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70 — THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

Aramaic Language

land of Israel the use of the Syriac (Aramaic) language was unjustifiable; people should speak either Hebrew or Greek (Sotah 49J B. K. 83a). This remained of course only a pious wish, exactly as that deliverance of Joseph, the Babylonian amora in the fourth century, who said that in Babylon the Aramaic language should no longer be used, but instead the Hebrew or the Persian (ib.). When the Mishnah of Judah I. provided new subject-matter for the studies in the academies of Palestine and Babylonia, the Aramaic language was not slow in penetrating likewise to those seats of Jewish

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scholarship. As shown in the two Talmuds those faithful " minutes " of the debates, lectures, and deliberations of the colleges

— the

Amoraim

partially

adhered to the Hebrew form of expression for their propositions and explanations: but the debates and lectures in the academies, together with the deliberations and discussions of their members, were, as a rule, in Aramaic and even the terminology of their exegeses and dialectics was Aramaized. The older collections of haggadic Midrash also evidence the fact that the language of the synagogue addresses and of the Scripture explanation in the amoraic time was, for the greater part, Aramaic. As a justification for the preponderance thus given to Aramaic within a field formerly reserved for Hebrew, Johanan, the great amora of Palestine, said: "Let not the Syriac (Aramaic) language be despised in thine

eyes for in all three portions of sacred Scripture in the Law, the Prophets, and the Holy Writings this language is employed." He then quoted the Aramaic fragments in Gen. xxxi. 47 Jer. x. 11 and Dan. ii. (Ter. Sotah vii. 21c). The same idea is probably intended to be conveyed by Rab, the great amora of Babylonia, when he says that Adam, the first man, spoke Aramaic, which, therefore, was not inferior to Hebrew in point of antiquity (Sanh. 38b).





But the same Johanan felt it his duty to oppose the possibility that Aramaic should ever become the language of prayer, by declaring that " He who recites his prayers in the Aramaic tongue, will receive no assistance from the angels in waiting; for they understand no Aramaic " (Shab. 12a Sotah 33«). This utterance, however, did not prevent the Kad;

dish-prayer

and

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—said at the close of the public addresses, more general employment — from being

later of

recited in amoraic times in the

or the insertion, later, of other the prayer-ritual.

Aramaic language, Aramaic portions in

For more than a thousand years Aramaic remained the vernacular of Israel, until the conquests of the Arabs produced another linguistic change, as a sequel of which a third Semitic language became the popular tongue for a large portion of the Jewish race, and the vehicle of their thought. The spread of Arabian supremacy over the whole country formerly dominated by the Aramaic Arabic tongue produced with extraordinary Displaces rapidity and completeness an ArabiAramaic. zing of both the Christian and Jewish populations of western Asia, who had hitherto spoken Aramaic (Syriac). At the beginning of the ninth century, in districts where the Jews had previously spoken Aramaic, only Arabic-speaking Jews were ,to be found; Arabic, as the daily

70

language of the Jews, held sway even beyond the territory formerly occupied by Aramaic, as far as the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean and Aramaic then became, in a certain measure, a second holy tongue, next to Hebrew, in the religious and literary life of the Jewish people.* It was especially to the Aramaic Targum that religious sentiment paid the highest regard, even after it had ceased to be useful

as a vernacular translation of the Hebrew original serving only as the subject of pious perusal or of learned study and had itself come to require translation. In the ritual of public worship the custom survived of accompanying the reading from the Scriptures with the Targum upon the passage read,

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a custom observed for certain festival -readings down To these Targum seto the very latest centuries. lections were added Aramaic poems, some of which have retained their places in the festival-liturgies. Aramaic, as the language of the Babylonian Talmud, of course always remained the principal idiom of halakic literature, which regarded the Babylonian Talmud as the source for all religio-legal decisions and as the proper subject for explanatory commentaries. In richer and more independent form this idiom of Aramaic appears in the Halakah in the responsa of the Geonim; whereas in the still later literature, the so-called rabbinical idiom is entirely dependent upon the language of the Talmud, although it but possesses a copious admixture of Hebrew elements. In the haggadic literature, which developed wonderfully from the close of the amoraic age until after the termination of the gaonic period, Aramaic predominated at first but in the course of time it was entirely displaced by Hebrew.

A new field was suddenly conquered by Aramaic when the Zohar, with its assumed antiquity of origin, made its entrance into Jewish spiritual life. This book, which became the most important text-

book of the Cabala, made itself the Holy Bible of all mystical speculation, and owed not a little of its influence to the mystic-sounding and The Zohar. peculiarly sonorous pathos of the Aramaic tongue, in which it is mainly written. The Aramaic of the Zohar itself a clever reproduction and imitation of an ancient tongue served in its turn as a model and its phraseology

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exerted a very

marked

influence over other than cabalistic writers. An Aramaic extract from the Zohar found its way into the prayer-book (Berik Shemeh), and is recited before the reading from the Law in the majority of synagogues of Ashkenazic ritual. In poetic literature, however, both liturgic

and

secular, Aramaic, apart from the above-mentioned poems belonging to the Targum, occupied a steadily decreasing place. Masters of Hebrew versification, especially under the influence of the Cabala, tried their skill now and then on Aramaic "

poems. An Aramaic poem by Israel Nagara ("Yah Ribbon 'Olam ") is still widely sung at table after the Sabbath meal. [The Jews in those regions call their Aramaic tongue " Leshon Galut." For the literature on the subject, see B. Gottheil, " The Judaeo-AramEean Dialect of Salamas," in "Journal of Amer. Orient. Soc." xv. 397 et seq.— G.]
 * In northern Mesopotamia, in Kurdistan, west of Lake Urmia, Aramaic dialects are still spoken by Christians and occaby the Jews, which dialects are termed "Neo-Syriac."

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