Saving the Aramaic of Jesus and the Jews

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Once spoken across most of the ancient Near East, Aramaic was most likely the mother tongue of Jesus. A considerable volume of Jewish literature is written in Aramaic, including parts of the Bible, Talmud, and Dead Sea Scrolls. Yona Sabar, a scholar and one of the last living native speakers of Aramaic, gives an account of the language and one of its peoples, the bygone Jews of Iraqi Kurdistan.

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Endnotes

1.
Both canonical books include many Old Persian words, but Daniel 3:15 also includes Greek loanwords.

2.
Linguists consider a language “clinically dead” when there are no more living young couples who speak that language to their babies. All my relatives who spoke Aramaic have passed away. My younger siblings understand it to a certain degree, but do not speak it (excluding names of some typical dishes, emotional words, etc.).

3.
See my first report in Yona Sabar, “Tafsirim (Commentaries) of the Bible and Hymns in the Neo-Aramaic of the Jews of Kurdistan [Nerwa],” Sefunot 10 (1965), pp. 337–412 [Hebrew].

4.
See, e.g., Yona Sabar, “Multilingual Proverbs in the Neo-Aramaic Speech of the Jews of Zakho, Iraqi Kurdistan,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 9.2 (1978), pp. 215–235; Yona Sabar, The Folk Literature of the Kurdistani Jews: An Anthology, Yale Judaica Series 23 (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1982); Yona Sabar, The Book of Genesis in Neo-Aramaic in the Dialect of the Jewish Community of Zakho, Including Selected Texts in Other Neo-Aramaic Dialects and a Glossary (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1983).

5.
See Yona Sabar, The Book of Daniel in a Neo-Aramaic Translation (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2014); Yona Sabar, Targum de–Targum: An Old Neo-Aramaic Version of the Targum on Song of Songs (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1991).

6.
See Yona Sabar, “Yona Gabbay, A Jewish Peddler’s Life Story from Iraqi Kurdistan, as Narrated by Him in His Jewish Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Zakho (Four Episodes),” Mediterranean Language Review 16 (2005), pp. 167–220; Yona Sabar, “A Folktale and Folk Songs in the Christian Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Tel-Kepe (Northern Iraq),” in Riccardo Contini et al., eds., Semitica: Serta philologica Constantino Tsereteli dicata (Torino: Silvio Zamorani, 1993), pp. 289–298; Yona Sabar, “Romantic Songs in Christian Neo-Aramaic as Preserved in Kurdistani Jewish Folklore: A Case of Cultural Borrowing,” Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies 24.2 (2010), pp. 1–10; Yona Sabar, “Multilingual Proverbs in the Neo-Aramaic Speech of the Jews of Zakho, Iraqi Kurdistan,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 9.2 (1978), pp. 215–235.