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The many countries in which Syriac was spoken
#1
{Quoting from William Norton's book}

Syriac is a very ancient language. It belongs to the same family of languages as the ancient Hebrew. In the time of the Redeemer it was spoken, in slightly different dialects, in many countries.

Syriac became the language of Palestine.-- Dr. Frederic Delitzsch, Professor of Assyriology, in the University of Leipzic, in a work on "The Hebrew Language Viewed in the Light of Assyrian Research, 1883," p. 2, says, "The transportation of the ten tribes from Palestine to Mesopotamia and Media, and the close intercourse of those left behind with people of different nations, as the Elamites, Babylonians, and Arabs, who supplied the places of the exiled Israelites, struck a deadly blow at the ancient language of the kingdom of Israel. Nor was it destined to flourish much longer in the kingdom of Judah......The termination of the Babylonian exile marks the beginning of that process," that is, as to Judah, "by which Hebrew gradually disappeared from among living languages. It is true that a small portion of the nation, those who availed themselves of the permission to return to the holy land, still wrote and spoke Hebrew; but the Aramaic [the Syriac] dialect, which had been favoured by the Persian kings, and was almost regarded as the official language of the western portion of the Persian empire, had already begun to bring its deteriorating influence to bear upon it; and, rapidly advancing, was conquering one portion of Palestine after another. This process continued under the dominion of the Greeks........At the time of the Maccabees, Hebrew had already ceased to be a spoken language........The learned among the Jews, during the last two centuries before Christ, even preferred to write in Aramaic; and at the time of Christ, Aramaic reigned supreme as the adopted language of the country."

Those of the ten tribes who were "carried away into Assyria," (2 Kings xvii. 6,) adopted the Syriac language also, as well as those of them who remained in Palestine. We have proof in holy Scripture that Aramaic, now called Syriac, was spoken by some of the Assyrians, when the king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh against Jerusalem. For the elders of the Jews asked him to speak to them in Aramaic, that the rest of the Jews might not know what he said. (2 Kings xviii. 26; Isa. xxxvi. 11.) The language then called Aramaic, and now called Syriac, was not the most ancient language of Assyria. The Rev. A. H. Sayce says, in his Assyrian Grammar, 1872," pages 1 and 10, that the original Assyrian language was more like Hebrew and Phoenician than it was like Syriac. But by degrees the old Assyrian language gave place to Syriac. Mr. Sayce says at page 18, "Assyrian passed away before the encroaching influence of Aramaean."
Before the ten tribes were carried away into Assyria, they had been brought under the power of the Syrians of Damascus, and this may have tended to change their language. While they were in Assyria, they seem to have adopted Syriac wholly, and to have ceased to speak their ancient Hebrew tongue.
Dr Asahel Grant, (M. D.) a modern missionary to that part of ancient Assyria, which is now called Coordistan, published a book, the third edition of which is dated 1844, entitled, "The Nestorians, or the Lost Tribes." At page 55, he says that among the Nestorian Christians whose ancestors dwelt there from before the time of Christ, the worship is still conducted and the Scriptures are read "in the ancient Syriac language," which is now "quite unintelligible to the common people;" so that when the Scriptures are read to them, they have to be translated by the reader into the modernized Syriac, which is now spoken by these Nestorian Christians, and by the Israelites who are not Christians, who dwell near them in Coordistan. He says at page 149, that this modernized Syriac is "at this day a living language only among the Nestorians and nominal Jews of Media and Assyria; unless an exception be found among the Syrian Christians dwelling west of the Tigris; who may, perhaps, also have a Hebrew origin." He says that both the Nestorian Christians, and the unchristianised Israelites, who use this "vernacular language, peculiar to themselves, must have acquired it at a remote period of antiquity; because an entire want of social intercourse forbids the idea that they have learned it from each other in modern times." Dr. Grant says, that both the Nestorians and the Israelites say that they all speak this modern Syriac language because they have a "common ancestry;" and he thinks that their common and peculiar language "affords convincing proof that they are both alike the children of Israel."
Dr. Grant was fully convinced that the ancestors of these
Nestorians "received the gospel from the apostles and immediate disciples of our Saviour," (p.56); "from Thomas, Bartholomew, Thaddeus, and others; not from Nestorius," from likeness to whom they are called Nestorians, (p. 50.) He says that their Scriptures, which are like other copies of the ancient Peshito-Syriac Bible, have been preserved by them "in manuscript, with great care and purity," (p. 60.); that "these Nestorians throughout Assyria and Media have a general and universally believed tradition that they are descendants of the ten tribes," (p. 110); that the Israelites "admit that the Nestorians are as truly the descendants of the Israelites as themselves, (p. 114); and that the Nestorians have a tradition that they "came from the land of Palestine," (p. 113.) Dr. Grant remarks that both the Nestorian Christians and the Israelites inhabit the very country where "the ten tribes were placed," (p. 114); that they "are the only people in Assyria who can be identified with the ten tribes, and consequently that they must be their descendants," (p. 140.) He says that Dr. Perkins, another missionary, agreed with him that the body of the modern language now spoken by the Nestorians and Israelites, comes as directly from the venerable Syriac, and as clearly, as the modern Greek comes from the ancient, (p. 144.)
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The many countries in which Syriac was spoken - by Larry Kelsey - 02-02-2004, 02:10 AM
....... - by Larry Kelsey - 02-02-2004, 03:17 AM
......... - by Larry Kelsey - 02-02-2004, 05:31 AM
Re: - by Larry Kelsey - 02-21-2004, 10:19 PM

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