Aramaic Bible History (1)

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**List: Aramaic Ministry Bible ( Ktaba ) Aramaic... "Aramaic, previously known as Chaldean, was [one of] the language[s] spoken by Christ.   Portions of the Old Testament are written in it, and the Old Testament Patriarchs are associated with the Aramaeans, not only by Abraham’s origins (in Haran, an Aramaean center), but by the return of Isaac to take a wife (Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel the Aramaean, Gen 25:20). Aramaic came into use as a lingua franca of Near Eastern official circles during the Assyrian Period (1100-605 B.C.).   Its wide- spread use is attested by the reference in the Old Testament to Eliakim, a general of Hezekiah, asking the Assyrian functionary not to make his humiliating demand for the surrender of Jerusalem ‘in the Syrian language; for we understand it: and talk not with us in the Jews'; language in the ears of the people’.   (2 Kings 18:26). After the fall of Samaria to the Assyrians in 721 B.C., Aramaic- speaking settlers were installed in the place of the Israelites, who had been carried into captivity.   By the time the Babylonian exiles were repatriated in 538, Aramaic had become the ver- nacular in Palestine as well as the acquired language of the exiles. Thus Aramaic was the popular language of the Holy Land, as well as the Near East, at the time of Christ, although Koiné Greek was the international trade language.   Aramaic continued in use as a spoken tongue until the 8th to 9th centuries A.D., when it was displaced by Arabic.   There are, however, a few Christian villages in the Anti-Lebanon Mountains where a language descended from Eastern Aramaic is still spoken as the mother tongue; and Eastern Aramaic (i.e. Syriac) survives in the Modern Syriac of Iraqi Kurdistan."--1000 Tongues, 1972   [Info only: Jewish Palestine, Land of Israel.] "Important for Biblical scholarship are the Aramaic Targums of the Old Testament, which were used by the Jews, who no longer understood Hebrew, in the synagogues.   At first simply oral paraphrases, the Targums later became more formal and were committed to writing.   The most important Targums are: Pentateuch, the Palestinian Pentateuch Targum, and the Targum of Onkelos (probably prepared in Palestine, but re-edited by the Babylonian scholars); Prophets, the Jonathan bar-Uzziel Targum (also of Palestinian origin, but now known only in a Babylonian recension); and Hagiographa, of which numerous versions pro- vide incomplete texts.   The Targum assumed a fixed, traditional form in the course of time and passed out of use when they could no longer be readily understood. Printed, critical editions of the Targums, of which there are a number, seldom occur without the Hebrew text."--1000 Tongues, 1972   [Info only]    "The Aramaic vernacular which superseded Hebrew among the Jewish population of Palestine and Babylon."--1000 Tongues, 1939   [Info only]    "First publication, the Targum of Onkelos on the Pentateuch in 1482 at Bologna, with the Hebrew text."--1000 Tongues, 1939   [Info only]    "The Targums for all the Old Testament, except Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah, were published in the first Rabbinic Bible, Venice, printed by Daniel Bomberg, 1517.   The Targums are translations or para- phrases of the Hebrew text intended to be read in the synagogue, made as Hebrew came to be less well understood than the vernacular.   The dates of their composition and their authorship are uncertain."--1000 Tongues, 1939   [Info only: RB1.] CHALDEE   Complutensian Polyglot--1000 Tongues, 1939   [Info only: Hebrew characters   "1517" Deuteronomy 6:13-17 unknown.] **File: Aramaic Bible History (3)--1860   S. Bagster   [Info only: Chaldee.]    "The most ancient Targum now extant is that written by Onkelos, a disciple of Hillel, who died 60 B.C.   This Hillel is by some supposed to have been the grandfather of Gamaliel, Paul’s instructor. In purity of style Onkelos equals the Chaldaic sections of Ezra and Daniel, and his fidelity to the Hebrew text, which he generally follows almost word for word, is so great, that he deserves to be looked upon as a translator, rather than as a paraphrast.   No writings of his are extant except his Targum of the books of Moses, which has been printed with a Latin translation in the first volume of the London Polyglot;"--1860   S. Bagster   [Info only] ARAMAIC--1000 Tongues, 1972   [Info only: HEBREW CHARACTER   "1959" Genesis 1:1-4 unknown.]

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