Monday, February 23, 2004
'The Passion of the Christ' brings hopes for revival of Aramaic
Gibson's 'The Passion of the Christ' brings hopes for revival of Aramaic, the vanishing language of Jesus
Linguists hope for a boost from Mel Gibson's new film "The Passion of the Christ," performed entirely in Aramaic and Latin. The film is set to open Wednesday in American theaters.
Just a half million people, most of them Christians living in pockets of the Middle East, Europe and the United States, still converse at home in Aramaic, once the lingua franca of the Middle East and parts of Asia.
"Undoubtedly, Aramaic is in danger of disappearing," said Moshe Bar-Asher, president of the Academy of Hebrew Language in Jerusalem.
Aramaic is one of the few languages that has been spoken continuously for thousands of years. It first appeared in written records around the 10th century B.C. though it was likely already being spoken earlier.
Aramaic is a Semitic language and has similarities with Hebrew and Arabic. Water is "moyeh" in Aramaic, "maim" in Hebrew and "miye" in Arabic. Carpenter is "nagouro" in Aramaic, "nagar" in Hebrew and "najar" in Arabic.
The most popular theory on its origin says the language was first spoken by nomads called Arameans, who migrated from the barren Arabian peninsula to the lush farmlands of Mesopotamia and finally settled around Damascus, modern Syria's capital, in the 13th century B.C.
Aramaic became a common language for much of the Middle East and parts of Asia, reaching its widest influence when it was adopted by the Persian empire around 500 B.C. It was a relatively simple language, with just 22 letters, and a community of scribes and intellectuals helped spread it in a largely illiterate world, said Bar-Asher.
Texts in Aramaic have been found in places as distant from each other as in India and Egypt. Jews returning from exile in Babylon around 500 B.C. helped spread the language to the eastern Mediterranean, where it largely supplanted Hebrew.
Scholars think Jesus might have known Hebrew -- which by that time was reserved mainly for use in synagogues and spoken by upper classes -- and some Greek, but Aramaic was the language of his native Galilee.
The New Testament records Jesus' last words on the cross in Aramaic: "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" St. Mark, most likely writing in Greek, adds, "... which means, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"' (Mark 15:34).
Michael Sokoloff, a professor of Hebrew and Semitic languages at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv, said it is believed that parts of the Gospels were originally written in Aramaic, but that only Greek writings have ever been found.
Today, Aramaic is spoken at home by about 500,000 people -- mainly Syrian Orthodox and other Christians -- in parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, India, Europe, Australia and a few cities in the United States, including Chicago.
A few thousand Israelis who immigrated from other parts of the Middle East still speak Aramaic, but are largely not passing it on to their children. Most Jews who learn the language study it only to read the Talmud, a book of Jewish law, and other religious texts written in Aramaic.
Part of the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, is recited in Aramaic, and marriage and divorce contracts in Israel are until today often written in the language.
The script was translated into first century Aramaic for the Jewish characters and "street Latin" for the Roman characters by Father William Fulco, director of ancient Mediterranean studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
Permalink
