Aramaic

An ancient language belonging to the same Semitic family as Hebrew. Although references to Aramaic have been found going back to the 2nd Mill BC, the earliest inscriptions in Aramaic come from the 10th or 9th Cent BC.

Aramaic was the diplomatic language of the Assyrian Empire but became widespread in the next century, becoming the official language of the Persian Empre in the 6th Cent. Most of the Jews taken into exile under the Babylonian began to speak Aramaic and Hebrew went into slow decline. Not surprisingly, the parts of the Old Testament written in or coloured by Aramaic—Ezr 4:8-6:18; 7:12-26; Dan 2:4-7:28, Jer 10:11—come from this period; "Of 305,441 words (graphic words, divided by spacing or maqqeph), the Aramaic portions make up 4,828" (Waltke & O'Connor). Jesus spoke Aramaic, and the Gospels retain a number of these Aramaic utterances by Jesus, of which the most famous is probably His cry on the cross, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mk 15:34). This cry is actually a quotation of Psm 22:1, which in Hebrew would be, "Eli, Eli, lama 'azavtani?"