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69 THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

69

Book of Daniel begins his narrative in Hebrew, when he introduces the Babylonian sages and

of the

but

Aramaic to the king, as if only awaiting this opportunity, he continues his history scholars as speaking in

Aramaic (Dan. ii. 4, two languages

of the

28).*

vii.

The employment

in these Biblical books well

which and for which the books were written. In point of fact, at the time of the Second Temple, both languages were illustrates their use in those circles in

common use in Palestine the Hebrew in the academies and in the circles of the learned, the Aramaic among the lower classes in the intercourse of daily life. But the Aramaic continued to spread, and became the customary popular idiom not, however, to the complete exclusion of the Hebrew. Nevertheless, while Hebrew survived in the schools and among the learned being rooted, as it were, in the national mind it was continuously exposed to the influence Under this influence a new form of of Aramaic. Hebrew was developed, which has been preserved in

in





—

—

the tannaitic literature embodying the traditions of the last two or three centuries before the common era. So that even in those fields where Hebrew remained the dominant tongue, it was closely pressed

There is extant an almost unique halakic utterance in Aramaic ('Eduy. viii. 4) of Yose b. Joezer, a contemporary of the author of Daniel. Legal forms for various public documents, such as marriage-contracts, bills of divorce, etc., Official meswere then drawn up in Aramaic. sages from Jerusalem to the provinces were couched " in the same language. The " List of the Past-Days (Megixlat Ta'anit), edited before the destruction of the Temple, was written in Aramaic. Josephus considers Aramaic so thoroughly identical with Hebrew that he quotes Aramaic words as Hebrew ("Ant." iii. 10, § 6), and describes the language in which Titus' proposals to the Jerusalemites were made (which certainly were in Aramaic) as Hebrew It was in Aramaic that Jo("B. J." vi. 2, § 1). sephus had written his book on the "Jewish War,'' as he himself informs us in the introduction, before he wrote it in Greek. That he meant the Aramaic is evident from the reason he assigns, namely, that he desired to make this first attempt intelligible to the Parthians, Babylonians, Arabs, the Jews living beyond the Euphrates, and the inhabitants of Adiabene. That the Babylonian diaspora was linguistically Aramaized is shown by the fact that Hillel loved to frame his maxims in that language. The oldest literary monument of the Aramaization of Israel would be the Tahgum, the Aramaic version of the Scriptures, were it not that this received its The Tarfinal revision in a somewhat later age. gum, as an institution, reaches back to the earliest

by Aramaic.

centuries of the Second Temple. Ezra may not have been, as tradition alleges, the inaugurator of the Tar-

gum



but

it

could not have been

much

after his

day


 * [Other explanations have been attempted in order to account for the appearance of both Aramaic and Hebrew in DanProf. Paul Haupt supposes that Daniel was origiiel and Ezra.

nally written in Hebrew, that portions of it were lost, and that these portions were supplied later from an Aramaic translation. See A. Kamphausen, " The Book of Daniel " ("8. B. 0. T."), p.

Marquart, " Fundamente der p. 72.-0.] 16



J.

Israel,

und

Jiid.

Gesch."

Aramaic Language

that the necessity made itself felt for the supplementing of the public reading of the Hebrew text of Scripture in the synagogue by a transThe Tar- lation of it into the Aramaic vernacgum, the ular. The tannaitic Halakah speaks of Aramaic the Targum as an institution closely Version connected with the public Bible-readof the ing, and one of long-established standScriptures, ing. But, just as the translation of the Scripture lesson for the benefit of the assembled people in the synagogue had to be in Aramaic, so all addresses and homilies hinging upon the Scripture had to be in the same language. Thus Jesus and his nearest disciples spoke Aramaic and

taught in

it

(see

Dalman, "Die Worte Jesu

").

When

the Second Temple was destroyed, and the last remains of national independence had perished, the Jewish people, thus entering upon a new phase of historical life, had become almost completely an Aramaic-speaking people. small section of the diaspora spoke Greek; in the Arabian peninsula Jewish tribes had formed who spoke Arabic; and in different countries there were small Jewish communities that still spoke the ancient language of their home but the great mass of the Jewish population in Palestine and in Babylonia spoke Aramaic. It was likewise the language of that majority of the Jewish race that was of historical importance those with whom Jewish law and tradition survived and developed. The Greek-speaking Jews succumbed more and more to the influence of Christianity, while the Jews who spoke other languages were soon lost in the obscurity of an existence without any history whatever. In these centuries, in which Israel's national language became superseded by the Aramaic, the literature of Tradition arose, in which Aramaic was predominant by the side of Hebrew it was a species of bilingual literature, expressing the double idioms of In the academies the circles in which it originated. which, on the destruction of Jerusalem, became the true foci of Jewish intellectual life the Hebrew language, in its new form (Mishnaic Hebrew), became the language of instruction and of religious With but few exceptions, all literary madebate. terial, written and oral, of the tannaitic age, whether of a halakic or non-halakic description, was handed down in Hebrew. Hence the whole. Language tannaitic literature is strongly distinguished from the post-tannaitic by of Amoraim. this Hebrew garb. The Hebrew language was also the language of prayer, both of the authorized ritual prayers and of private devotion, as handed down in the cases of individual sages and pious men. According to a tannaitic Halakah (Tosef. Hag., beginning; compare Bab. Suk. 42a), every father was bound to teach his child Hebrew as soon as it began to speak. It is no doubt true that there was a knowledge of Hebrew in nonscholarly circles of the Jewish people besides that of the Aramaic vernacular indeed, attempts were not lacking to depose Aramaic altogether as the lan-

A



—



—

—



guage its

of daily intercourse, and to restore In the house of the patriarch

stead.

Hebrew in Judah I.,

the female house-servant 'spoke Hebrew (Meg. 18a). The same Judah is reported to have said that in the