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Word play in aramaic and syriac
#16
Shlama Akhi Steve.

I in no way meant to discredit your work. I am in fact a big fan, even though the hypothetical is not my forte.

My only objection was to your wording of a "missed pun". That's a statement that assumes a definitive. Perhaps qualifying it with a "potential/hypothetical" would sound much less authoritative and much less misleading.

I also think that the Aramaic of the Peshitta is a lot closer to whatever single dialect of "Galilean" Aramaic you feel obliged to confine Christ's understanding to, than to say "little argument that it's closer than Greek." What argument, little or otherwise? Are you serious? There's absolutely no argument whatsoever, seriously, that any Aramaic (ancient or modern) dialect is a lot closer than Greek is to what Christ spoke on a daily basis. To suggest anything otherwise is ludicrous. It's not even worth mentioning in a serious breath.

It's my personal opinion that Christ spoke multiple dialects of Aramaic, as his apostles must have in order to have evangelized Syria and Mesopotamia. If you don't, that's certainly your right. But you'd be wrong. You're not an Aramaic-speaking person in a multi-dialectic culture, I am. And I see and experience it daily. Much like Christ and His Disciples did.

Please understand that phrases like "missed pun" carry a lot of weight, and require a much more thorough analysis than to simply count the number of occurrences in a still-incompletely analyzed corpus of work. Anyone with any bit of basic search technique can look up entries in CAL. Try living it, and have posters come on your forum and tell you (while flipping pages in a book or a browser) that you must be wrong.

Is there a missing wordplay in the Peshitta? Certainly not. Especially not to the hearers of the teaching...even if it wasn't spelled out in the text, it was understood by both the listener and the educated reader. If, and only if, it was meant as a pun. That's an assumption, of course.

Matthew Black was your predecessor in this line of reasoning, and he not only failed miserably in promoting Aramaic primacy among the firmly entrenched Greek camp, but he also made native Aramaic speakers shake their heads in disbelief at the monstrosities he proposed in the spoken dialect. His book is ridiculous.

It's the same reason Mel Gibson's film was a linguistic flop. Not only is the language of the movie gibberish to anyone alive today, but it's highly improbable that anyone in the past would have understood 10% of it. Perhaps only if they listened to it in slow motion, and with subtitles.

I am not a fan of reconstructionalism, not the sort made by Matthew Black nor by Professor Fulco of Mel Gibson fame. It doesn't strengthen our case or help the Aramaic cause, if anything it weakens it by making it as convoluted as the Greek camp finds itself in.

For some reason you feel compelled to know exactly how Christ said every word, and I feel you are chasing a fruitless goal. Like most Aramaic speakers today, He would and could have said things in multiple ways depending on the audience and the situation. Certainly no one alive today is constrained by a single dialect of Aramaic, so I don't see why it's so important to you to create such a rigid divide between the Aramaic of the Peshitta and "good enough", although I feel Akhan Chuck might be onto something in his comments.

Your constant use of "Syriac" instead of "Aramaic" to describe the language of the Peshitta speaks volumes and gives me a clue into your intentions, and I fear they are no different than that of our opponents in the Greek camp. I hope I am wrong. You have no issue with calling Tkhumnaya, Jiluaya, Elkoshnaya or Baznaya a "Neo-Aramaic" dialect, yet you insist on calling the dialect of the Peshitta, "Syriac". It betrays your intention, it really makes you transparent. You are trying to create a false divide between the Aramaic of the Peshitta, and the Aramaic of Jesus, although there is absolutely no primary textual evidence to support your claim. The reason you are doing it is because you, like other like-minded westerners, don't want there to be a record of His Language in a written document. It would upset your established consensus.

We call it Aramaic, and that right belongs to us and us alone, not you. You are a foreigner and you can have the right to call your language by whatever name you choose. The Assyrians have been speaking Aramaic continuously for the last nearly three thousand years. It was called Aramaic during the empire, during Christ's time, today, and tomorrow. We don't call it "Syriac" and would appreciate it and take you more seriously if you don't, either.

For us, calling it "Syriac" is as offensive as calling us "Nestorians", "East Syrians", "Chaldeans", etc.....or calling you by a derogatory name for Italians. I hope you understand that I don't say this in a mean spirit, but one of instruction. You might not realize what a derogatory term "Syriac" is to Assyrians. You might as well call an African-American the N-word. If you never understood that, please understand it now. We are not "East Syriacs", we do not speak "Syriac", we are not "Chaldeans" nor "Arameans". We are Assyrians. And our language yesterday, today, and tomorrow is called Aramaic.

By taking it upon yourself to define someone else's milieu demonstrates a hubris that comes across as offensive. I don't think you intend to do it, but that is how it comes across. Even if you cloak it with "scholarly consensus" - that's certainly western, not eastern, scholarly thought. And I have less respect in the opinions of someone surnamed "Black" or "Fulco", in matters relating to Aramaic, than I do for the dirt under the shoes of our own scholars.

Look into the Hudra, if you can read it, and see what language it describes itself as. That is how you should refer to it. If you respect the language and the Milieu, you will do just that. If you choose instead to play with semantics to further your own agenda, that's fine too. Just expect to be called out on it. <!-- sWink --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/wink1.gif" alt="Wink" title="Wink" /><!-- sWink -->

+Shamasha
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#17
Thirdwoe Wrote:Really? Not "good enough"??? Interesting statement there Steve, I hope I misunderstood you.

Is this why you are trying so hard to figure out what the Galilean dialect might have been, so you can make His words "good enough". Please say no.

Yes I think you have misunderstood me. :-) I mean "good enough" in the sense of *complacency*, like a declaration that there is nothing more to be learned or better understood, so there's no sense trying.

In this case I'm arguing that Classical Syriac, although closer than Greek, isn't the final authority on the quirks and original form of Jesus' language. There are other possibilities that can be explored, and there is always room for improvement in our understanding.

It's not a matter of *making* anyone's words "good enough" for any purpose. My goodness? :-)

Thirdwoe Wrote:Also, I had asked you a question a few days ago, maybe you missed it. I asked what you thought the term "Edessian letters" might mean, as to the script and text of the NT used in Edessa as early as 78 A.D. What would we call such a language that was in such letters?

I think I did miss it as I only have time nowadays to skim forums from time to time. (This response is actually a patchwork of several sittings.)

I suppose that "Edessian letters" in the time period of 78 AD in and around Edessa would refer to Old Syriac script (which eventually developed into classical Estrangela forms). Something similar to the Birecik inscription and Helene of Adiabene's tomb (although we have no examples of *penned* Syriac scripts [i.e. on parchment or papyrus] until the 3rd century, so that style would be slightly different from those carved forms).

That language, too, is designated "Old Syriac" (not to be directly confused with the Old Syriac Gospels, and as opposed to "Middle Syriac" starting around the 3rd Century and the "Classical Syriac" of the Peshitta).

+++

Paul Younan Wrote:I don't say this in a mean spirit, but one of instruction.

This is what I have assumed from the beginning. You can likewise assume that I am being 'instructive,' myself, and not at all mean-spirited in my reply.

Paul Younan Wrote:I in no way meant to discredit your work. I am in fact a big fan, even though the hypothetical is not my forte.

My only objection was to your wording of a "missed pun". That's a statement that assumes a definitive. Perhaps qualifying it with a "potential/hypothetical" would sound much less authoritative and much less misleading.

If I must prefix each and every one of my statements with an ontological disclaimer, then I would use more words than necessary. As such, I should not cease to speak with confidence and conviction. I am confident of my conclusions, and anyone who engages another party in such discourse should be aware of both their and their colleague's reasonable limits of evidence and certainty from the outset. Insisting upon overqualification is distracting from the issue at hand. :-)

Paul Younan Wrote:I also think that the Aramaic of the Peshitta is a lot closer to whatever single dialect of "Galilean" Aramaic you feel obliged to confine Christ's understanding to,...

Not a single dialect. A distinct sub-family and dialect continuum distinct from Judean, Samaritan, and Syriac. This sub-family is generally identified as early Galilean or (increasingly more common) early Jewish Palestinian. Exposure to other dialects, following established models for borrowing and absorption, is taken into account.

Paul Younan Wrote:You're not an Aramaic-speaking person in a multi-dialectic culture, I am. And I see and experience it daily. Much like Christ and His Disciples did.

I'm not *quite* sure that how you paint me is *wholly* accurate. I do speak Aramaic at home with my kids (JPA -- in similar manner to modern Kthobonoyo -- which is very different in speech and writing from anything that you're most familiar with), and I teach several classical dialects. I'm not wholly in the dark.

However, if you wish to brand me as "not a true Aramaic speaker" do me at least the honor of donning a proper kilt and saying it in a good Scotch brogue. ;-)

Paul Younan Wrote:Please understand that phrases like "missed pun" carry a lot of weight, and require a much more thorough analysis than to simply count the number of occurrences in a still-incompletely analyzed corpus of work. Anyone with any bit of basic search technique can look up entries in CAL. Try living it, and have posters come on your forum and tell you (while flipping pages in a book or a browser) that you must be wrong.

Paul, I've *worked* on the CAL. It was the first grant I worked on from the National Endowment for the Humanities. It's a tool that I am familiar with in function in ways that I'm not sure you're even aware of are available.

I've had plenty of problems with visitors to my blog who do not understand, follow, or wish to understand the conventions of my field.

But all of this is getting us even further away from the point. :-)

Paul Younan Wrote:Is there a missing wordplay in the Peshitta? Certainly not. Especially not to the hearers of the teaching?even if it wasn't spelled out in the text, it was understood by both the listener and the educated reader. If, and only if, it was meant as a pun. That's an assumption, of course.

This is a case of special pleading. That it "was understood" by an "educated reader" is nebulous. The very would/could/should that you'd rather avoid. :-)

Paul Younan Wrote:Matthew Black was your predecessor in this line of reasoning, and he not only failed miserably in promoting Aramaic primacy among the firmly entrenched Greek camp, but he also made native Aramaic speakers shake their heads in disbelief at the monstrosities he proposed in the spoken dialect. His book is ridiculous.

Matthew Black is nearly 70 years out of date, Paul. His "An Aramaic Approach..." is older than you are. :-)

Furthermore, he was not quite an Aramaic primacist, he was better characterized as an enthusiastic source critic.

I'm talking more about recent works like Casey and Chilton and in Galilean studies such as Sokoloff and Kutscher and applying them to NT source criticism; things that have been published in the past few decades, or even few years. A lot has happened in that time that is never talked about here. :-)

Paul Younan Wrote:It's the same reason Mel Gibson's film was a linguistic flop. Not only is the language of the movie gibberish to anyone alive today, but it's highly improbable that anyone in the past would have understood 10% of it. Perhaps only if they listened to it in slow motion, and with subtitles.

I am not a fan of reconstructionalism, not the sort made by Matthew Black nor by Professor Fulco of Mel Gibson fame. It doesn't strengthen our case or help the Aramaic cause, if anything it weakens it by making it as convoluted as the Greek camp finds itself in.

I actually got to meet and talk with Fulco when he gave a presentation at Rutgers University under the auspices of the (now) AMESALL department. I wasn't initially convinced that he was working with the right material from the get-go? but it's a *movie*; a really strange artsy-religious one, where he was constrained in many ways by Mel Gibson's requirements, and made artistic choices in many places rather than more conventional ones. It was not a documentary, it was entertainment.

(However, most "documentaries" nowadays can't be told apart from "entertainment" anyway. :-) )

Additionally, there were plenty of Aramaic speakers who got a kick out of it, and were able to understand quite a bit (I remember George Kiraz's interview in the paper).

Paul Younan Wrote:For some reason you feel compelled to know exactly how Christ said every word, and I feel you are chasing a fruitless goal.

Again, you're strongly mis-categorizing me, and again I need to remind you that's not how reconstructive work -- by its very nature -- *works*.

Paul Younan Wrote:Like most Aramaic speakers today, He would and could have said things in multiple ways depending on the audience and the situation.

This is an axiom. Additionally, if you espouse to this axiom, you must also allow for wording that isn't found in the Peshitta. Otherwise you don't espouse to this axiom.

Paul Younan Wrote:Certainly no one alive today is constrained by a single dialect of Aramaic,

No Neo-Aramaic speaker has that luxury in this day and age. Aramaic is fragmented, shattered like Romance Languages after the fall of Rome and the splintering of Vulgar Latin into local dialects that evolved into completely different languages.

Out of the 20+ families (consisting of some 100+ dialects in total) of Neo-Aramaic that exist today, very few are mutually intelligible, spoken. Unless you can readily understand Turoyo, Ma'loula, Hulaula, and Shushtar? :-)

Paul Younan Wrote:Your constant use of "Syriac" instead of "Aramaic" ?

This entire section of your response seems to hinge upon a very grave misunderstanding: The designation of the language of the Peshitta. It's unanimously called "Classical Syriac," distinct from "Middle Syriac" and "Old Syriac." It's no matter of "cloaking" anything, nor is it a political statement on my part. It's an established, academic name that virtually all linguists refer to it by, and a goodly number of them who study it specifically are, by your account, ethnically Assyrian.

"Aramaic" like "English" is a very broad brush that many people take for granted. Very few people who are not trained in Old Englisc can crack Beowulf, or the Winchester Chronicle open to random page and make sense of it without a translation, let alone pronounce it properly (and Beowulf is only 1,000 years old). The same with Chaucer in its original form.

In any case, I lack the basis to formulate an agenda on this matter, and I unilaterally refuse to couch anything in terms of your proposed "us vs them" as I am party to neither "side" (it's not my fight; I'm my own "side," tout seul). To say anything else is chasing windmills.

Overall, however, this even further distracts (if that's possible) from the topic at hand, and that is the potentiality for the Peshitta missing puns and wordplay due to dialectical differences.

These differences exist. I've demonstrated a shibboleth in the extant corpus that's beyond unlikely to happen by mere chance (and is one of many I could expound upon; but let's focus on this one) and due to that shibboleth, a plain wordplay would exist in nearly any other relevant dialect *but* the dialect of the Peshitta (because that's simply how the language works). So naturally we don't find it there. This is a wordplay that a number of scholars have remarked upon from a variety of angles.

This is not something to dismiss offhand as a fribble for the various reasons and diversions you've stated above, but something to take a bit more seriously in the context of Peshitta studies. :-)

Peace,
-Steve
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#18
Quote:I suppose that "Edessian letters" in the time period of 78 AD in and around Edessa would refer to Old Syriac script (which eventually developed into classical Estrangela forms). Something similar to the Birecik inscription and Helene of Adiabene's tomb (although we have no examples of *penned* Syriac scripts [i.e. on parchment or papyrus] until the 3rd century, so that style would be slightly different from those carved forms).

That language, too, is designated "Old Syriac" (not to be directly confused with the Old Syriac Gospels, and as opposed to "Middle Syriac" starting around the 3rd Century and the "Classical Syriac" of the Peshitta).

+++

Thanks for the response Steve,

Q: If it wasn?t the Aramaic of the Peshitta New Testament, as seen in the Manuscripts, such as the Yonan and the Khabouris, then why does Mar Elia III, who was Patriarch of the Church of the East from 1176-1190 A.D. in one of his Homilies, give witness to an ?old Edessian Gospel? which he saw sitting on the Altar of Mar Sawrisho in the city of Baghdad, where he states that it was better than any of the new copies with no missing letters, and which bore the date of 78 A.D., (?year 389 of the Greeks?) handwritten by Mar Akhai companion of Mar Mari, the disciple of Mar Adai (Thaddeus) the Apostle?

?Better than any new copies????

Copies of what? The Aramaic New Testament in the 12th century, which he was familiar with? This ?Edessian Gospel? was used in a Church in Baghdad 1,100 years after it was given to the Church of Edessa in 78 A.D. by companions of the Apostles.

Look at the thread called ?Earliest known date attached to four Gospels? where all this is discussed in detail.

Shlama,
Chuck
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#19
Akhi Steve,

You state in one breathe that saying "potential/hypothetical pun" ( for the sake of accuracy) would be an over bearing over-qualification, yet in the rest of your post you insist on being extra detailed in minutia such as differentiating between the mlhaso and malula dialects. You can't have it both ways. Either be specific in both cases, or vague in both.

You can be convinced in your alleged wordplay without being dogmatic in positively stating that it is a missed pun. Someone reading your post, who doesn't know any better, might assume that it must be true. Or that there must be something other than pure conjecture behind the statement.

The fact remains that even the small amount of Aramaic preserved in the GNT is identical to what you call "Classical Syriac." Even in cases where glosses occur, it is for clarification of an A/B scenario.

For your information, yes in addition to my own Tkhuma dialect I also have family (uncles, aunts, brother-in laws, etc) and close personal friends with whom I regularly and easily converse in Jilu, Tyari, Urmi, Baz, Elkosh and even Turoyo. I won't lie and claim I've ever met anyone who speaks mlahaso (it's nearly dead, if not already dead) nor anyone from Malula (which is more influenced by Arabic than Aramaic.)

The fact is Aramaic has always been fragmented, today and even more so in Christ's time. But what you call "mutual intelligibility" is simply a matter of exposure and practice. People in our community are more comfortable in switching dialects than you think. And people were back then as well, as evidenced by the different people with whom Christ conversed). The evidence is in the scripture and in the evangelizing of multiple areas of Aramaic speaking peoples.

+Shamasha
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#20
Shlama Akhi Steve

While we're on the topic of puns/word plays that work only in one dialect (according to your criteria), let us discuss a real (not hypothetical) one.

Can you please give your educated opinion on James 3:18 ?

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Are you aware of any "Galilean" Aramaic usage of Shayna that would fit in this very nice wordplay with seed and "peace/cultivated land"? (Supported later with the wordplay on the familiar Shlama)

According to your work on CAL, the word Shayna is not attested to outside the "Syriac" dialect.

Thank you.

+Shamasha
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#21
Shlama' Younan and Steve

After your "disputatio" about the dialect of Jesus, I want to know your opinion : Did Jesus use one ?international? dialect with maybe some dialectal adaptations (Jesus would have use a single dialect in Galilee, Samaria, Judea and was understood) or did Jesus use several dialects according to the place where he was preaching (he used Galilean in Galilee, Samaritan Aramaic in Samaria to be understood)?

John the Baptist (a Judean and not a Galilean according to Luke 1:39) would have used the same dialect as Jesus?

And if you have some texts testimoniing the galilean dialect, I'd be habby to know them.... <!-- s:biggrin: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/biggrin.gif" alt=":biggrin:" title="Big Grin" /><!-- s:biggrin: -->
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#22
memradya Wrote:Shlama' Younan and Steve

After your "disputatio" about the dialect of Jesus, I want to know your opinion : Did Jesus use one ?international? dialect with maybe some dialectal adaptations (Jesus would have use a single dialect in Galilee, Samaria, Judea and was understood) or did Jesus use several dialects according to the place where he was preaching (he used Galilean in Galilee, Samaritan Aramaic in Samaria to be understood)?

John the Baptist (a Judean and not a Galilean according to Luke 1:39) would have used the same dialect as Jesus?

And if you have some texts testimoniing the galilean dialect, I'd be habby to know them.... <!-- s:biggrin: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/biggrin.gif" alt=":biggrin:" title="Big Grin" /><!-- s:biggrin: -->

Hi Memradya,

I've mentioned this several times before. All major languages have local dialects, and (at least) one (sometimes, more) "koine" dialects. When people of mixed dialects converse, they revert to a standard "koine" that is usually the base of all the others. Or, if they are in the minority of the group they are conversing with, they switch to the dialect that the rest of the group is talking in.

I only use my Tkhuma dialect with family members, or members of my Tkhuma tribe. Out of courtesy to others, if they aren't accustomed to my dialect (many in my church parish speak the Urmi dialect), then I switch to that one for their sake.

Jesus not only spoke multiple dialects of Aramaic with people from Galilee, Samaria, Judea, Jordan and Syria ... but He also very likely spoke Greek and Latin to Pilate and soldiers, etc. There is no one dialect of Aramaic that Jesus was constrained to.

Was Eusebius of Caesarea an idiot for thinking that King Abgar and Jesus could actually communicate and understand one another? Eusebius saw the letters himself. Was the correspondence between the two in the Chinese language? Was he that uneducated, as to not know if they couldn't understand each others' Aramaic dialects?

+Shamasha
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#23
Thirdwoe Wrote:Q: If it wasn?t the Aramaic of the Peshitta New Testament, as seen in the Manuscripts, such as the Yonan and the Khabouris, then why does Mar Elia III, who was Patriarch of the Church of the East from 1176-1190 A.D. in one of his Homilies, give witness to an ?old Edessian Gospel? which he saw sitting on the Altar of Mar Sawrisho in the city of Baghdad, where he states that it was better than any of the new copies with no missing letters, and which bore the date of 78 A.D., (?year 389 of the Greeks?) handwritten by Mar Akhai companion of Mar Mari, the disciple of Mar Adai (Thaddeus) the Apostle?

?Better than any new copies????

Copies of what? The Aramaic New Testament in the 12th century, which he was familiar with? This ?Edessian Gospel? was used in a Church in Baghdad 1,100 years after it was given to the Church of Edessa in 78 A.D. by companions of the Apostles.

"New copies" is curious as then my question is "Which one?" there were 4 subsequent editions after the Peshitta by that time. The Philoxenian, the Harklean, and at least two others that were not named. Andreas Juckel from the University of M?nster did some serious work on this. From what I understand from seeing him at the Hugoye Symposium back in 2010 where he was showing the extensive work he's done on dating Peshitta manuscripts, he's also working on a critical edition of the Peshitta New Testament (with full apparatus, showing variants, etc.).

Anyways, each of the subsequent revisions were much more literal translations from Greek into Syriac (the Harklean even had an extensive apparatus with notes), and as a result a lot less fluid, which is why they never "stuck." In 78 it could not be the Peshitta, as the Peshitta is in too young of a dialect (the consensus is that the form it's in today is 5th century, being compiled over the late 3rd and 4th; it's Middle/Classical not Old Syriac).

The only possibility left under established consensus -- if we were to take Mar Elia III's account at face value, as we cannot examine this manuscript ourselves -- is perhaps an unknown Old Syriac edition, older than what we call "the Old Syriac Gospels" by quite some time (which are actually on the cusp of Old Syriac into Middle Syriac).

The only other possibility is that he was simply mistaken, or the colophon was fabricated. (Like they say about pieces of the True Cross, if you were to gather them up together, you could build Noah's Ark.)

I'm going to assume that regardless of what transpired that Mar Elia was not intending to deceive anyone, but today we have no way of knowing what that manuscript was in relation to his preference. There are too many possibilities. :-)


+++++


Paul Younan Wrote:Akhi Steve,

You state in one breathe that saying "potential/hypothetical pun" ( for the sake of accuracy) would be an over bearing over-qualification, yet in the rest of your post you insist on being extra detailed in minutia such as differentiating between the mlhaso and malula dialects. You can't have it both ways. Either be specific in both cases, or vague in both.


If you have a problem with my argument, please address the argument, not its window-dressing. Focusing upon presentation in this manner blurs the subject and is a red herring. :-)

Paul Younan Wrote:You can be convinced in your alleged wordplay without being dogmatic in positively stating that it is a missed pun. Someone reading your post, who doesn't know any better, might assume that it must be true. Or that there must be something other than pure conjecture behind the statement.

Category error. My work isn't "pure conjecture." If it were pure conjecture, there would be no linguistic basis for it. I'm not simply "making stuff up," I'm working with an established corpus in comparison to another corpus. :-)

I am additionally not going to assume that my audience is so uncritical that I need to "spoon-feed" them.

So please, let's let this be the last of this distraction. This marginal discussion has been enough of a disclaimer for anyone who reads the thread.

Paul Younan Wrote:The fact remains that even the small amount of Aramaic preserved in the GNT is identical to what you call "Classical Syriac." Even in cases where glosses occur, it is for clarification of an A/B scenario.

Yes, the small portions retained are also identical to nearly every other dialect from the first millenium as it contains very common words. That doesn't narrow it down. :-)

Additionally, the Peshitta *does* make clarifications *into* more "native" Syriac, so it's not quite as "identical" as you make it out to be. :-)

Paul Younan Wrote:For your information, yes in addition to my own Tkhuma dialect I also have family (uncles, aunts, brother-in laws, etc) and close personal friends with whom I regularly and easily converse in Jilu, Tyari, Urmi, Baz, Elkosh and even Turoyo. I won't lie and claim I've ever met anyone who speaks mlahaso (it's nearly dead, if not already dead) nor anyone from Malula (which is more influenced by Arabic than Aramaic.)

The fact is Aramaic has always been fragmented, today and even more so in Christ's time. But what you call "mutual intelligibility" is simply a matter of exposure and practice. People in our community are more comfortable in switching dialects than you think. And people were back then as well, as evidenced by the different people with whom Christ conversed). The evidence is in the scripture and in the evangelizing of multiple areas of Aramaic speaking peoples.

Yes, and Jilu, Tyari, Urmi, Baz, and Elkosh are all subdialects of Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, and I have heard some native speakers refer to some of them as "accents" (so I am assuming very high intelligibility).

I assume that Turoyo gives you some difficulty, as it contains grammatical structures and lots of vocab that doesn't occur in other dialects (such as the re-invention of the definite article). When I hear Turoyo I must write it down to make sense of it, myself.

Ma'loula is not mutually intelligible to any of the dialects you've listed. Even the subdialects of Bakh'a and Jub'addin (which are Musilim Neo-Aramaic) have some difficulty understanding each other as they contain phonemes that Ma'loula proper does not.

Hulaula is a Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialect that is intelligible with Lishanid Noshan, and Lishan Didan groups, but little else. Jewish Neo-Aramaic and Christian Neo-Aramaic dialects that "grew up" in the very same villages tended not to be mutually intelligible, even if they shared the same mother dialects.

Shushtar is Mandaic Neo-Aramaic and is rather unique, but largely intelligible with other Mandaic Neo-Aramaic dialects.

I never mentioned Mlahso. It is, for all intents and purposes, dead. :-(

None of these are very well intelligible to my own home dialect that I speak with my kids. The closest living relation is Ma'loula, but what I speak is like book Latin to them.

In any case, switching dialects between the same subfamily isn't as difficult as switching between subfamilies. A better example: I can speak Standard American English, Lowland Scots, Estuary English, and South Jersey English pretty well, too (although the latter is more of what *I* consider an "accent" rather than a separate dialect, although there are a number of vocab differences). British English (mostly urban) and American English are also seeing increasing exposure and overlap due to mass media and are beginning to grow together again.

Some dialects of English I can understand, but cannot possibly speak. For example, I grew up in an Episcopal Church where there were a lot of speakers of Jamaican, Haitian and other Caribbean English dialects, and I am able to follow the cadence and idiom very well. But bugger-all when I try to reproduce it. :-)

Some dialects of English, such as Manxenglish, or Igbo-English give me quite a bit of difficulty on both ends (understanding *and* speaking; and back in my college years I had an Igbo-English-speaking professor... it was madness).

Aramaic, indeed, was starting to split apart in Jesus' day. It's nothing like it is in modern times, though. But 2,000 years does that to language.

Paul Younan Wrote:Can you please give your educated opinion on James 3:18 ?

Are you aware of any "Galilean" Aramaic usage of Shayna that would fit in this very nice wordplay with seed and "peace/cultivated land"? (Supported later with the wordplay on the familiar Shlama)

According to your work on CAL, the word Shayna is not attested to outside the "Syriac" dialect.

No pun is necessary here to make sense of this passage in Galilean, although I can see exactly why a Peshitta scribe would choose /$yn)/.

This is because "sewing peace" is an established idiom, but not one you find in Syriac (or on the CAL :-) ). For example /zr( $lmh bynyhwn/ = "He sewed peace between them" from Dereshot.

Additionally /(bd/ "to make" also means "to produce" or "to yield" as in crops such as /hwwn zr(yn lh xy+yn whwwt (bd) zwnyn/ = "They sewed it (a field) with wheat and it produced weeds." This also happens in Syriac.

Sewing peace and making/yielding peace works perfectly fine in situ in the Greek from an Aramaic perspective. :-)


More later. My time is currently short. :-)


Quick Edit: And once again we're distracted from the focus:

SteveCaruso Wrote:These differences exist. I've demonstrated a shibboleth in the extant corpus that's beyond unlikely to happen by mere chance (and is one of many I could expound upon; but let's focus on this one) and due to that shibboleth, a plain wordplay would exist in nearly any other relevant dialect *but* the dialect of the Peshitta (because that's simply how the language works). So naturally we don't find it there. This is a wordplay that a number of scholars have remarked upon from a variety of angles.

This is not something to dismiss offhand as a fribble for the various reasons and diversions you've stated above, but something to take a bit more seriously in the context of Peshitta studies. :-)
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#24
memradya Wrote:Shlama' Younan and Steve

After your "disputatio" about the dialect of Jesus, I want to know your opinion : Did Jesus use one ?international? dialect with maybe some dialectal adaptations (Jesus would have use a single dialect in Galilee, Samaria, Judea and was understood) or did Jesus use several dialects according to the place where he was preaching (he used Galilean in Galilee, Samaritan Aramaic in Samaria to be understood)?

John the Baptist (a Judean and not a Galilean according to Luke 1:39) would have used the same dialect as Jesus?

And if you have some texts testimoniing the galilean dialect, I'd be habby to know them.... <!-- s:biggrin: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/biggrin.gif" alt=":biggrin:" title="Big Grin" /><!-- s:biggrin: -->

There was no "international dialect" since the splintering of Imperial Aramaic into local dialects. Judean, Galilean and Samaritan, were all quite readily intelligible; however, intelligibility was closest between Galilean and Samaritan, the two being Western dialects as opposed to to Judean which was Eastern. Judean Aramaic speakers are on record finding the language and pronunciation of Galilean and Samaritan odd. Some Rabbis found it even worthy of ridicule, in later times banning Galileans to speak in their own synagogues during services for fear that they'd mispronounce something and offend God, himself (no joke).

In fact, this Eastern-Western divide is why so few Galilean manuscripts (especially from the mid to later Byzantine era) are in such poor condition. The Western Aramaic text was preserved by Eastern Aramaic speaking scribes who, over time, sought to "correct" all of the "errors" in the manuscripts to "proper Aramaic"... not knowing that those "errors" *were* proper Western Aramaic to begin with. (E. Y. Kutscher gives good account of this in "Studies in Galilean Aramaic" where he lists a number of manuscripts that demonstrate the dialect's grammar and quirks; these are Rabbinic works, there are no New Testament manuscripts in Galilean.)

In any case, it's quite likely (most likely even) that Jesus used his own dialect to preach, regardless of where he was and there is some evidence for that in the New Testament (as his followers were known for being Galileans by their speech). He would also know a few Latin and Greek loan words, but the Galilean dialect had assimilated a number of those for a while. As an illustration, a friend of mine who speaks American English went to the University of Glasgow for 4 years. He took his classes speaking in American English, gave his dissertation in American English, graduated without problem. He never once had to don Scottish English, himself, to get by. As a result, there was occasional confusion when he would use American idioms or miss Scottish idioms, and he was immediately identifiable as an American. Using Scottish English idioms were novel, and he avoided them as it usually got him an odd look (who was this American trying to speak like a Scot? :-) ). He also came home speaking American English.

Now, if he had to take his classes in Highland Scots, that dialect is far enough away to cause difficulty to the untrained ear. He would have to take classes just to understand his coursework if that were the case, or work through an interpreter.

Modern Aramaic dialects are vastly different from each other, like how Romance Languages (as I mentioned earlier) evolved away from Vulgar Latin. Much more different than between Galilean, Samaritan, and Judean Aramaic of Jesus' day. However, some words just weren't found in any of those dialects as they were coined outside of their borders, and therefore would be -- logically -- rather odd to hear on Jesus' lips. Likewise, known idioms and vocabulary in his mother dialect in that environment -- logically -- would have been common. :-)

More later. :-)
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#25
Steve Caruso Wrote:No pun is necessary here to make sense of this passage in Galilean, although I can see exactly why a Peshitta scribe would choose /$yn)/.

This is because "sewing peace" is an established idiom, but not one you find in Syriac (or on the CAL :-) ). For example /zr( $lmh bynyhwn/ = "He sewed peace between them" from Dereshot.

Additionally /(bd/ "to make" also means "to produce" or "to yield" as in crops such as /hwwn zr(yn lh xy+yn whwwt (bd) zwnyn/ = "They sewed it (a field) with wheat and it produced weeds." This also happens in Syriac.

Sewing peace and making/yielding peace works perfectly fine in situ in the Greek from an Aramaic perspective. :-)


More later. My time is currently short. :-)

I hope so. You still didn't answer the question. $-y-n-) is unattested to in Galilean. It's purely "Syriac." That's the whole point. (your example of /zr( $lmh bynyhwn/ is irrelevant - $-l-m is a common lexeme in all Aramaic dialects).

The use by James of $-y-n-) is deliberate. How can that be so, if he was writing in Galilean ?

+Shamasha
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#26
Shlama'

I've written a post, but it seems it has gone away <!-- s:angry: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/angry.gif" alt=":angry:" title="Angry" /><!-- s:angry: -->

To summerize it: Jesus used severals dialects, yes but how could have he spoken in samaritan aramaic with the samaritan women (in John 4) ? The jews and Samaritans didn't talk together, so where Jesus have learnt it? And to Steve, if Jesus used sevarals dialects, what need to reconstruct his galilean dialect ? The Christian's St Thomas used syriac (the name of thieir fonction shows it) ,before the nestorian's proselitism. So the apostles could have composed themselves a gospel in syriac. And no gospels would show the exaxt dialects of the speakers, if it was the case, the Pilatos' words would have been kept in Greek, in the aramaic gospels... So the gospels haven't to show the puns to be the original one...
(very summerized)
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#27
Friends,

This is how I understand Pauls explanation. He meets people with several Aramaic dialects and they understand each other.

I for instance, can understand Belgium-Dutch and also South African 'Dutch'. I even can 'emulate' their speach but this does not feel natural to me. So, if Jesus spoke Gallilean dialect, he certainly could speak Samaritan and the Syrians, the northern neighbours as well. And Judean was the Southern border. It's no problem at all.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjdfHTjkbHs">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjdfHTjkbHs</a><!-- m -->
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-BYEsElq5E">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-BYEsElq5E</a><!-- m -->

Keefa (Peter) was recognized by his dialect, and not because he was not speaking a *different* language. <!-- sSmile --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="Smile" title="Smile" /><!-- sSmile -->
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#28
Shlama,


to me, the pun is so obvious, i just can't see the promotion of it not being intended. there are other examples of the play on "sons/stone/build" in the Peshitta that could be brought forth from other books, which gives evidence that the pun was apparent and used by those who were speaking the language everyday. who cares what anybody says differently 2000 years removed? the text speaks for itself, if we have ears to hear. <!-- s:listen: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/listen.gif" alt=":listen:" title="Listen" /><!-- s:listen: -->

if you're interested in an outside source of Aramaic puns that are somewhat close to the time of Messiah, read portions of the Talmud/Mishnah, and see similar punning taking place. rabbis could apparently easily converse with Samaritans and Galileans, even to the point of punning on each other's words. look at the books of Exodus and Proverbs, for example, where there is even cross-language punning taking place! these people weren't dolts - they lived in an intensely variated culture, with languages and dialects galore, and their written works not only show this to be so, but uphold the reality that such diversity wasn't such an immediate problem for these people.

Chayim b'Moshiach,
Jeremy
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#29
Excellent points Akhay.

I think Steve is either not understanding my question, or intentionally ignoring the ramifications to his viewpoint.

Shayna is a purely "Syriac" term. It is unattested in any other Aramaic dialect.

I've used Akhan Steve's own criteria and logic. Except, my example really exists - in a primary text. His example (or I should say, the example of memdraya) does not exist in any written primary text. It's purely hypothetical.

Here is a word that is purely "Syriac" (as he and his fellows like to call it, I and all Assyrians I know hate the term). How can Yaqub, the brother of our Lord, be using a purely "Syriac" term to convey the word imagery? What happened to this mythical Galilean that was so different as to make the Aramaic of the Peshitta not "good enough?"

Akhi Steve, for every one hypothetical missed pun or wordplay you find that you attribute to an underlying "Galilean" dialect, I'll find five more that can't possibly work except in "Syriac." Except my examples will come from a real textual source, not hypothetical words I place in Christ's speech.

Deal?

+Shamasha
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#30
Shlama'

I'm happy with the answers (a possible pun doesn't mean that it must exist) . But I don't think that Steve agrees with that. I think he will say: why the peshitta is in edessian dialect and not in galilean ? It makes me think about: According to Francis Alichoran , the Peshitta has some tendencies that shows galilee's aramaic and judean's dialect with his hebrew influence.
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