| PLOWRIGHT WORLD Ancient History - Languages - Front Page |
| For myself, foolish person that I am, I had always thought Jesus spoke a local dialect called Aramaic. But no, He spoke a local dialect of Aramaic. The difference? Aramaic was not a local dialect, but the lingua franca or common language of the area. To quote from one source, "By the 8th century BC it was the major language from Egypt to Asia Minor to Pakistan." It lost its universalism only about 600AD, but is still used in some areas and churches. So what about Hebrew, Babylonia, Sumerian, Akkadian, Chaldean etc? Read on. |
| Aramaic -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Semitic language closely related to Hebrew. Originally the language of the Aramaeans, it was used, in many dialectical forms, in Mesopotamia and Syria before 1000BC and later became the lingua franca of the Middle East. Aramaic survived the fall of Nineveh (612BC) and Babylon (539BC) and remained the official language of the Persian Empire (539-337BC). Ancient inscriptions in Aramaic have been found over a vast area extending from Egypt to China. Before the Christian era, Aramaic had become the language of the Jews in Palestine. Jesus preached in Aramaic, and parts of the Old Testament and much of the rabbinical literature were written in that language. Christian Aramaic, usually called Syriac, also developed an extensive literature, especially from the 4th to 7th centuries. The influence and diffusion of Aramaic began to decline in favor of Arabic at the time of the Arab conquest in the 7th century AD. Aramaic survives today in Eastern and Western dialects, mostly as the language of Christians living in a few scattered communities in Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. Hebrew (also see link below) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hebrew is a Semitic language originally adopted by the 'ibhri, or Israelites, when they took possession of the land of Canaan west of the Jordan River in Palestine. The language has also been called the speech of Canaan, and Judean, after the kingdom of Judah. Ancient Hebrew, the language of the Bible, was succeeded by an intermediary form, Mishnaic Hebrew, about the 3rd century BC. Modern Hebrew, the only vernacular tongue based on an ancient written form, was developed in the 19th and 20th centuries & is the national language of Israel. There are 4,500,000 speakers in Israel and by over 100,000 in the United States plus small numbers in many other nations around the world. Source: |
| Here are pages of a few more languages of interest. Please note that all this language information, including above, is copied from the mentioned source web pages. Here is a language table with some linked (underlined) to information pages: The Afro- Asiatic Group Cushitic: : Ugaritic: a unique, non- Semitic language. Demotic Canaanitic Coptic Phoenician Aramaic (see above) Arabic |
 |
 |