Hebrew or Aramaic? Some Evidence from Inscriptions

Modern interest in the Aramaic language arose with the “discovery” of the Aramaic-speaking churches of the east in the sixteenth century. Here, finally, it was believed, Jesus’ “mother-tongue” had been found, and the earliest treatises about the Jewish vernacular in the time of Jesus were written by de Rossi (1772)^[20] and Pfannkuche (1798)^[21] on the basis of this assumption. These treatises remained the only ones in the field until the studies of Dalman in 1894 and following.^[22] Throughout these approximately one hundred years, scholars firmly believed in the exclusive use of Aramaic, and this belief permeated works of New Testament scholarship. By the end of the nineteenth century this belief had almost reached the status of infallibility.

For this reason, even the word “Hebrew” in the New Testament, as well as in Josephus and Philo, was believed to refer to the Aramaic language. Wordlists of Semitic terms in the New Testament were compiled and carefully checked against the Aramaic lexicon known at that time; however, these lists were never equally crosschecked against the Hebrew lexicon. In this way, even some clearly Hebrew terms ended up in the lists of Aramaic words. As Joseph A. Fitzmyer, one of the world’s more prominent Aramaic scholars, admitted in 1975 in hindsight: “…the way in which claims are sometimes made for the Aramaic substratum of the sayings of Jesus, when the evidence is merely “Semitic” in general, or, worse still, derived from some other Semitic language, e.g., Hebrew, should no longer be countenanced.”^[23]

What we have to keep in mind is how thin was the evidence upon which scholars based their observations. They did not have the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Cairo Genizah. There were no Bar Kochva letters or documents from Nahal Hever. There was no Targum Neofiti and no Hebrew fragments of Ben Sira. Archaeology in the Holy Land had only just begun and the epigraphic evidence was minimal. Therefore, some of the scholarly conclusions of these pioneers in the field, as learned as the conclusions were in their day, have to be revised from today’s perspective. For example, in 1798 Pfannkuche referred to the “Year 1” coins as proof that Aramaic was the vernacular as early as Hasmonean times. Today we know that these coins were minted during the first Jewish revolt and their language is Hebrew. Pfannkuche and Dalman dated the Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan to Hellenistic times and believed they reflected the language spoken at the time of Jesus. Today these Targums are dated centuries later, and so is their language. Julius Wellhausen noticed the late date of the Targumic language and acknowledged that no textual evidence for “Palestinian Jewish Aramaic” was available. Therefore, he took most of his Aramaic material from the Palestinian-Christian lectionaries of the third and fourth centuries A.D.^[24]

• ^[1] Jean Baptiste Frey, Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaicarum. Recueil des Inscriptions Juives qui vont du IIe siècle avant Jésus-Christ au VIIe siècle de Notre Ère. Vol II: Asie-Afrique. Sussidi allo studio delle antichità cristiane III (Roma: Pontificio Institutu di Archeologia Cristiana, 1952). ↩
• ^[2] David Noy, Alexander Panayotov and Hanswulf Bloedhorn, Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis. I. Eastern Europe. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 101 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004); Walter Ameling, Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis. II. Asia Minor. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 99 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004); David Noy and Hanswulf Bloedhorn Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis. III. Syria and Cyprus. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 102 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004). ↩
• ^[3] Cf. the progress report of the project: Hannah M. Cotton, Leah Di Segni, Werner Eck and Benjamin Isaac, “Corpus Inscriptionum Judaeae/Palestinae,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 127 (1999): 307-08. ↩
• ^[4] L. Y. Rahmani, A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries in the Collections of the State of Israel (Jerusalem: The Israel Antiquities Authority and The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1994). ↩
• ^[5] Ronny Reich, “Ossuary Inscriptions from the ‘Caiaphas’ Tomb,” Atiqot 21 (1992): 72-77; idem, “Ossuary Inscriptions from the Caiaphas Tomb, JerPersp 33-34 (Jul./Oct. 1991): 13-21, 29; Zvi Greenhut, “Discovery of the Caiaphas Family Tomb,” JerPersp 33-34 (Jul./Oct. 1991): 6-12, 13. ↩
• ^[6] Shlomit Weksler-Bdolah, “Jerusalem, Mt. Skopus,” Excavations and Surveys in Israel 13 (1995): 72-74. ↩
• ^[7] Lili Gershuny and Boaz Zissu, “Tombs of the Second Temple Period at Giv’at Shapira, Jerusalem,” Atiqot 30 (1996): 45-59 (Hebrew) and 128-30 (English summary). ↩
• ^[8] Tamar Shadmi, “The Ossuaries and the Sarcophagus” (chpt. 2), in Israel Antiquities Authorities Report 1: The Akeldama Tombs (eds. Gideon Avni and Zvi Greenhut; Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 1996), 41-55. ↩
• ^[9] Mordechai Aviam and Danny Syon, “Jewish Ossilegium in Galilee,” in What Has Athens to Do with Jerusalem? Essays on Classical, Jewish, and Early Christian Art and Archaeology in Honor of Gideon Foerster, Interdisciplinary Studies in Ancient Culture and Religion 1 (ed. Leonard V. Rutgers; Leuven: Peeters, 2002), 151-87.  ↩
• ^[10] Volkmar Fritz and Roland Deines, “Catalogue of the Jewish Ossuaries in the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology,” Israel Exploration Journal 49 (1999): 222-41. Yigael Yadin and Josef Naveh, The Aramaic and Hebrew Ostraca and Jar Inscriptions, in Masada, I (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1989), 1-68, Pls.1-59. ↩
• ^[11] Yigael Yadin and Josef Naveh, The Aramaic and Hebrew Ostraca and Jar Inscriptions, in Masada, I (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1989), 1-68, Pls.1-59. ↩
• ^[12] Esther Eshel, “Hebrew and Aramaic Inscriptions from the Jewish Quarter,” in Jewish Quarter Excavations in the Old City of Jerusalem (conducted by Nahman Avigad, 1969-1982); Volume III: Area E and Other Studies (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and Institute of Archeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2006), 389-407. ↩
• ^[13] Joseph Naveh, “Hebrew and Aramaic Inscriptions,” in Excavations at the City of David 1978-1985 (directed by Yigal Shiloh); Volume VI: Inscriptions (Qedem, Monographs of the Institute of Archeology 41) (Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2000), 1-14. ↩
• ^[14] Benjamin Mazar, Beth She’arim I: Catacombs 1-4 (report on the 1936-1940 ecavations; Jerusalem: Massada Press, 1973); Moshe Schwabe and Baruch Lifshitz, Beth She’arim II: The Greek Inscriptions(Jerusalem: Massada Press, 1974); Nahman Avigad, Beth She’arim III: Catacombs 12-23 (report on the 1953-1958 excavations; Jerusalem: Massada Press, 1976). ↩
• ^[15] For an overview and bibliography, see Emmanuel Tov, “The Texts from the Judaean Desert,” indices and introduction to Discoveries in the Judaean Desert: Volume 39 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), 143-64. ↩
• ^[16] I am indebted to David Bivin who analyzed the inscriptions in the Rahmani catalogue and provided me with these statistics. ↩
• ^[17] Cf. Hanan Eshel, “On the Use of Hebrew in Economic Documents from the Judaean Desert“ in Jesus’ Last Week: Jerusalem Studies in the Synoptic Gospels (ed. R. S. Notley, M. Turnage and B. Becker; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2005), 245-58. ↩
• ^[18] Ya’acov Meshorer, Ancient Jewish Coinage (2 vol.; Dix Hills, NY: Amphora Books, 1982); recent additions in, idem, “Ancient Jewish Coinage, Addendum I,” Israel Numismatic Journal 11 (1991): 104-132.  ↩
• ^[19] Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine Period (2d ed.; Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2002); idem, A Dictionary of Judean Aramaic (Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2003). ↩
• ^[20] Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi Della Lingua Propria Di Cristo E Degli Ebrei Nazionali Della Palestina Da Tempi de Maccabei (Parma: Stamperia Reale, 1772). ↩
• ^[21] Heinrich Friedrich Pfannkuche, “Über die palästinische Landessprache in dem Zeitalter Christi und der Apostel. Ein Versuch, zum Theil nach de Rossi entworfen,” in: Allgemeine Bibliothek der biblischen Literatur (ed. Johann Gottfried Eichhorn; Achter Band; Drittes Stück; Leipzig: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1798), 365-80. ↩
• ^[22] Gustaf Dalman, Grammatik des jüdisch-palästinischen Aramäisch nach den Idiomen des palästinischen Talmud und Midrasch, des Onkelostargum (cod. Sorini 84) und der jerusalemischen Targume zum Pentateuch (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1894); idem, Aramäische Dialektproben: Lesestücke zur Grammatik des jüdisch-palästinischen Aramäisch zumeist nach Handschriften des Britischen Museums (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1896); Gustaf Dalman and G. H. Händler, Aramäisch-neuhebräisches Handwörterbuch zu Targum, Talmud und Midrasch. Mit Vokalisation der Targumischen Wörter nach südarabischen Handschriften und besonderer Bezeichnung des Wortschatzes des Onkelostargum (Frankfurt a.M.: Kaufmann, 1897); Gustaf Dalman, Die Worte Jesu: mit Berücksichtigung des nachkanonischen jüdischen Schrifttums und der aramäischen Sprache erörtert (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1898). ↩
• ^[23] Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “The Study of the Aramaic Background of the New Testament” (1975), reprinted in Joseph A. Fitzmyer, A Wandering Aramaean: Collected Aramaic Essays (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1979): 5. ↩
• ^[24] Julius Wellhausen, Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1905), 38-42. ↩