Aramaic (Syriac) is a Semitic language which was employed to compose the ancient Scriptures of the Hebrews, Essenes and Manichaeans, including some Christians. The language was also used by the Prophet Mani for composing some of the sacred texts of Manichaeans.
The first people to be inspired by Jesus’ message were almost all Jews. But within a decade after the Crucifixion, non-Jews were being converted and the burgeoning faith was spreading out to the great cosmopolitan centers of the Roman Empire. In particular it was spreading into areas where Syriac and Greek were the dominant languages. Jesus’ native tongue was Aramaic.
The Jesus Sutras – Rediscovering the Lost Scrolls of Taoist Christianity, Martin Palmer, 2001, Ballantine Publishing Group
Other members of this [Aramaic language] family include Hebrew…Arabic, Akkadian,… Mandaic…and, more distantly, Amharic…
Aramaic is written in its own unique script.
Modern Aramaic Assyrian/Syriac Dictionary and Phrasebook, Nicholas Awde, Nineb Lamassu, Nicholas Al-Jeloo, 2008, Hippocrene Books, NY
In later Mingjiao (Monijiao, Manichaean Buddhism), some Aramaic words and phrases were transliterated within Chinese vocabulary to represent specific doctrinal key words.
A Brief Overview of the History of the Aramaic Language
…the New Covenant writings of the Gospel, Acts, Epistles and Revelation… In the Holy Land, Syria, Mesopotamia and other countries of the Parthian Empire, these writings were circulated in Aramaic, lingua franca of the East… The weekly synagogue lections of the Holy Scriptures, called sidra or parashah, with the haphtarah, were accompanied with an oral Aramaic translation, according to fairly fixed traditions. A number of Targumim in Aramaic were thus eventually committed to writing, some of which are of unofficial character, and of considerable antiquity…
Since 1947 approximatively 500 documents were discovered in eleven caves of Wadi Qumran near the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea. In addition to the scrolls and fragments in Hebrew, there are portions and fragments of scrolls in Aramaic. Hebrew and Aramaic have always remained the most distinctive features marking Jewish religious and cultural life to our present time.
English Introduction to New Covenant Aramaic Peshitta Text, Aramaic Scriptures Research Society in Israel, 1986, Bible Society Jerusalem
Aramaic is often dated according to five periods:
1. Old Aramaic (925-700)
2. Official or Imperial Aramaic (700-200)
3. Middle Aramaic (200 B.C.E. – 200 C.E.)
4. Late Aramaic (200-700)
5. Modern Aramaic (700 to the present day)English Introduction to New Covenant Aramaic Peshitta Text, Aramaic Scriptures Research Society in Israel, 1986, Bible Society Jerusalem
Aramaic is the ancient language of the Semitic family group, which includes the Assyrians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Arameans, Hebrews, and Arabs. In fact, a large part of the Hebrew and Arabic languages is borrowed from Aramaic, including the Alphabet. The modern Hebrew (square) script is called “Ashuri”, “Ashuri” is the Hebrew name for Assyrian, the name being used to signify the ancestor of the Assyrians, Ashur the son of Shem, the son of Noah (Genesis 10:22). Aramaic is quoted in the very first book of the Bible, Berisheth (Genesis) in Chapter 31:47. In fact, many portions of the Old Testament are penned originally in Aramaic, including Daniel chapter 2:4 thru chapter 7.
The first known inscriptions of Aramaic date to the late tenth or early ninth century B.C. In a phenomenal wave of expansion, Aramaic spread over Palestine and Syria and large tracts of Asia and Egypt, replacing many languages, including Akkadian and Hebrew. For about one thousand years it served as the official and written language of the Near East, officially beginning with the conquests of the Assyrian Empire, which had adopted Aramaic as its official language, replacing Akkadian.
During the later Chaldean (Neo-Babylonian) and Persian conquests, Aramaic had become the international medium of exchange. Despite Hellenistic influences, especially in the cities, that followed the conquests of Alexander the Great of Macedonia, Aramaic remained the vernacular of the conquered peoples in the Holy Land, Syria, Mesopotamia and the adjacent countries. It ceded only to Arabic in the ninth century A.D., two full centuries after the Islamic conquests of Damascus in 633, and Jerusalem in 635. Aramaic has never been totally supplanted by Arabic. Aramaic had been adopted by the deported Israelites of Transjordan, exiled from Bashan and Gilead in 732 B.C. by Tiglath-Pileser III, the tribes of the Northern Kingdom by Sargon II who took Samaria in 721, and the two tribes of the Southern Kingdom of Judah who were taken into captivity to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar in 587. Hence, the Jews who returned from the Babylonian Captivity brought Aramaic back with them to the Holy Land, and this continued to be their native tongue throughout the lifetime of Eshoo Mshikha.
During the Hellenistic period of the Seleucids, Aramaic ceased to be a uniform language, when various dialects began to form, due to regional influences of pronunciation and vocabulary. Some of these dialects became literary languages after the differences had increased. The language, henceforth, divided into an Eastern branch, with a number of dialects, and a Western branch with its dialects, but all of which retained a great similarity.
The Aramaic in which the Bible called “Assakhta Peshitta” is written, known as the Peshitta Text, is in the dialect of northwest Mesopotamia as it evolved and was highly perfected in Orhai, once a city-kingdom, later called Edessa by the Greeks, and now called Urfa in Turkey. Harran, the city of Abraham’s brother Nahor, lies 38 kilometers southeast of Orhai. The large colony of Orhai Jews, and the Jewish colonies in Assyria in the kingdom of Adiabene whose royal house had converted to Judaism, possessed most of the Bible in this dialect, the Peshitta Tenakh…
Greeks had called Aramaic by a word they coined, ‘Syriac’, and this artificial term was used in the West, but not in the East, where it has always been known by its own name, ‘Lishana Aramaya’ (the Aramaic language). Modern Eastern Aramaic has sixteen dialects, spoken by Christians and Jews, and a widely spoken western dialect. Modern Western Aramaic is spoken in three small villages north of Damascus, but in a very mixed form with words borrowed from Arabic and Turkish.
Modern Aramaic, in its various dialects, is spoken in modern-day Iraq, Iran, Syria, Israel, Lebanon, and the various Western countries to which the native speakers have emigrated, including Russia, Europe, Australia and the United States.
Article by Paul D. Younan, 2000, (source)
Aramaic and various dialects are still used by the Manichaean churches today, especially in their various liturgical works. Some examples include the Manichaean Assyrian Church in Iran, the Manichaean Orthodox Church and others.
Chinese Manichaeans (they refer to themselves as Mingjiao and Monijiao) use certain Aramaic terms within their theological vocabulary quite often, but they transliterate these with Chinese or Tibetan characters.
Lecture by Dr. Allen, August 15, 2013, Georgia, USA
(Updated: 20 July 2015)