Article claims to debunk Aramaic as Yeshua's language

[rramlow]

I think Mark 5:41 "Talitha koum!" would be a good example since "talitha" is Aramaic and the equivalent Hebrew word for girl would be "yaldah".

bar Sinko

Good one.

Although, the link in the OP claims to address that, so for my purposes a little unwrinkling is in order. Mr.Minge has it like this:

Even talitha (?little girl?, Mark 5:41), at first glance the ?least? Hebrew of all the seven words, is known to have been used by other Jews of the period, as it occurs in the Targum of Genesis 34:3 for ?young woman?[57]. Merely because a word is in the Targum, of course, does not preclude it from being Hebrew, as the Targums contain many words ? by one count almost half ? either identical, or very similar, to the Hebrew Bible[58]. Talitha too has Hebrew roots, coming from the Hebrew talah, meaning ?lamb? ? a term hardly out of place on the lips of the Good Shepherd. Merely because it has a ?tha? ending does not, of itself, make it ?Aramaic?, since Gamaliel ? whose strong views concerning Aramaic have already been noted ? had a devout Jewish maidservant with the closely related name of Tabitha[59]. This is not, again, to deny a possible Aramaic influence for talitha, just as ?lassie? is a regional Scottish term derived from old Norse for a young woman. Though not normally used in wider English, its use in Scotland does not mean the Scots speak ?Norse?!

Before covering his back at the end by saying that an Aramaic word here does not an Aramaic speaker make, his main argument seems to be that we are not compelled to read talitha as Aramaic since Tabitha would not have been. This position on the name Tabitha is calling support from Gamaliel's supposed view against Aramaic as recorded in the Talmud, Shabbath 115. So, I decided to read that section in an English translation available here.

After giving this a read, it seems to me that Gamaliel's issue was not general hostility towards Aramaic, or even towards an oral Targum therein, but rather against a written Targum. The rabbis appear concerned that establishment of written Targums could have undesirable consequences. Still, the fact that the order was to bury (hide) and not burn, seems to me more than insignificant. At this point, until corrected, I think Mr.Minge has misunderstood Gamaliel's episode with this early written Targum. Therefore his reasoning against talitha being certainly Aramaic seems to collapse.

Proceeding from that, I find this below snippet from an interview with Ian Young:

There are, however, in my judgement, some words that must be Aramaic, and cannot be Hebrew; whereas there are no words that have to be Hebrew and cannot be Aramaic. A good example is in Mark 5:41, where Mark translates Jesus' words rather prosaically, as 'little girl, I say to you, arise'. The words are also transliterated in Greek as talitha qumi. Now qumi could be a feminine singular imperative meaning 'arise' in either Hebrew or Aramaic. However one of the most noticeable differences between the two languages is the position of the definite article, 'the'. Aramaic places the definite article at the end of the word, thus the 'tha' at the end of 'talitha' is the Aramaic definite article on a feminine noun. Hebrew would have placed the definite article at the beginning, and produced something like 'Ha-talah', or perhaps 'ha-talyah'. The word talitha means both 'girl' and 'lamb', and the definite article is probably being used here as a vocative, so a possible translation of Jesus' words to the girl would be, 'Get up, little lamb'.

If Mr.Young is correct, I'm sure many of you could make the argument from your own learning. At this point in my studies however, it's better for me to refer to another authority.

At this point I think it's fair to say Mr.Minge's point on Mark 5:41 has been disarmed, and bar Sinko's view upheld. Critique, anyone?