ARAMAIC LANGUAGE. The term “Aramaic” is derived from the pre-Hellenic name of Syria, Aram. Already in Abraham’s time (2000 b.c.) the Arameans controlled Haran and the surrounding area of Paddan-aram, and there the family of Terah became Aram.-speaking. Even after Abraham had migrated to Canaan and adopted the language of that region, it was an Aram.-speaking Rebekah whom Isaac married; the same was true of Leah and Rachel, the wives of Jacob. Their father Laban is quoted as giving to the rock-cairn of Gilead (gal ’ēd meaning “rock-pile of witness” in Canaanite or Heb.) the Aram. name Y^egar sāh^adūtā, which had the same meaning. Thus there was a close contact with Aram. language and culture even in patriarchal times.

Like Heb., Aram. belongs to the NW Sem. language group, and there are close resemblances between the two in the matter of vocabulary and basic morphology. One who has mastered Heb. finds Aram. quite easy to acquire. Nevertheless there are several significant differences, sufficient to give the two languages a different sound and appearance (in written form).

1. In regard to the consonants, there were four or five differences in the treatment of the original Sem. phonemes. (a) The original Sem. th shifted to sh or š in Heb. but to t in Aram. (thus the word for “three” was thalāthun in Arab. but sālôs in Heb., and t^elāt in Aram. (b) The original Sem. d (Arab. dād) became ṩadde in Heb., but ’ayin (or occasionally qoph) in Aram. thus the word for “earth” is ’ardun in Arab., but ’ereṩ, in Heb., and ‘^ara’ or ’^araq in Aram. (c) The original z became ṩadde in Heb., but ṭēt in Aram. thus the word for “guard” is nazara in Arab.—in which it means “to see”—but nāṩar in Heb., and n^eṭar in Aram. (d) The original dh became z in Heb., but d in Aram., at least by 5th cent. or late 6th cent. b.c. thus the word for “remember” was dhakara in Arab., zākar in Heb., but d^ekar in Biblical Aram. (e) There was a tendency to substitute an r for an original n in certain words. Thus “two” was ’ithnāni or ’ithnayni in Arab., but šnayim in Heb., and trēyn in Aram. Likewise bēn, the Heb. for “son,” was bar in Aram. (although in the pl. the bar reverted to n: b^enîn).

2. In regard to the vowels: (a) the Aram. preserved the original Sem. ā, which in the Canaanite dialects shifted to ô. Thus “three” was t^elāt in Aram., whereas it became šālôš in Heb. (b) Whereas in Heb. pretonic a was lengthened to ā, in Aram. it volatilized to a very short e, as can be observed from the example just cited: Heb. šālôš (Arab. thalāthun) is the Aram. t^elāt; Heb. kātab (“he wrote”) is k^etab in Aram. (c) Whereas original i under accent became ē in Heb., it often remained i in Biblical Aram. (y^etib, “he sat”; yākil, “’being able”) although it usually became ē. (d) U under accent usually did not shift to ō as in Heb. Thus: yiktub (“he will write”), as contrasted with Heb. yiktōb. (e) Unlike Heb., a under accent did not lengthen. Thus “aged,” “eternity” is ’ālam (accented on second syllable), whereas the Heb. was ’ôlām.

3. In regard to noun inflections, the definite article was indicated by the long final -â of the emphatic state, rather than by the preceding ha- of Heb. Thus “the king” was malkâ, rather than the Heb. hammelek. The fem. emphatic was -tâ (thus, malk^etâ, “the queen”); the masc. pl. emphatic was -ayyâ (thus, malkayyâ, “the kings”), and the fem. pl. emphatic-ātâ (malkātâ, “the queens”). The masc. pl. absolute ended in -în rather than in -îm (as in Heb.). Thus, “kings” was mal^ekîn, rather than the m^elākîm of Heb. The fem. pl. absolute ending was -ān, in contrast to the Heb. -ôt; thus, mal^ekān rather than Heb. m^elākôt (to which the Aram. fem. pl. construct is more similar: mal^ekāt). As for the possessive pronouns attached to nouns, the principal differences are found in the third sing. masc. -ēh (“his king” is malkēh, rather than Heb. malkô), first common pl. -nâ (“our king” is malkanâ, rather than Heb. malkēnû), second plu. masc. -kôn (Heb. -kem) “your,” and third masc. and fem. pl. “their”: -hôn and -hên (as contrasted with Heb. -ām and -ān, or after pl. nouns: -êhem and -êhen).

4. In regard to verbal inflections, the fem. third sing. is -at instead of Heb. -â^h (“she wrote” is kit^ebât rather than kāt^ebâ^h); first sing. is -ēt instead of -tî (“I wrote” is kit^ebēt rather than the Heb. kātabtî); the third pl. masc. accents on the penult rather than the ultima (“they ^m. wrote” is k^eta:bû rather than kāt^ebû:, as in Heb.); there is a third fem. pl. in use (k^eta:bâ), unlike Heb.; the second pl. is -tûn, -tên, rather than the Heb. -tem, -ten; and the first pl. is -nâ instead of -nû (“we wrote” is k^etabnâ rather than kātabnû). In the imperfect tense, aside from the preservation of the original -u- rather than altering it to -ō- (as in Heb.), the principal differences are found in the addition of -n to the long vowel sufformative endings; thus: “thou (fem.) shalt write” is tikt^ebîn instead of Heb. tikt^ebî; “they will write” is yikt^ebûn rather than yikt^ebû; fem. “they will write” is yikt^ebān instead of yiktōbna; “you” pl. is likewise tikt^ebû and tikt^ebûn and tikt^ebān rather than tikt^ebû and tiktōbna (although Heb. occasionally shows yikt^ebûn, tikt^ebûn and even tikt^ebîn in poetic passages). As far as the verbal stems are concerned, Aram. uses a pa’ēl rather than a pi’ēl (“he received” is qabbēl rather than qibbēl), and the causative haphēl rather than Heb. hiphīl (haqrēb or haqrib for “he brought near,” rather than Heb. hiqrîb). In regard to the passive stems, there are no niphals or pu’als in Aram., and just a few hophals in Biblical Aram. of the 6th cent., but none in later Aram. The passive of the simple or qal stem (called pe’al in Aram.) was expressed either by a p^e'îl (which may have been derived originally from the passive participle, pe’îl—so that k^etîb could mean either “written” or “he was written,” depending on the context) or else by the more usual hitp^e'ēl or ’itpe’ēl (the hit- or ’it being originally a reflexive element, adaptable also for expressing passive ideas). For example, hitq^eṭilû or ’itq^eṭēlû meant “they were killed.” Correspondingly, the passive of pa’ēl was expressed by hitpa’al or ’itpa’al, which thus took the place of Heb. pu’al or hitpa’ēl. Thus from m^eḥâ, “smite,” comes pa’ēl imperf. y^emaḥēh “he will knock aside,” and the hitpa’al form would be yitmaḥê, “he will be knocked aside.” Rarely a passive of haphēl (the causative stem) is formed with the same hit- or ’it- as an ittaphal. (In Biblical Aram. this is not yet in use; the Heb.-type hophal is still employed for verbs like n^eḥat “go down” and ’^alal “enter”: honhat “he was brought down” and hu’al “he was brought in”.) Another important distinction between Heb. and Aram. is found in the infinitives. Whereas Heb. uses the pattern p^e'ōl (thus k^etōb, “to write”), Aram. prefixes m-; “to write” is miktab. For the other stems Aram. uses an ā-ā^h pattern; “to receive” is qabbālā^h (but qabbēl in Heb.), the pa’ēl infinitive. The hitpe’el form is hitq^eṭālā^h, to be killed”; the hitpa’al infinitive of b^eqar “seek” is hitbaqqārā^h, “to be investigated.”

Apart from matters of morphology, Aram. vocabulary differs from Heb. quite marketedly in the commonest words of everyday speech, such as “come” (’atā^h in Aram., but usually bô in Heb.), “speak” (mallēl in Aram., but usually ’āmar or dibbēr in Heb.), “go down” (n^eḥat in Aram., but yārad in Heb.), “go up” (s^elēq in Aram. but ’ālā^h in Heb.), and “fear” (d^eḥal in Aram., but yārē in Heb.), The regular verb for “see” in Aram., h^azā^h, is used in Heb. only for “gaze at,” “look at”; Heb. uses rā'ā^h for the normal idea of seeing, a word never found in Aram.

The use of Aramaic in the Bible. Not all of the OT was written in Heb. In the Book of Ezra most of chs. 4, 5, 6 and 7 are in Aram., and all of Daniel 2 through 7. In addition there is one v. in Jeremiah entirely in Aram. (10:11). In NT times a Palestinian dialect of Aram. often known as “Hebrew” was the household speech of the compatriots of Jesus, and several brief quotations from Him have been preserved in Gr. transcription, esp. in the gospel of Mark (such as, “Talîthâ qûmi” in 5:41, meaning, “Maiden, arise!”; and “Ephphatha” or “Ethp^ataḥ” in 7:34, meaning, “Be opened!”). Best known is the cry from the cross (“Ēlî, Ēlî, l^emâ š^ebaqtanî?”—“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”) recorded in Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34 as a quotation from Psalm 22:1. (This indicates that even when the Bible was quoted, it was common to use an Aram. tr. rather than the Heb. original.) One or two Aram. expressions occur outside of the gospels, notably Maranatha (or Māran ’^atâ, “Our Lord has come”; or else, Māranā tâ, “Come, O Lord!” in 1 Cor 16:22, and Abbâ, “Father!” in Rom 8:15 and Gal 4:6). Apart from direct quotations there are many statements quoted from the Lord in Gr. which show an Aram. background (a matter thoroughly investigated by Matthew Black and C. C. Torrey in various of their works). There is good reason to believe that the grammatical eccentricities of Revelation are best explained as resulting from literal tr. from an original Aram. text.

In regard to the Aram. chs. of Daniel, the reason for the composition of chs. 2 through 7 in this language rather than Heb. seems to be found in their subject matter. Since he was a high public official in Babylon, rather than a resident of Pal., Daniel’s prophetic writings were of general public interest, esp. those which pertained to the affairs of the Chaldean Empire and its future destiny. It is only natural that these six chs. should have been couched in a language serving as the lingua franca of the capital and of the empire generally. The subject matter of chs. 1 and 8 through 12, on the other hand, was of special relevance to the Jewish people, or else was of such a nature as to be kept confidential from the Gentile public. Therefore these chs. were kept in Heb. As far as the Aram. chs. of Ezra are concerned, they consist largely of international correspondence originally composed in Aram. Since Ezra’s Jewish public was perfectly conversant with Aram. after their long captivity in Babylonia, there was no need to tr. these communications into Heb.

Extra-Biblical Aramaic literature.One of the oldest extant Aram. inscrs. is that of King Zakir of Hamath, written about 820 b.c. on a pedestal of a statue dedicated to the god Iluwer. Interestingly enough, it contains some admixture of Canaanite terms, such as ’-s (in Heb. ’îš) for “man,” rather than the usual Aram. ’^enāš; ’-š-r- (’ašrā) for “the place” rather than the proper Aram. spelling ’atrā; and the verb nasā for “lift up” rather than the usual n^eṭē. Another 9th cent. inscr. is that of Kilamuwa from Zenjirli, which is basically Phoen. with Aram. admixtures. But more definitely Aram. is the early 8th cent. inscr. of Panammu, king of Ya’udi, found also at Zenjirli. This shows such Canaanisms as ’-n-k for “I” (Heb. ’ānōkî) rather than the Aram. ’^anā^h; n-t-n for “he gave” (Heb. nātan) rather than the usual y^ehab; y-š-b-t for “I sat” (Heb. yāšabtî) rather than the proper Aram. form, y-t-b-t; ’-š for “man” or “each one,” rather than ’-n-š; infinitive b-n, (like Heb. b^enôt or bānô^h) rather than the Aram. m-b-n’ (“to build”); b-n-y for “my son” (instead of b^erî). The importance of these Canaanite loan words lies in the fact that even in the 9th and 8th centuries words were freely borrowed from Canaanite in the Aram. of that period; there is every reason to suppose, therefore, that borrowing could take place in the reverse direction, i. e., from Aram. into Heb., long before the time of the Exile and Restoration. No sound argument as to lateness of composition of any purportedly pre-exilic book of the OT can be based on the mere presence of Aramaisms in the text. There was too much mutual influence and communication between these two language areas for them to remain watertight compartments, as many advocates of liberal critical theories have naively assumed.

From Panammu’s son, Bar-rekub (in the late 8th cent.) comes a short autobiographical inscr., speaking of himself as king of Sam’al (a principality in the extreme N of Syria next to Ya’udi). He emphasizes his loyalty to the Assyrian emperor, Tiglath-pileser III, and also speaks highly of the fine palace he has built or renovated for the benefit of his own dynasty. From Sudshin (or Sujin) near Cilicia comes a longer inscr. (of over four cols. in length), likewise from the 8th cent., celebrating the prowess of a King Mati’el, and containing a suzerainty treaty. It contains a number of peculiarities in spelling, such as the substitution of qoph for kaph in w-l-z-q-r-h (“and to his memorial”); it also uses a Canaanite shin instead of tau in such words as ’-š-r (“place”) and š-w-r (“ox”).

In the 7th cent. we have an interesting letter written around 650 b.c. from the city of Asshur in Assyria by a certain Bel-etir to his brother Pirawur, discussing the provisions to be furnished to certain slaves, and also alluding to political developments during this period when Shamash-shum-ukin, as king of Babylon, was rebelling against his brother Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria. On a bas-relief discovered in Nerab near Aleppo an inscr. was recorded, by a priest named Sinzirban, containing the customary curse upon anyone who would tamper with this monument to the deceased. It too uses shin for tau in ’-s-r-k (“thy place”) and the Canaanite ṩadde for ṭet in the verb n-ṩ-r (“preserve”). Lastly, from the time of Necho’s occupation of Pal. c. 606 b.c., we have a letter to the pharaoh from King Adon of Ashkelon reporting the arrival of the invading Chaldean army at the city of Aphek in Samaria. Its chief peculiarity is the spelling of the demonstrative “this” as d-k-m (instead of d-k-n).

By far the largest body of non-Biblical Aram. lit. from the pre-Christian era was discovered at the island of Elephantine in the extreme S of Egypt. Apart from a fragmentary Aram. VS of the Behistun Rock inscr. and the Tale of Ahiqar, virtually all of these documents—letters, wills, contracts, conveyances of property—were composed by a military colony of Jews stationed on this island outpost (then known as Yeb) beginning with the reign of Darius I of Persia in the first half of the 5th cent. (the earliest dated document is from 497 b.c.). No document bears a date later than 400 (Cowley A. P. no. 35), but some of the undated or fragmentary instruments undoubtedly came from the 4th cent. These papyri afford a fascinating picture of what life was like for a Jewish colony maintaining their community life and customs so far away from their ancestral homeland. Even at that early date there seem to have been serious episodes of anti-Semitism on the part of the local populace, notably when (according to C.A.P. 30) a detachment of Egyp. militia destroyed completely the Temple to Yahweh which the Jews had built on Yeb. Much to their distress, moreover, the hierarchy in Jerusalem showed no sympathy or interest when they were appealed to for assistance in restoring this sanctuary; they apparently felt that there could be no legitimate sanctuary outside of Jerusalem.

Linguistically the Elephantine Papyri belong to the same dialect of Imperial Aram. as do the passages in Ezra and Daniel which were formerly thought by some scholars to be much later than 5th cent. There are some regional differences, however, such as the tendency in Biblical Aram. to defer the verb until later in the clause than was true in Egypt and the W. In the matter of the shift from zayin to dalet (coming from original dhal), the Elephantine documents definitely favor retention of zayin; but there are already a fair number of examples of the shift to dalet in such words as ’ahad (“seize”), dî-l^ekî (C.A.P. 13), dikkā, (“this”) in 14:6, 9, dakkî (“clean, innocent”) in 27:12, and its related verb in 21:6; and d^enā^h (“that”) in 16:9. Thus we see the transition taking place from zayin to dalet which had apparently taken place already in Eastern Aram. in the late 6th cent., judging from Daniel and Ezra.

A precisely dated funerary inscr. (455 b.c.) was found at Sardis in Asia Minor, composed in somewhat ungrammatical Aram. on a funerary stela erected by the family of Mani, and invoking the curse of Artemis “of Coloë and of the Ephesians” upon any who would disturb the family tomb. It contains such Pers. terms as stūnā (“stela”) and ’atr^etâ (“firepillar” from Pers. ātar, “fire”). Another interesting 5th cent. inscr. comes from Tema in N Arabia, memorializing the piety of a certain Salm-shezib, who introduced the worship of an image of the god Salm into Tema and set aside valuable date-palm groves for the support of his sanctuary.

Biblical and Post-Biblical Aramaic. As for the Aram. chs. of Daniel, it is highly signficant that it contains about fifteen words of probable Pers. origin, largely pertaining to administration and government; yet it does not contain a single loan word from Gr., except for the names of three musical instruments. These evidences cannot be squared with any theory of 2nd cent. composition of Daniel, after 160 years of rule by a Gr.-speaking government; yet they fit well with a final recension of Daniel’s memoirs by the author himself at about 530 b.c. In view of the failure of the LXX tr. of Daniel to tr. correctly such terms as ’^adargāz^erayyâ (“counselors”), g^edobrayyâ (“treasurers”), and d^etābrayyâ (“law-givers”), it can be inferred only that these words had long since passed out of use by the 2nd cent. b.c., and the Gr.-speaking tr. could only guess at their meaning. The early cast of the language is further demonstrated by its use of internalvowel-change passives (hophals such as honḥat from n^eḥat, hussaq from s^elēq, hûbad from ’^abad, and hu’al from ’^alal), instead of the passive-reflexive prefixes hit- or ’it-, which already by the time of the Genesis Apocryphon were used exclusively to express passivity. (In this connection it should be noted that the Heb. chs. of Daniel likewise contain Pers. loanwords, but none whatever from Gr.)

By far the largest Aram. document discovered in the Dead Sea caves was the Genesis Apocryphon, which is generally dated about mid-first cent. b.c. Only five cols. are tolerably complete and legible. Column 2 contains a midrashic type of narrative concerning the remarkable appearance of the infant Moses, which led Lamech to question his wife as to whether he was really the child’s father. Columns 19 through 22 relate Abraham’s adventures in Egypt and Sarah’s temporary detention in Pharaoh’s harem (in which she was kept from defilement because of a grievous illness afflicting the king and all his family). Her charms are glowingly described, feature by feature and limb by limb. From the linguistic standpoint it is most significant to observe the contrasts between this composition and the Aram. chs. of Daniel. For example, it adds a final nun to the third pl. perf. of lamed-aleph verbs (b^e'ôn instead of b^e'ô “they sought”; ’^atôn for ’^atô “they came”)—a form not hitherto known to occur prior to the Talmud. The same is true of mišbôq, used instead of the regular infinitive mišbaq (“to leave”). The Apocryphon uses -ha’ for the possessive pronoun “her” even after a sing. noun, a trait which had not been known to occur prior to the Targum (a.d. 200). The appearance of aleph before the final -t of perf. third fem. sing. (e.g. ’etb^eniyat instead of Biblical hitb^enāt for “she was built”) was not previously known before the Targumic stage. The compound preposition b^edîl (“on account of”) is never found in Biblical Aram. or the Elephantine Papyri, but is characteristic of later Aram. Many other examples could be cited to add to the cumulative result that the Aram. of the Apocryphon is centuries later than that of Daniel and Ezra. Otherwise there is no such thing as linguistic evidence. This means that the Maccabean dating for Daniel must be totally abandoned by all critics who are willing to face evidence.

The Aram. Targums have been preserved in a written form no earlier than a.d. 200 (the Targum of Onkelos on the Pentateuch); the Targums on the Prophets and the Writings are later yet. They consist of a tr. or paraphrase of the Heb. original (which already in the time of Ezra was understood only imperfectly by the common people) into the Aram. which became the vernacular of the Jews from the late 5th cent. and onward. (Yet they were still sufficiently fluent in Heb. to understand the prophecies of Zechariah, Haggai and Malachi down to about 430 b.c.) In the synagogue services it became customary for every Heb. reading of the Torah to be followed by an interpretation into Aram. Eventually these renderings assumed a sufficiently standard form to be consigned to writing. In the early 3rd cent. a.d. Aram. was used also in many portions of the Midrash, which was a doctrinal and homiletical comm. on the Torah (the Halakah), and of the OT as a whole (the Haggada). The Midrash arose between 100 b.c. and a.d. 300, when it assumed definite written form. The second main portion of the Talmud, known as the Gemara, was almost entirely written in Aram.; the Palestinian Gemara dates from about a.d. 200, and the Babylonian from 500 or a little later. In Christian circles the eastern dialect of the Edessa region was written down in a new type of alphabet, resembling Arab. more than the “square Heb.” alphabet in use until the 2nd cent. a.d. Grammatically it was quite close to the Aram. used in Pal., but it developed some special traits of its own and became known as Syriac (q.v.).

Bibliography' G. H. Dalman: Aramäisch-Neuhebräisches Wörterbuch (1901); H. Bauer & P. Leander: Grammatik des Biblischaramäischen (1911, 1927); A. Cowley: Aramaic Papyri of the 5th Cent. B.C. (1923); W. B. Stevenson: Grammar of Palestinian Jewish Aramaic (1924); M. Jastrow: A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud...and the Mishnaic Literature (2 vol.), 2d ed. (1926); L. H. Gray: Introduction to Semitic Comparative Linguistics (1934); J. B. Pritchard (ed.): Ancient Near Eastern Texts (1950); M. Black: An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (1954); G. R. Driver: Aramaic Documents of the 5th Cent. B.C. (1954); N. Avigad and Y. Yadin: A Genesis Apocryphon (1956); A. Sperber: The Bible in Aramaic; M. Lidzbarski, Ephemeris für Nordsemitischen Epiographik (3 vols.) (1962).