Biblical Aramaic

Biblical Aramaic is the form of the Aramaic language that is used in the books of Daniel, Ezra and a few other places in the Hebrew Bible. It should not be confused with the Aramaic paraphrases, explanations, and expansions of the Jewish scriptures known as targumim.

History

As Old Aramaic had served as a lingua franca in the Neo-Assyrian Empire from the 8th century BCE,linguistic contact with even the oldest stages of Biblical Hebrew are easily accounted for.

In 2 Kings 18:26, the linguistic situation is directly referred to, as Jerusalem (during the reign of Hezekiah) was besieged by the army of Sennacherib in 701 BCE. The 2 Kings account sets the meeting of the ambassadors of both camps just outside the city walls. Hezekiah's envoys pleaded that the Assyrians make terms in Aramaic so that the people listening would not understand. Thus, Aramaic had become the language of international dialogue, but not of the common people.

During the Babylonian exile, Aramaic became the language spoken by the Jews, and the Aramaic square script replaced the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. After the Persian Empire's capture of Babylon, it became the language of culture and learning. King Darius I declared that Aramaic was to be the official language of the western half of his empire in 500 BCE, and it is this Imperial Aramaic language that forms the basis of Biblical Aramaic. Biblical Hebrew was gradually reduced to the status of a liturgical language and a language of theological learning, and the Jews of the Second Temple period would have spoken a western form of Old Aramaic until their partial Hellenization from the 3rd century BCE, and the eventual emergence of Middle Aramaic in the 3rd century CE.