As shown in recent studies, East Syriac colophons were rather standardised, at least in the Ottoman period, and they incorporated into the main colophon body not only prose passages, but also poetic ones. The current article discusses one such passage that occurs in both prose and poetic forms in various manuscripts, namely the topos of ‘the five twins that pulled a yoke from the forest through the

The verb √šmt and noun šamata, attested in the dialects of Eastern Aramaic in the Sasanian period, would seem at first to be synonymous with the Palestinian term nidui, ‘excommunication’. However, a closer examination reveals that šamata has a different semantic value. It is not simply conceived as a social sanction of excommunication but is understood as a curse involving divine violence; is closely

In the Aramaic of Daniel, the imperfect expresses past situations 29 times. Scholars have long wrestled with these past time uses, and although important contributions have been made along the way, one of the most salient semantic issues that arise with these uses—the semantic intersection of imperfective aspect and telicity—has been overlooked. This study addresses this issue directly by providing

In recent literature, the noun ‮ܫܡܝܐ‬‎ has been described as a singular in the book of Isaiah, ostensibly on the basis of the lack of syame. I will argue to the contrary, demonstrating that it should be described as a plural in this corpus. The key to proper interpretation of the form is agreement with other clausal and phrasal constituents, not the presence or absence of syame.

The present article presents a synchronic description of the morphology of adjectives in the highly endangered Neo-Aramaic dialects of ʿAqra in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. It discusses the morphology of adjectives in these dialects as used in the sixties of the last century. In particular, the article highlights adjectival patterns, inflectional features, and the adaptation of loanwords from Kurdish

Many have assumed that Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (TgPsJ) is the product of first millennium Palestine. This study presents evidence suggesting that TgPsJ is neither from the first millennium, nor from Palestine. TgPsJ displays an unawareness of some basic facts with regard to the geography of the land of Israel, which makes the argument for its author being a native of Palestine unpersuasive. Excerpts

The date of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan has been the occasion of much controversy, with propositions ranging from the Second Temple period to the time of the Crusades. Related to the Targum is the late midrashic work Pirqe deRabbi Eliezer (eighth century), but the nature of this relationship is disputed. The present article proposes that the Targum depends unilaterally on PRE, based on two principal arguments:

The Cairo Geniza has yielded 650+ manuscripts (all fragmentary, of course) of the book of Samuel. A survey of those documents reveals a number of places with variant readings, especially when compared to the great medieval codices: Aleppo (A) and St Petersburg (L). The present article demonstrates that many of these variant readings are reflected in Targum Jonathan and in the Peshitta.

This article argues that the Qumran pesharim and TgJon originate from a common, though internally varied, elite intellectual tradition with a priestly character. This tradition developed particular interests, e.g. messianism and eschatology, and transmitted individual textual and interpretative traditions. As it appears, this tradition has pre-70 CE roots, but continued after the destruction of the

This study examines six manners in which rabbinic literature and Targum Psalms interact. 1. An earlier rabbinic tradition provides the backdrop against which the Targum’s translation must be understood. 2. The Targum applies a tradition it uses to translate one part of a psalm towards translating another verse in that same psalm. 3. The Targum revises earlier rabbinic traditions to suit its own ideological

Jewish Palestinian Aramaic was the language of the Jews of Palestine and is identifiable from around the third or fourth centuries CE until the last centuries of the first millennium, by which time it was completely displaced in speech by Arabic. This article surveys its origins and subsequent stages of development, chronologically from Palestinian Targumic to Palestinian Talmudic to Late Jewish Literary

This article presents a full edition, with translation and detailed commentary, of SyrHT 1 and SyrHT 388, the only two Syriac medical fragments found in Turfan. Based on a re-examination of the original text, this article shows that the Turfan fragments have parallels in Galen’s De compositione medicamentorum secundum locos and contain elements of Hippocratic recipes as well. This adds further evidence

This article discusses the status of spirantisation in the Aramaic of Arabia based on transcriptions in Safaitic and other ancient Arabian languages. I suggest that ‘Arabian’ Aramaic pronunciation stems from an archaic variety of the language introduced by the Babylonians and Achaemenids in the mid-first millennium BCE. This variety lacked post-vocalic spirantisation and formed the basis for the local

The manuscript Heb. 110 of the National Library in Paris (=Ms Paris 110) has long been considered by many targumic scholars to be the best manuscript for the Aramaic targums to the Hagiographa, mainly due to its many prominent and consistent Palestinian linguistic features. This article discusses the peculiarities of Ms Paris 110 in comparison with many other earlier manuscripts, and shows that many

On the whole, the verb yhb ‘give’ occurs in suppletion with ntn in Pre-Modern Aramaic: the former is found in the perfect, participle, and imperative, and the latter in the imperfect and infinitive. There are exceptions in some corpora. Only yhb, however, has survived into Neo-Aramaic, where it is attested in all varieties of the language. This article traces the use of both roots in the history of

The provenance of the opening Aramaic portion of the Passover Haggadah has confounded practitioners and scholars for centuries. Little evidence has come to light to explain the origins of this passage or the fluctuations in its attending practices over time. This article argues that additional evidence, found in some neglected Talmudic manuscripts and in incantation bowls, reveals that the core recitational

This article examines a Syriac historiographical writing of the late eighth century—the so-called Zuqnin Chronicle, or the Chronicle of Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell Maḥre—and certain lexical features that are found at the end of the work. It is argued that these lexical items were drawn into the chronicle from a colloquial Aramaic language spoken in the vicinity of Amid, and that this colloquial variant

This article compares the Targum with Masoretic cantillations. The comparison between the different reading traditions shows agreement in everything concerning the division between one verse and the next. Usually, there is agreement in the division within each verse as well, particularly when both the cantillations and the Targum respond to an ideological or exegetical problem in the text. Juxtaposing

Few studies have focused on the Aramaic of the Zohar, and to this day, only one of these presents a completed grammatical analysis. Scholars have dealt at large, however, with the question of whether the Aramaic of the Zohar is artificial or not. I briefly review the history of the literature around this question, then propose my own criteria to examine whether a language of a given text is indeed

Syriac literature exhibits interest in narratives associated with the Maccabees by the fourth century. Seventh-century manuscripts preserve two different Syriac translations of 1 Maccabees. The translation of this book into Syriac is not part of the Peshitta Old Testament translated from the Hebrew Bible in the second century CE. Its dating and the possible context for its production have not yet been

This article examines the lexical class of interjections in Biblical Aramaic through the framework of an interjectional prototype and its functional (semantic and pragmatic) and formal (phonetic, morphological, and syntactic) characteristics. The authors analyse eight interjectional lexemes or constructional patterns, attested in twenty-four uses, for their compliance to the canonical prototype. The

Scholars have traditionally categorised early Syriac manuscripts as either Estrangela or Serto. The same categories dominate the prevailing narrative of how Syriac script is thought to have developed. Most see Estrangela as the earliest strata of Syriac and Serto as a later development. More recent scholarship explores how early manuscripts support neither this stark division between script styles

The Syriac version of 1 Macc. that is preserved in Codex Ambrosianus (7a1) is very different from the one attested in the rest of the manuscripts of the Peshitta. This double attestation is typically explained by a hypothesis first put forward by G. Schmidt in 1897 that sees the version of 7a1 (Syr-2) as a revision of the original Syriac translation (Syr-1), which is the one attested in the majority

In this essay, the varieties of refrain structures used in the body of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic poetry from late antiquity provide a laboratory for examining the intersection of acclamation structures and piyyutim. The fact that these poems were written in the vernacular of the community rather than in Hebrew complicates our understanding of their performative setting but at the same time may make

This article examines in detail an Aramaic poem from M. Sokoloff’s and J. Yahalom’s magisterial Jewish Palestinian Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity (SYAP) (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1999). It begins by offering a translation of the entire poem along with an overview of some of the poem’s key linguistic features. It then moves to an analysis of the poem’s literary artistry

The author of the first poem of a manuscript from the Cairo Geniza, CUL T-S H14.64, used the verses in Lamentations 1 as a technical device to frame his poem, while he found a variety of ways to connect the stanzas of the poem with verses from Lamentations and other biblical verses. He linked the stanzas of the poem forward and backward through themes and language that are significant in the poem as

One of the most significant themes shared by the studies in this issue is intertextuality. Several authors conduct systematic analyses of the relationship between Aramaic poems and their biblical antecedents, while one study argues that the repetition of refrains in Jewish Aramaic poetry has much in common with the practice of public acclamation in the Greco-Roman world. Each of these studies also

This article presents a critical edition of three Aramaic piyyutim for Purim. The piyyutim are unique in that they were not written in Hebrew, the overwhelmingly dominant language of classical piyyutim, but in a biblicizing register of Aramaic. This puts these piyyutim in conversation with other forms of Jewish Aramaic poetry, namely poems written in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic (JPA). The article includes

This article challenges the assumption that insofar as the Jewish communities of Babylonia were a ‘people of the book’, their book was a Hebrew Bible. Functionally the Bible that most people would have known was the Aramaic Targum of Onqelos and Jonathan. The Bible’s content—its law, narrative, and prophecy—was culturally mediated through Aramaic. Even in Rabbinic communities, where some had competence

Based on palaeography and the supposed relative chronology of the three Aramaic steles from Sefire, various dates in the first half of the 8th century BCE have been proposed for the stele Sefire I. In this article, I propose a new reading in the inscription of part of the name of Aššur-dān III, one of the kings of Assyria from the first half of the 8th century BCE. This new reading, together with other

In Samaritan Aramaic we find the gentilic suffixes -’Cā:y, -’Cā: and -Cāʔi. Originally these suffixes signified different grammatical categories, but eventually they became interchangeable. This article examines all the forms with a gentilic suffix that are documented in the oral tradition of Samaritan Aramaic along with additional data derived from the manuscripts. It is suggested that fluctuations

The first part of this article examined the features that distinguish the language of the earliest Mandaean colophons from Classical Mandaic and demonstrated that many of these features are shared with the contemporary Neo-Mandaic dialects recorded in the research literature since the 20th century. Part 2 presents editions and translations of the source texts with some brief philological notes and

As recent research in the study of manuscripts has demonstrated, variations in the phrasing of a text not only reveal scribal error or play but also indicate how changes to a given passage in different manuscripts convey important interpretive traditions. In this article, I explore one such case in TgJon to Isa. 10:32. First, I examine how key features (or the lack thereof) in the biblical text of

This pilot study outlines the diverse and at times interwoven textual traditions of the story of Susanna in the Syriac Bible. There are three different versions of the story aside from the Syrohexapla and the revision of Jacob of Edessa, namely the ‘Peshitta’ version, another here dubbed ‘Sinai Susanna’, and finally the so-called ‘Harklean’ version. This paper seeks to describe the kinds of relationships

In Aramaic, the productive causative (= C) stem can be reconstructed as *hapˁil- (suffix-conjugation) ~ *yVhapˁil- (prefix-conjugation) with *h as the causative morpheme. There are, however, also traces in Aramaic of what seems to be a non-productive C-stem in which the causative morpheme is š (< Proto-Semitic *s1). This šap̄ˁel, as it is called, was traditionally thought to result from contact with

Although folk etymology is a common linguistic phenomenon, it has hitherto hardly been touched upon in lexicological and other works related to varieties of Neo-Aramaic. The present article concerns twelve cases of folk etymology selected from some of the dialects of North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA), the largest and most variegated division of modern Aramaic. Among these are three folk-etymological

For the first time, we provide a comprehensive and annotated list of 74 certain, likely, and possible Greek loanwords in Samaritan Aramaic, paying due attention to the variegated distribution of the loans in the different textual genres and chronological stages of the dialect. Greek loanwords in Jewish and Christian Palestinian Aramaic as well as Rabbinic Hebrew are compared throughout. The study provides

In the present article we aim to describe the distribution and functions of preposed and postposed paronomastic infinitives in literary and spoken varieties of North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA). In the first part, the syntax and the function(s) of constructions involving a paronomastic infinitive will be described from a typological point of view. Syntactic and functional variation of NENA paronomastic

This paper examines some aspects of the morphology and syntax of the copula in the North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) dialects. The first part proposes a possible pathway for the diachronic development of the morphology of the copula, with particular attention to the innovative inflection of the 3rd person. It is argued that this originated in deictic constructions that were reanalysed as deictic copulas

A language such as Neo-Aramaic, the use of which has tended to diminish with each generation since World War I, is liable to undergo rapid change. This article presents and analyses some of the differences in the speech of three successive generations of a family of speakers of the Jilu dialect of Neo-Aramaic.

Neo-Mandaic [NM] is a direct descendant of a dialect very close to its classical predecessor. By the time the earliest surviving Mandaean manuscripts were copied, spoken Mandaic already showed many of the developments that distinguish the modern vernaculars from the classical language. This article, the first of two, identifies those features. The second article presents the texts and a brief assessment

The ethical dative (dativus ethicus) has been attested without interruption in Aramaic dialects from the Official Aramaic period down through Neo-Aramaic. The extent and durability of this linguistic feature is discussed. Though its frequency differs from corpus to corpus, it is alive in some Neo-Aramaic dialects and its distribution in Modern Aramaic suggests that it was more widespread in pre-Modern

While the Hebrew Bible does not specify the duration of Rebekah’s barrenness, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (TgPsJ) Gen. 25:21 introduces a comment that Rebekah was barren for twenty-two years. This appears to produce an inconsistency, both between the Hebrew Bible and TgPsJ, and within the TgPsJ narrative itself. Two references to Isaac’s age—in the context of his relationship to Rebekah—seem to suggest

Previous research has argued that the Old Syriac and Peshitta Gospels tend to follow the Old Testament Peshitta to render Old Testament quotations, a practice that supposedly goes back to Tatian’s Diatessaron. This article argues that this conclusion should be reconsidered. At least in the rendering of the Isaiah quotations, the Old Syriac, and especially the Peshitta version of the Gospels, tends

In a box of unpublished Aramaic papyri from the 1906–1907 German excavations of Elephantine there is a small fragment (p. 23141) that uses scribal marks in a margin or vacat to identify a textual edit. This is the first example of Aramaic editorial marks of this type from the Persian period, and demonstrates a previously unidentified scribal practice.

The Targum of Onqelos was the principal pentateuchal targum on which medieval Jews in northern France relied. When Rashbam referenced Onqelos, he used a consistent format composed of four elements. His use of the targum is varied: in most instances, his purpose was lexical. In about one-third of cases, his purpose was exegetical. In three cases, Rashbam cited the targum in order to consider its precise

The present article presents four new linguistic features that link Early-Mandaic and Neo-Mandaic: 1. Diphthongisation and fortition of long vowels ū/ī (ࡈࡁࡅࡊࡕࡀ ṭbukta instead of ࡈࡀࡁࡅࡕࡀ ṭabuta “grace”, ࡀࡓࡁࡉࡊࡕࡉࡍࡊࡉࡀ arbiktinkia instead of ࡀࡓࡁࡉࡕࡉࡍࡊࡉࡀ arbitinkia “four of you [f.pl.]”); 2. Apheresis of y in the gentilic noun ‮יהודיא‬‎ (ࡄࡅࡃࡀࡉࡉࡀ hudaiia “Jews”); 3. Assimilation of z in the root ʾzl (ࡕࡏࡋࡅࡍ

Despite the many advances that have taken place in our understanding of the Hebrew Bible’s Old Iranian terminology, the donor terms of several words have remained elusive. Among them is Biblical Aramaic ‮אֲדַרְגָּזַר‬‎ (Dan. 3:2–3). Proposed Old Iranian etymologies for this word suffer from various phonological and semantic difficulties, rendering them unlikely. This paper proposes that Biblical Aramaic

A growing interest in Syriac science and medicine can be observed in scholarship published over the last decades.1 An impressive wealth of new textual discoveries and studies has been produced, often in the framework of important European research projects, which has facilitated fruitful collaborations between scholars.2 Inspired by this vibrant exchange, the present issue was conceived after the conference

This article challenges a series of common assumptions regarding the Syriac translations of Galen: first, about the quality of the sixth-century Syriac translations; second, about the status and role of Syriac as a scientific language; and, third, about economic forces and the motivation for excellence in translation. Finally, the circumstances that produced so many incorrect assumptions, and permitted

This paper presents the first edition of two leaves with medical content discovered at the beginning of the 20th century in the Qubbet el-Ḫazne of the Great Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. The bifolium contains fragments of pharmaceutical recipes in Syriac that are not known from any previously published work. A brief commentary appended to the critical edition situates these fragments in the Syriac medical

Rendering Hebrew archaic verbal forms was a challenging task for the targumists who translated biblical poetry into Aramaic. Their translational technique reveals at least three aspects of morphosyntax of the verbs in the poetical discourse in Middle and Late Aramaic: a) diachronic shifts in the use of suffix (qtl) and prefix (yqtl) conjugations; b) an influence of the interpretation and the practice

The ubiquitous vocative expression ‮בן־אדם‬‎ (literally ‘son of man’) in the Book of Ezekiel seems to underscore the prophet’s status as a mere mortal. In contrast to the other ancient versions, Targum Jonathan to the Prophets interprets the word ‮אדם‬‎ as a proper noun, and renders the phrase accordingly as ‮בר אדם‬‎ ‘son of Adam’. This translation runs counter to the Targum’s conventional practice

Paris Bibliothèque nationale de France MS Arabe 6734 contains a bilingual Syriac-Arabic text of the Hippocratic Aphorisms. Whereas the Arabic lemmata are clearly taken from Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq’s translation of Galen’s Commentary on the Hippocratic Aphorisms, the Syriac translator has not been identified conclusively. In the Syriac translation, there is a long note on lemma iv. 47 in which the annotator

This article explores some of the translational choices made by Sergius of Res ʿAynā in translating the Greek plant names found in Books VI–VIII of Galen’s treatise On simple drugs into Syriac, and especially as found in the “tables of contents”—or pinakes—which preface these books. These latter took the form of alphabetically ordered lists of Greek phytonyms transliterated into Syriac characters,

Targum Song of Songs contains words from several Aramaic dialects which seemingly should not coexist. This paper is an analysis of the Targum’s lexicon with particular attention given to the dialectal status of each word, and by extension the text as a whole. It is argued that the targumist primarily draws upon words from Targums Onqelos and Jonathan. A second layer of influence includes words from

In this article, I will explore the fortune of Hippocrates in the Syriac alchemical literature. I will investigate a so far unedited Syriac text (MS Cambridge University Library, Mm. 6.29, ff. 133r–134v) that presents Hippocrates as the founder of alchemy and medicine. This text is edited here for the first time, translated into English, and compared with other alchemical writings (both in Syriac and

Neo-Mandaic (NM) is the least known Neo-Aramaic language, despite recent progress in investigations of its grammar and lexicon. Lexicographical coverage of NM is still particularly replete with lacunae, as many of the language’s lexical items and lexical peculiarities remain beyond common scholarly knowledge. The present contribution discusses several hitherto unknown or misrepresented NM lexemes.

This article presents the editio princeps of an Aramaic magic bowl housed in the Pharmacy Museum (Museu da Farmácia), Lisbon. It contains a spell that seeks to grant success in conception and childbirth for Mihranahid daughter of Aḥat. The spell includes what may be the earliest attested quotation of Gen. 30.22, as well as the often-quoted Zech. 3.2. It also contains an unambiguous rendering of the

Over many decades the references to ‘Aram’ in the Aramaic inscription Sefire I A, 5–6 have been interpreted as referring to a geographical location. Various scholars have proposed different solutions for the identification of this region. Nevertheless, a parallel formula, which appears in some Neo-Assyrian adê-texts, sheds new light on the meaning of ‘Aram’ in the Sefire inscription.