In a word: No.
In a few more words…
This claim has been circulating the Internet lately. It’s been on Brietbart, it’s been on Before It’s News, it’s spreading through Twitter and the rest of the Internet.
ISIS cannot, no matter how hard it tries, eliminate Aramaic. Aramaic is not a single language, but an entire family of languages. Sadly, the dialect spoken by Jesus is already dead. (Well, outside what I speak with my kids in reconstruction, but that doesn’t make it “living” by any means.) It died as a living language in the 6th and 7th centuries with Arab Conquest.
However, ISIS can certainly extinguish a few of the smaller Neo-Aramaic dialects if they strive to, which in some cases consist of a single surviving village — and let me not be equivocal about this: That is a serious problem.
Most Neo-Aramaic languages are severely endangered as it is and in the past 100 years we’ve seen dozens die due to violence (like this) or simply migration and adoption of another language (most Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects have been lost due to immigration to Israel and the adoption of Modern Hebrew). These language are certainly related (the dialect in Ma’loula the closest by lineage) but none of these are the language Jesus actually spoke.
Syriac Aramaic is the language of the liturgy of the Syriac Church (Syriac Orthodox, Chaldean Catholic, Assyrian, etc.) and recited every Sunday. That’s not going anywhere. Jewish Literary Aramaic is used in the Jewish liturgy nearly every Sabbath, and that’s not going anywhere either. There are Aramaic-speaking diasporas all over the place. Aramaic is global, and ISIS is not.
Peace,
-Steve
Shalom Steve,
What can you say about this article? http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicamisener/the-10-coolest-dead-languages
What can you say to some people who were say that hebrew, aramaic and greek are dead languages? Some people often say that studying of original languages isn’t necessary because it is already translated in english and for them, it is enough if you have english bible.
I find it neat that buzzfeed has a picture of Targum Neofiti as their example for Aramaic. 🙂
The Biblical counterparts to those language families — Biblical Hebrew, Biblical Aramaic, and Koine Greek — are all indeed “dead.” They are no longer spoken by any community as their day-to-day language. They all have modern counterparts, however, which are unintelligible with their ancient cousins and *are* spoken by large communities.
When it comes to understanding the original languages of any document, however, I tend to use the following metaphor: If you’re a fan of Jules Verne, you have lots of media at your fingertips. His complete works in English are available for free in dozens of formats from paper to e-books and a large number of movies and dramatical interpretations exist as his work is constantly re-interpreted for each generation.
However, if you are serious about getting to understand Verne as a *person* (trying to get inside his head and see through his eyes) you read his works in their original *French*. There is nuance that cannot easily come across in any translation (indeed, there are a number of translations that are quite obtuse due to this) nor are any of these things realized by every dramatic representation (for dramatic representations are seen through the lens of their directors).
The Bible in English can only get you so far. By reading it in your native tongue, you’re relying upon the expertise of hundreds of scholars who are trying to distill the text down to something anyone can more-or-less understand. However, much is lost in this process and due to the nature of it compromises are *always* made. 🙂
Peace,
-Steve
I have noticed that text being used in hebrew and aramaic there are similar. I thought aramaic has its own alphabet? Im just confused because the text of aramaic is the same with hebrew text.
The Hebrew alphabet is actually derived from Aramaic and this form is loosely referred to as “Block Script” or “Square Script” or “Ashuri” (“Assyrian” letters). During the Exile to Babylon, when the Jews adopted the Aramaic language as a matter of necessity and survival, they adopted the writing system along with it and subsequently adapted it to write Hebrew. Before that time, Hebrew was written in a script *much* like Phoenician.
Subsequently, the largest Christian dialects of Aramaic (by number of speakers) settled in the Syriac family which had already developed the Estrangela script and in the 5th century the further Madnhaya (Eastern) and Serto (Western) scripts.
So because of this, the vast majority of Jewish Aramaic is written in the exact same alphabet as Hebrew. Think of it as how Spanish and Portuguese share the same alphabet, but are distinct languages.
Peace,
-Steve