By Gabriel Sawma BACKGROUND The fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the First Temple in 587 BC, by the forces of king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, mark the beginning of what is known as the Babylonian Exile of the Jews. Up to that time, and from the moment of its appearance in a documented written form, the Hebrew language presents, a clear evidence that it belongs to the Canaanite family of languages. This means that when the Israelite tribes settled in the land of Canaan, from the fourteenth to thirteenth centuries BC, they adopted the language of that country (Isa. 19:18). The Hebrew of the poetic sections of the Bible, as well as the oldest epigraphic material in inscriptions dating from the tenth to the sixth centuries BC, is known as Archaic Hebrew. Among the biblical passages that reflect Archaic Hebrew are the Song of Moses (Ex 15), the Song of Deborah (Jug 5), the Blessings of Jacob (Gen 49) and of Moses (Deut 33), the Oracles of Balaam (Nm 23-24), and the Poems of Moses (Deut 32), as well as Ps 68 and other early psalms. The language used in the prose sections of the Pentateuch and in the prophets and the writings before the exile, are known as Classical Biblical Hebrew, or Biblical Hebrew (BH) proper. Many Biblical scholars characterize BH as a language which does not have the full sense of the word, a merely “fragment of language”. The approximately 8,000 lexical items preserved in the books of the Bible, are not enough to meet the needs of a living language. There have also been claims by various scholars that clear traces of Aramaic can be found in the origins of Hebrew. Recently, various studies have emphasized that Aramaic May have influenced the Hebrew language very strongly, mainly in the second half of the first millennium BC up to the beginning of the Christian Era. It may also be said that other languages, Semitic and non-Semitic had their influence on the Hebrew language, especially those who had a significant cultural impact in the region such as the Sumarian, Akkadian, and Egyptian. Those languages left their mark on Canaan before the Hebrew language came into existence. Ugarit and Phoenician on one hand, and the Southern Semitic dialects on the other, have also given rise to many loanwords in Biblical Hebrew. There is also influence, to a lesser degree, from Persian and Greek. Some Hebrew words derive from Indo-European languages, such as Hittite, and even Sanskrit. In the Oracles of Balaam (Nm 23:7) we encounter, for example (Roba) ‘dust’, attested in the Akkadian inscriptions; (Surim), which means ‘mountains’; (Nehalim) ‘palm’ . Some of the roots peculiar to archaic poetry are found in other Semitic dialects. For example (P’L) ‘do, make’; (Mhs) ‘strike’, and (hardus) ‘gold’ are common in Canaanite and Ugaritic texts, wheras (Yatannu) ‘let them recount’ (Jg 5:11) and (Mahaqa) ‘destroyed’ (Jg 5:26) correspond phonologically to Aramaic. The Babylonian Exile of the Jews exposed them to an Aramaic cultural and linguistic environment. The Aramaic language before that time had been widely spread throughout the Assyrian Empire as the language of administration, commerce and diplomacy, supplanting the Akkadian as the Lingua Franca of the Assyrian Empire (1100-612 BC). The incident recorded at 2 Kings 18:26 and Isa 36:11 provide some indication of the spread of Aramaic into Palestine. During Sennacherib’s siege of Jerusalem in 701 BC, the Jewish officials request that the Assyrian Rabshakeh negotiate in the diplomatic tongue, i.e. Aramaic. In the aftermath of the destruction of Nineveh in August 612 BC by a combined force of Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar II and Medes commanded by Cyaxares, a Neo-Babylonian Empire (605-538 BC) became the dominant power. And the Aramaic language remained a universal language during that period. It reached its zenith as the official language of the Persian Empire (538-330 BC). With the rise of the Empire of Alexander (336-323 BC) in the East, the Greek language became influential in the region. The Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament (at Alexandria), known as the Septuagint (LXX), and subsequently the writings of the New Testament, were only examples of such influence. But Greek never displaced Aramaic among the Jews of Palestine or Babylon. The succeeding Maccabean, Hasmonian, and Roman administration in Palestine did not witness fundamental changes in the linguistic situation, although, with the coming of the Romans to the East, Latin was introduced into many aspects of public life. BIBLICAL ARAMAIC Passages of the Old Testament written in the Aramaic language are called Biblical Aramaic. They occur in Ezra 4:8; 6:18 and 7:12-26. Daniel 2:4,7:28; and the gloss in Jer. 10:11 and Gen 31:47. Various scholars have tried to show that the original language of a number of books from the Persian and Hellenistic periods, were written in Aramaic, and that they were later translated into Hebrew. This view has been presented in connection with Job, Koheleth, Daniel, Esther, 1 and 2 Chronicles, proverbs, and Ezekiel In the New Testament, various Aramaic words or expressions occur, e.g. “Talitha Cumi” (little girl, stand up) Mark 5:41; “Ephphata” (etphtah, be opened) Mark 7:34; “Eli, Eli, Lama Shabachthani” (my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me) Matt.27:46, Mark 15:34; “Rabboni” (my Lord) Mark 10:51, John 20:16; “Maran Atha” (our Lord, come) Cor. 16:22. Aramaic influence is apparent in personal names such as “ Cephas” John 1:42, 1 Cor 1:12 and “Tabitha” Acts 9:36, 40, and in place names, including “Akeldama” (field of blood) Acts 1:19; “Gesthsemane (oil press) Matt 26:36, Mark 14:32; and “Golgotha” (skull) Mark 15:22 ARAMAIC INSCRIPTIONS We possess an abundant number of inscriptions written in Aramaic. They constitute an extremely important source of information for our knowledge of Biblical Aramaic. With the earliest inscriptions dating as far back as the ninth century BC, from Zinjirli in north Syria; from Nineveh, Kouyunjik, Nimrud, Khorsabad (8th to 7th century BC; from Babylonia (6th

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