published, together with the text, at Venice, 1590 (4) " Perush,

commentary on Song of Songs, published in the Bible of Amsterdam 1724-27, which latter bears the title " Kehillot Mosheh " (5) commentary upon

Esther,

extant in manuscript (Codex Rossi, No. 727). Arama quotes in his works a commentary of his on the Pentateuch. It is no longer in existence. still

of Arama are, like those of his father Isaac, full of allegories and moral aphorisms. He wrote also a pamphlet against Isaac Abravanel, accusing him of plagiarizing the works of his father, which pamphlet was republished recently by Gabriel Polak.

The commentaries

Bibliography 2d



Rossi,

Dizimwri

ftturieo,

Steinschneider, Cat. BtulL hOrGeditlim, p. 120.

ed., p. 45

Shem k.



German

translation,

cols. 1693-94 I.



Azulai,

Br.

ARAMAIC LANGUAGE AMONG THE JEWS Of all Semitic languages the Aramaic is

most closely related to the Hebrew, and forms with it, and possibly with the Assyrian, the northern group of Semitic languages. Aramaic, nevertheless, was considered by the ancient Hebrews as a foreign tongue; and a hundred years before the Babylonian exile it was understood only by people of culture in Jerusalem. Thus the ambassador of the Assyrian king who delivered an insolent message from his master in the Hebrew language and in the hearing of the people sitting upon the wall, Considered was requested by the high officials of Foreign by King Hezekiah not to speak in He-

Ancient Hebrews,

brew, but in the " Syrian language, which they alone understood (II Kings xviii. 26; Isa. xxxvi. 11). In the early Hebrew literature an Aramaic expression occurs once. In the narrative of the covenant between Jacob and Laban it is stated that each of them named in his own language the stone-heap built in testimony of their amity. Jacob called it " Galeed " Laban used the Aramaic equivalent, "Jegar sahadutha " (Gen. xxxi. 47). This statement undoubtedly betrays a knowledge of the linguistic differences between Hebrews and Arameans, whose kinship is elsewhere frequently insisted on, as for instance in the genealogical tables, and in the narratives of the earOne of the genealogies mentions Aram liest ages. among the sons of Shem as a brother of Arphaxad, one of the ancestors of the Hebrews (Gen. x. 23). In another, Kemuel, a son of Nahor, the brother of Abraham, is called " the father of Aram " (Gen. xxii. 21). Other descendants of this brother of the Hebrew Abraham (Gen. xiv. 13) are termed Ara;

means;

as, for instance, Bethuel, Rebekah's father (Gen. xxv. 20, xxviii. 5), and Laban, the father of Rachel and Leah (Gen. xxv. 20; xxxi. 20, 24). The earliest history of Israel is thus connected with the

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Arameans of the East, and even Jacob himself is called in one passage " a wandering Aramean " (Deut. During the whole period of the kings, xx vi. 5). Israel sustained relations

both warlike and friendly

whose country, later borders Palestine on the north and northeast. Traces of this intercourse were left upon the language of Israel, such as the Aramaisms in the vocabulary of the older Biblical books.* 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 Aramaic itself was by no means a decisive facDisplaces tor, for the prophets that spoke to the Hebrew, 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 in formation 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 Achoemenid& Aramaic became the official tongue in the provinces between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean (see Ezra iv. 7) there-' fore 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. with the Arameans of the

west,,

called Syria,



—



xiii. 24).

How long this process of Aramaization lasted is not known.

About the year 300 b.c. Aramaic makes 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 its

written in Aramaic (Ezraiv. 23, v. 5, vi. 13In the time of Autiochus Epiphanes, the author

itself is 18).

[Modern Bible

have endeavored to determine accuAramaic upon the various authors of Bibbooks, and to use the results thus obtained in determining the age and authorship of the books (see, for example, Konig, " Einleitung in das Alte Test." p. 149 Holzinger, " Einleltung in den Hexateuch," passim D. Cilesebrecht," Zur HexateucbKritlk," in Stade's " Zeitschrift," i. 177 et seq. and compare xiii. 309, xiv. 143 8. R. Driver, " Journal of Philology," xi. critics

rately the influence oi lical









201-236)

.— o.]