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Mel Gibson Says ‘Resurrection of the Christ’ Not in Aramaic Because the Story Is Too “Complex” for Subtitles

🔗 https://www.worldofreel.com/blog/2026/8/9/mel-gibson-explains-why-the-resurrection-of-the-christ-wont-be-in-aramaic

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Ashkenazi Jews

Author’s Note: This post has mentions of Nazis, the Holocaust, & Nazi Germany. We completely understand if you wish to skip over this post. We’ll catch you in the next one!

Also known as Ashkenazic Jews, Ashkenazis, or Ashkenazim.

This is a form of distinct ethnic subdivision of the Jewish Diaspora. Emerging from the Jewish communities that consolidated during the 10th century in the Rhineland (Western Germany) & northern France. They migrated there from centers such as the Italian peninsula & the Southern Levant. This includes present-day Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, & Jordan.

After numerous massacres of Jews during the Crusades (11th-13th centuries), they began a gradual eastward migration due to mounting restrictions within the Holy Roman Empire & the favorable policies of Casimir the Great & others.

This diaspora ramped up after the persecution during the Black Death of the 14th century. The bulk of the Ashkenazi Jews had migrated to the Kingdom of Poland (which includes modern-day Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, & parts of Russia). This area became the main center of Ashkenazi Jewry until the Holocaust.

Ashkenazim adapted their traditions, rites, & customs to Europe. They traditionally followed the German rite synagogue ritual & until the Holocaust primarily spoke Yiddish, an offshoot of Middle High German written in a variety of the Hebrew script, with significant Hebrew, Aramaic, & Slavic influences.

The Yiddish language progressively declined in prestige, in favor of national languages & Hebrew, being stigmatized by assimilationists & later also Zionists. Though it was spoken by over 11 million people worldwide before the Holocaust. The Yiddishist movement, which sought to preserve & revive the language, faded through the 20th century. Including Duolingo adding Yiddish as a language.

As a proportion of the world Jewish population, Ashkenazim were estimated to be 3% in the 11th century, rising to 92% in 1930, near the population’s peak. The Ashkenazi population was significantly diminished by the Holocaust carried out by Nazi Germany during WWII, which killed around 6 million Jews. Before WWII, the estimated worldwide Jewish population was 15.3-16.7 million, with 92% being Ashkenazi. As of 2023, the population of Ashkenazim was estimated to be around 10-13 million out of 15.8 million total Jews.

The name Ashkenazi comes from the biblical figure of Ashkenaz. He’s the 1st son of Gomer, grandson of Japhet, great-grandson of Noah, & a Japhetic patriarch in the Table of Nations. The name for Gomer has often been linked to the Cimmerians.

The Biblical Ashkenazis are usually derived from Assyrian Askuza, a people who expelled the Cimmerians from the Armenian area of the Upper Euphrates. The name Askuza is identified with the Scythians.

In Jeremiah 51:27, Ashkenaz figures as 1 of 3 kingdoms in the far north, the others being Minni (or Mannaea), an ancient kingdom that flourished in northwestern Iran, & Arrat (corresponding to Urartu), called on by God to resist Babylon.

Ashkenaz is linked to Scandza/Scanzia (usually identified with Scandinavia), viewed as the cradle of Germanic tribes, in the 6th-century gloss to the Historia Ecclesiastica of Eusebius. In the 10th century, in the History of Armenia of Yovhannes Drasxanakertci, Ashkenaz was associated with Armenia.

As it was occasionally in Jewish usage, where its denotation extended at times to Adiabene, Khazaria, Chimea, & areas to the east. They’re also identified with the Slavim or Slavs. In keeping with the custom of designating areas of Jewish settlement with biblical names, Spain was called Sefarad (Obadiah 20), France was called Tsarefat (I Kings 17:9), & Bohemia was called the Land of Canaan.

Given the close links between the Jewish communities of France & Germany following the Carolingian unification, the term Ashkenazi came to refer to the Jews of both medieval Germany & France.

In later times, the word Ashkenaz is used to designate southern & western Germany, the ritual of which sections differs somewhat from that of eastern Germany & Poland. Thus, the prayer book of Isaiah Horowitz (a prominent rabbi & mystic), & many others, give the piyyutim (a Jewish liturgical poem), according to the Minhag of Ashkenaz & Poland. A Minhag is an accepted tradition or group of traditions in Judaism.

In a religious sense, an Ashkenazi Jew is any Jew whose family tradition & synagogue ritual follow Ashkenazi practices (German rite). Until the Ashkenazi community 1st began to develop in the Early Middle Ages, the centers of Jewish religious authority were in the Islamic world, at Baghdad & Islamic Spain. German Ashkenaz was so geographically distant that it developed a minhag of its own.

The counterpart of Ashkenazi is Sephardic. Since most non-Ashkenazi Orthodox Jews follow Sephardic rabbinical authorities, whether or not they’re ethnically Sephardic. By tradition, a Sephardic or Mizrahi (a.k.a. Oriental Jews; Jews who lived in the Muslim world) who married into an Orthodox or Haredi (a.k.a. ultra-Orthodox) Ashkenazi Jewish family raises her kids to be Ashkenazi Jews.

On the other hand, an Ashkenazi woman who married a Sephardi or Mizrahi is expected to take on Sephardic practices & the kids will “inherit” a Sephardic identity. Though in practice, many families do compromise. A “convert” usually follows the practice of the rabbinical court (beth din) that converted them.

Culturally, an Ashkenazi Jew can be identified by the concept of Yiddishkeit, which means “Jewishness” in the Yiddish language. Before the Haskalah (a.k.a. the Jewish Enlightenment) & the emancipation of Jews in Europe, this meant the study of the Torah & the Talmud for men, & communal life governed by the observance of Jewish Law for men & women.

From the Rhineland to Riga (the largest city in Latvia) to Romania, most Jews prayed in liturgical Ashkenazi Hebrew, & spoke Yiddish in their secular (worldly) lives. But with modernization, Yiddishkeit now includes not just Orthodoxy & Hasidism, but a broader range of movements, ideologies, practices, & traditions in which Ashkenazi have participated & somehow kept a sense of Jewishness. Although pockets of Jews still speak Yiddish, Yiddishkeit can be identified in manners of speech, styles of humor, & in patterns of association.

As Ashkenazi Jews moved away from Europe, mostly in the form of aliyah to Israel. Or immigration to North America, South Africa, Europe (particularly France), & Latin America, the geographic isolation has given way to mixing with other cultures, & with non-Ashkenazi Jews who, similarly, are no longer isolated in distinct geographic locales.

Hebrew has replaced Yiddish as the primary Jewish language for many Ashkenazi Jews. Although many Hasidic & Hareidi groups still use Yiddish in daily life. Aliyah is the immigration of Jews from the diaspora to, historically, the geographic Land of Israel or the Palestine region, where the State of Israel was established.

France’s blended Jewish community is typical of the cultural recombination that’s going on among Jews throughout the world. Although France expelled its original Jewish population in the Middle Ages, by the time of the French Revolution, there were 2 distinct Jewish populations.

One consisted of Sephardic Jews, originally refugees from the Inquisition (which no one expects! Sorry, we’re Monty Python fans here.) & concentrated in the southwest. While the other community was Ashkenazi, concentrated in formerly German Alsace, & mainly speaking a German dialect similar to Yiddish.

The 3rd community of Provencal Jews living in Comtat Venaissin was technically outside France, & was later absorbed into the Sephardim. Comtat Venaissin (called Comtat, for short) was a part of the Papal States from 1274 to 1791.

But after emancipation, a sense of a unified French Jewry emerged, especially when France was wracked by the Dreyfus Affair in the 1890s. (We’ll be doing a post about the Dreyfus Affair.) In the 1920s & 30s, Ashkenazi Jews from Europe arrived in large numbers as refugees from antisemitism, the Russian Revolution, & the economic turmoil of the Great Depression.

By the 1930s, Paris had a vibrant Yiddish culture, & many Jews were involved in diverse political movements. After the Vichy years & the Holocaust, the French Jewish population was augmented once again, 1st by Ashkenazi refugees from Central Europe, & later by Sephardi immigrants & refugees from North Africa, many of them francophone. Francophone refers to people/organizations who use French (language) regularly.

Ashkenazi Jews didn’t transmit their traditions or achievements by text. Instead, these traditions were passed down orally from one generation to the next. The desire to maintain pre-Holocaust traditions relating to Ashkenazi culture has often been met with criticism by Jews in Eastern Europe.

In an ethnic sense, an Ashkenazi Jew is a descendant of the Jews who settled in the Central European region of “Ashkenaz.” For roughly 1,000 years, the Ashkenazim were a reproductively isolated population in Europe.

Despite living in many countries, with little inflow or outflow of countries from migration, conversion, or intermarriage with other groups, including other Jews. Since the mid-20th century, many Ashkenazi Jews have intermarried, both with members of other Jewish communities & non-Jews.

Religious persecution of the Jews in Western & Central Europe led to a significant migration of the Ashkenazi Jews into Eastern Europe. This resulted in a major cultural divide between Western/Central & Eastern Ashkenazi communities. In particular, this was reflected in the division of Yiddish into Western & Eastern Yiddish dialects. As well as in other cultural distinctions: traditions, food, dress, etc.

Initially, the Jews of Eastern Europe enjoyed relative freedom in terms of movement, being invited by the kings of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Over time, the situation was reversed. By the 19th century, the Jews in the West had gradually been integrated into the general society.

While the Eastern Ashkenazi maintained their strict Jewish traditions & were mostly confined to ghettos, especially in the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire, which incorporated a considerable amount of land where the Eastern Ashkenazi lived: Poland & Lithuania.

Well-known differences in practices include:

• Observance of Passover (Pesach)
  • Ashkenazi Jews traditionally refrain from eating legumes, grain, millet, & rice. Quinoa has become accepted as a food grain in North American communities. Sephardi Jews typically don’t prohibit these foods.
• Notwithstanding stricter requirements for the ACTUAL slaughter, Sephardi Jews permit the rear portions of an animal after proper Halakhic removal of the sciatic nerve. While many Ashkenazi Jews don’t.
• Ashkenazi Jews often name newborns after deceased family members, not after living relatives. Sephardi Jews often name their kids after their grandparents, even if those grandparents are still living. An exception to this is among Dutch Jews, where Ashkenazi for centuries used naming conventions otherwise attributed exclusively to Sephardim, such as Chuts. Chuts is the name given to Jews who immigrated to London from the Netherlands in the 1850s-1860s.
• Ashkenazi tefillins are wound toward the body, not away from it. Ashkenazim put on the tefillin while standing up. Other Jews generally do so while sitting down. A tefillin(s) is/are sets of small black leather boxes with leather straps having scrolls of parchment written with verses of the Torah inside.
• The prayer shawl (tallit/tallis) is worn by all Ashkenazi men AFTER marriage. Except for Western European Ashkenazi men who wear it from the bar mitzvah. In Sephardi or Mizrahi Judaism, the prayer shawl is commonly worn from early childhood.

The term Ashkenazi also refers to the Nusach Ashkenaz, the liturgical tradition used by Ashkenazi Jews in their siddur (prayer book). A nusach is defined by a liturgical tradition’s choice of prayers, the text of prayers & melodies used in the singing of prayers. 2 other major forms of nusach among Ashkenazi Jews are Nusach Sefard (not to be confused with the Sephardic ritual), which is the general Polish Hasidic nusach, and Nusach Ari, used by those in Chabad.

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Ashkenazi Jews

Author’s Note: This post has mentions of Nazis, the Holocaust, & Nazi Germany. We completely understand if you wish to skip over this post. We’ll catch you in the next one!

Also known as Ashkenazic Jews, Ashkenazis, or Ashkenazim.

This is a form of distinct ethnic subdivision of the Jewish Diaspora. Emerging from the Jewish communities that consolidated during the 10th century in the Rhineland (Western Germany) & northern France. They migrated there from centers such as the Italian peninsula & the Southern Levant. This includes present-day Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, & Jordan.

After numerous massacres of Jews during the Crusades (11th-13th centuries), they began a gradual eastward migration due to mounting restrictions within the Holy Roman Empire & the favorable policies of Casimir the Great & others.

This diaspora ramped up after the persecution during the Black Death of the 14th century. The bulk of the Ashkenazi Jews had migrated to the Kingdom of Poland (which includes modern-day Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, & parts of Russia). This area became the main center of Ashkenazi Jewry until the Holocaust.

Ashkenazim adapted their traditions, rites, & customs to Europe. They traditionally followed the German rite synagogue ritual & until the Holocaust primarily spoke Yiddish, an offshoot of Middle High German written in a variety of the Hebrew script, with significant Hebrew, Aramaic, & Slavic influences.

The Yiddish language progressively declined in prestige, in favor of national languages & Hebrew, being stigmatized by assimilationists & later also Zionists. Though it was spoken by over 11 million people worldwide before the Holocaust. The Yiddishist movement, which sought to preserve & revive the language, faded through the 20th century. Including Duolingo adding Yiddish as a language.

As a proportion of the world Jewish population, Ashkenazim were estimated to be 3% in the 11th century, rising to 92% in 1930, near the population’s peak. The Ashkenazi population was significantly diminished by the Holocaust carried out by Nazi Germany during WWII, which killed around 6 million Jews. Before WWII, the estimated worldwide Jewish population was 15.3-16.7 million, with 92% being Ashkenazi. As of 2023, the population of Ashkenazim was estimated to be around 10-13 million out of 15.8 million total Jews.

The name Ashkenazi comes from the biblical figure of Ashkenaz. He’s the 1st son of Gomer, grandson of Japhet, great-grandson of Noah, & a Japhetic patriarch in the Table of Nations. The name for Gomer has often been linked to the Cimmerians.

The Biblical Ashkenazis are usually derived from Assyrian Askuza, a people who expelled the Cimmerians from the Armenian area of the Upper Euphrates. The name Askuza is identified with the Scythians.

In Jeremiah 51:27, Ashkenaz figures as 1 of 3 kingdoms in the far north, the others being Minni (or Mannaea), an ancient kingdom that flourished in northwestern Iran, & Arrat (corresponding to Urartu), called on by God to resist Babylon.

Ashkenaz is linked to Scandza/Scanzia (usually identified with Scandinavia), viewed as the cradle of Germanic tribes, in the 6th-century gloss to the Historia Ecclesiastica of Eusebius. In the 10th century, in the History of Armenia of Yovhannes Drasxanakertci, Ashkenaz was associated with Armenia.

As it was occasionally in Jewish usage, where its denotation extended at times to Adiabene, Khazaria, Chimea, & areas to the east. They’re also identified with the Slavim or Slavs. In keeping with the custom of designating areas of Jewish settlement with biblical names, Spain was called Sefarad (Obadiah 20), France was called Tsarefat (I Kings 17:9), & Bohemia was called the Land of Canaan.

Given the close links between the Jewish communities of France & Germany following the Carolingian unification, the term Ashkenazi came to refer to the Jews of both medieval Germany & France.

In later times, the word Ashkenaz is used to designate southern & western Germany, the ritual of which sections differs somewhat from that of eastern Germany & Poland. Thus, the prayer book of Isaiah Horowitz (a prominent rabbi & mystic), & many others, give the piyyutim (a Jewish liturgical poem), according to the Minhag of Ashkenaz & Poland. A Minhag is an accepted tradition or group of traditions in Judaism.

In a religious sense, an Ashkenazi Jew is any Jew whose family tradition & synagogue ritual follow Ashkenazi practices (German rite). Until the Ashkenazi community 1st began to develop in the Early Middle Ages, the centers of Jewish religious authority were in the Islamic world, at Baghdad & Islamic Spain. German Ashkenaz was so geographically distant that it developed a minhag of its own.

The counterpart of Ashkenazi is Sephardic. Since most non-Ashkenazi Orthodox Jews follow Sephardic rabbinical authorities, whether or not they’re ethnically Sephardic. By tradition, a Sephardic or Mizrahi (a.k.a. Oriental Jews; Jews who lived in the Muslim world) who married into an Orthodox or Haredi (a.k.a. ultra-Orthodox) Ashkenazi Jewish family raises her kids to be Ashkenazi Jews.

On the other hand, an Ashkenazi woman who married a Sephardi or Mizrahi is expected to take on Sephardic practices & the kids will “inherit” a Sephardic identity. Though in practice, many families do compromise. A “convert” usually follows the practice of the rabbinical court (beth din) that converted them.

Culturally, an Ashkenazi Jew can be identified by the concept of Yiddishkeit, which means “Jewishness” in the Yiddish language. Before the Haskalah (a.k.a. the Jewish Enlightenment) & the emancipation of Jews in Europe, this meant the study of the Torah & the Talmud for men, & communal life governed by the observance of Jewish Law for men & women.

From the Rhineland to Riga (the largest city in Latvia) to Romania, most Jews prayed in liturgical Ashkenazi Hebrew, & spoke Yiddish in their secular (worldly) lives. But with modernization, Yiddishkeit now includes not just Orthodoxy & Hasidism, but a broader range of movements, ideologies, practices, & traditions in which Ashkenazi have participated & somehow kept a sense of Jewishness. Although pockets of Jews still speak Yiddish, Yiddishkeit can be identified in manners of speech, styles of humor, & in patterns of association.

As Ashkenazi Jews moved away from Europe, mostly in the form of aliyah to Israel. Or immigration to North America, South Africa, Europe (particularly France), & Latin America, the geographic isolation has given way to mixing with other cultures, & with non-Ashkenazi Jews who, similarly, are no longer isolated in distinct geographic locales.

Hebrew has replaced Yiddish as the primary Jewish language for many Ashkenazi Jews. Although many Hasidic & Hareidi groups still use Yiddish in daily life. Aliyah is the immigration of Jews from the diaspora to, historically, the geographic Land of Israel or the Palestine region, where the State of Israel was established.

France’s blended Jewish community is typical of the cultural recombination that’s going on among Jews throughout the world. Although France expelled its original Jewish population in the Middle Ages, by the time of the French Revolution, there were 2 distinct Jewish populations.

One consisted of Sephardic Jews, originally refugees from the Inquisition (which no one expects! Sorry, we’re Monty Python fans here.) & concentrated in the southwest. While the other community was Ashkenazi, concentrated in formerly German Alsace, & mainly speaking a German dialect similar to Yiddish.

The 3rd community of Provencal Jews living in Comtat Venaissin was technically outside France, & was later absorbed into the Sephardim. Comtat Venaissin (called Comtat, for short) was a part of the Papal States from 1274 to 1791.

But after emancipation, a sense of a unified French Jewry emerged, especially when France was wracked by the Dreyfus Affair in the 1890s. (We’ll be doing a post about the Dreyfus Affair.) In the 1920s & 30s, Ashkenazi Jews from Europe arrived in large numbers as refugees from antisemitism, the Russian Revolution, & the economic turmoil of the Great Depression.

By the 1930s, Paris had a vibrant Yiddish culture, & many Jews were involved in diverse political movements. After the Vichy years & the Holocaust, the French Jewish population was augmented once again, 1st by Ashkenazi refugees from Central Europe, & later by Sephardi immigrants & refugees from North Africa, many of them francophone. Francophone refers to people/organizations who use French (language) regularly.

Ashkenazi Jews didn’t transmit their traditions or achievements by text. Instead, these traditions were passed down orally from one generation to the next. The desire to maintain pre-Holocaust traditions relating to Ashkenazi culture has often been met with criticism by Jews in Eastern Europe.

In an ethnic sense, an Ashkenazi Jew is a descendant of the Jews who settled in the Central European region of “Ashkenaz.” For roughly 1,000 years, the Ashkenazim were a reproductively isolated population in Europe.

Despite living in many countries, with little inflow or outflow of countries from migration, conversion, or intermarriage with other groups, including other Jews. Since the mid-20th century, many Ashkenazi Jews have intermarried, both with members of other Jewish communities & non-Jews.

Religious persecution of the Jews in Western & Central Europe led to a significant migration of the Ashkenazi Jews into Eastern Europe. This resulted in a major cultural divide between Western/Central & Eastern Ashkenazi communities. In particular, this was reflected in the division of Yiddish into Western & Eastern Yiddish dialects. As well as in other cultural distinctions: traditions, food, dress, etc.

Initially, the Jews of Eastern Europe enjoyed relative freedom in terms of movement, being invited by the kings of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Over time, the situation was reversed. By the 19th century, the Jews in the West had gradually been integrated into the general society.

While the Eastern Ashkenazi maintained their strict Jewish traditions & were mostly confined to ghettos, especially in the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire, which incorporated a considerable amount of land where the Eastern Ashkenazi lived: Poland & Lithuania.

Well-known differences in practices include:

• Observance of Passover (Pesach)
  • Ashkenazi Jews traditionally refrain from eating legumes, grain, millet, & rice. Quinoa has become accepted as a food grain in North American communities. Sephardi Jews typically don’t prohibit these foods.
• Notwithstanding stricter requirements for the ACTUAL slaughter, Sephardi Jews permit the rear portions of an animal after proper Halakhic removal of the sciatic nerve. While many Ashkenazi Jews don’t.
• Ashkenazi Jews often name newborns after deceased family members, not after living relatives. Sephardi Jews often name their kids after their grandparents, even if those grandparents are still living. An exception to this is among Dutch Jews, where Ashkenazi for centuries used naming conventions otherwise attributed exclusively to Sephardim, such as Chuts. Chuts is the name given to Jews who immigrated to London from the Netherlands in the 1850s-1860s.
• Ashkenazi tefillins are wound toward the body, not away from it. Ashkenazim put on the tefillin while standing up. Other Jews generally do so while sitting down. A tefillin(s) is/are sets of small black leather boxes with leather straps having scrolls of parchment written with verses of the Torah inside.
• The prayer shawl (tallit/tallis) is worn by all Ashkenazi men AFTER marriage. Except for Western European Ashkenazi men who wear it from the bar mitzvah. In Sephardi or Mizrahi Judaism, the prayer shawl is commonly worn from early childhood.

The term Ashkenazi also refers to the Nusach Ashkenaz, the liturgical tradition used by Ashkenazi Jews in their siddur (prayer book). A nusach is defined by a liturgical tradition’s choice of prayers, the text of prayers & melodies used in the singing of prayers. 2 other major forms of nusach among Ashkenazi Jews are Nusach Sefard (not to be confused with the Sephardic ritual), which is the general Polish Hasidic nusach, and Nusach Ari, used by those in Chabad.

Make a one-time donation

Your contribution is appreciated.

Make a monthly donation

Your contribution is appreciated.

Make a yearly donation

Your contribution is appreciated.

Rate this:

Ashkenazi Jews

Author’s Note: This post has mentions of Nazis, the Holocaust, & Nazi Germany. We completely understand if you wish to skip over this post. We’ll catch you in the next one!

Also known as Ashkenazic Jews, Ashkenazis, or Ashkenazim.

This is a form of distinct ethnic subdivision of the Jewish Diaspora. Emerging from the Jewish communities that consolidated during the 10th century in the Rhineland (Western Germany) & northern France. They migrated there from centers such as the Italian peninsula & the Southern Levant. This includes present-day Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, & Jordan.

After numerous massacres of Jews during the Crusades (11th-13th centuries), they began a gradual eastward migration due to mounting restrictions within the Holy Roman Empire & the favorable policies of Casimir the Great & others.

This diaspora ramped up after the persecution during the Black Death of the 14th century. The bulk of the Ashkenazi Jews had migrated to the Kingdom of Poland (which includes modern-day Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, & parts of Russia). This area became the main center of Ashkenazi Jewry until the Holocaust.

Ashkenazim adapted their traditions, rites, & customs to Europe. They traditionally followed the German rite synagogue ritual & until the Holocaust primarily spoke Yiddish, an offshoot of Middle High German written in a variety of the Hebrew script, with significant Hebrew, Aramaic, & Slavic influences.

The Yiddish language progressively declined in prestige, in favor of national languages & Hebrew, being stigmatized by assimilationists & later also Zionists. Though it was spoken by over 11 million people worldwide before the Holocaust. The Yiddishist movement, which sought to preserve & revive the language, faded through the 20th century. Including Duolingo adding Yiddish as a language.

As a proportion of the world Jewish population, Ashkenazim were estimated to be 3% in the 11th century, rising to 92% in 1930, near the population’s peak. The Ashkenazi population was significantly diminished by the Holocaust carried out by Nazi Germany during WWII, which killed around 6 million Jews. Before WWII, the estimated worldwide Jewish population was 15.3-16.7 million, with 92% being Ashkenazi. As of 2023, the population of Ashkenazim was estimated to be around 10-13 million out of 15.8 million total Jews.

The name Ashkenazi comes from the biblical figure of Ashkenaz. He’s the 1st son of Gomer, grandson of Japhet, great-grandson of Noah, & a Japhetic patriarch in the Table of Nations. The name for Gomer has often been linked to the Cimmerians.

The Biblical Ashkenazis are usually derived from Assyrian Askuza, a people who expelled the Cimmerians from the Armenian area of the Upper Euphrates. The name Askuza is identified with the Scythians.

In Jeremiah 51:27, Ashkenaz figures as 1 of 3 kingdoms in the far north, the others being Minni (or Mannaea), an ancient kingdom that flourished in northwestern Iran, & Arrat (corresponding to Urartu), called on by God to resist Babylon.

Ashkenaz is linked to Scandza/Scanzia (usually identified with Scandinavia), viewed as the cradle of Germanic tribes, in the 6th-century gloss to the Historia Ecclesiastica of Eusebius. In the 10th century, in the History of Armenia of Yovhannes Drasxanakertci, Ashkenaz was associated with Armenia.

As it was occasionally in Jewish usage, where its denotation extended at times to Adiabene, Khazaria, Chimea, & areas to the east. They’re also identified with the Slavim or Slavs. In keeping with the custom of designating areas of Jewish settlement with biblical names, Spain was called Sefarad (Obadiah 20), France was called Tsarefat (I Kings 17:9), & Bohemia was called the Land of Canaan.

Given the close links between the Jewish communities of France & Germany following the Carolingian unification, the term Ashkenazi came to refer to the Jews of both medieval Germany & France.

In later times, the word Ashkenaz is used to designate southern & western Germany, the ritual of which sections differs somewhat from that of eastern Germany & Poland. Thus, the prayer book of Isaiah Horowitz (a prominent rabbi & mystic), & many others, give the piyyutim (a Jewish liturgical poem), according to the Minhag of Ashkenaz & Poland. A Minhag is an accepted tradition or group of traditions in Judaism.

In a religious sense, an Ashkenazi Jew is any Jew whose family tradition & synagogue ritual follow Ashkenazi practices (German rite). Until the Ashkenazi community 1st began to develop in the Early Middle Ages, the centers of Jewish religious authority were in the Islamic world, at Baghdad & Islamic Spain. German Ashkenaz was so geographically distant that it developed a minhag of its own.

The counterpart of Ashkenazi is Sephardic. Since most non-Ashkenazi Orthodox Jews follow Sephardic rabbinical authorities, whether or not they’re ethnically Sephardic. By tradition, a Sephardic or Mizrahi (a.k.a. Oriental Jews; Jews who lived in the Muslim world) who married into an Orthodox or Haredi (a.k.a. ultra-Orthodox) Ashkenazi Jewish family raises her kids to be Ashkenazi Jews.

On the other hand, an Ashkenazi woman who married a Sephardi or Mizrahi is expected to take on Sephardic practices & the kids will “inherit” a Sephardic identity. Though in practice, many families do compromise. A “convert” usually follows the practice of the rabbinical court (beth din) that converted them.

Culturally, an Ashkenazi Jew can be identified by the concept of Yiddishkeit, which means “Jewishness” in the Yiddish language. Before the Haskalah (a.k.a. the Jewish Enlightenment) & the emancipation of Jews in Europe, this meant the study of the Torah & the Talmud for men, & communal life governed by the observance of Jewish Law for men & women.

From the Rhineland to Riga (the largest city in Latvia) to Romania, most Jews prayed in liturgical Ashkenazi Hebrew, & spoke Yiddish in their secular (worldly) lives. But with modernization, Yiddishkeit now includes not just Orthodoxy & Hasidism, but a broader range of movements, ideologies, practices, & traditions in which Ashkenazi have participated & somehow kept a sense of Jewishness. Although pockets of Jews still speak Yiddish, Yiddishkeit can be identified in manners of speech, styles of humor, & in patterns of association.

As Ashkenazi Jews moved away from Europe, mostly in the form of aliyah to Israel. Or immigration to North America, South Africa, Europe (particularly France), & Latin America, the geographic isolation has given way to mixing with other cultures, & with non-Ashkenazi Jews who, similarly, are no longer isolated in distinct geographic locales.

Hebrew has replaced Yiddish as the primary Jewish language for many Ashkenazi Jews. Although many Hasidic & Hareidi groups still use Yiddish in daily life. Aliyah is the immigration of Jews from the diaspora to, historically, the geographic Land of Israel or the Palestine region, where the State of Israel was established.

France’s blended Jewish community is typical of the cultural recombination that’s going on among Jews throughout the world. Although France expelled its original Jewish population in the Middle Ages, by the time of the French Revolution, there were 2 distinct Jewish populations.

One consisted of Sephardic Jews, originally refugees from the Inquisition (which no one expects! Sorry, we’re Monty Python fans here.) & concentrated in the southwest. While the other community was Ashkenazi, concentrated in formerly German Alsace, & mainly speaking a German dialect similar to Yiddish.

The 3rd community of Provencal Jews living in Comtat Venaissin was technically outside France, & was later absorbed into the Sephardim. Comtat Venaissin (called Comtat, for short) was a part of the Papal States from 1274 to 1791.

But after emancipation, a sense of a unified French Jewry emerged, especially when France was wracked by the Dreyfus Affair in the 1890s. (We’ll be doing a post about the Dreyfus Affair.) In the 1920s & 30s, Ashkenazi Jews from Europe arrived in large numbers as refugees from antisemitism, the Russian Revolution, & the economic turmoil of the Great Depression.

By the 1930s, Paris had a vibrant Yiddish culture, & many Jews were involved in diverse political movements. After the Vichy years & the Holocaust, the French Jewish population was augmented once again, 1st by Ashkenazi refugees from Central Europe, & later by Sephardi immigrants & refugees from North Africa, many of them francophone. Francophone refers to people/organizations who use French (language) regularly.

Ashkenazi Jews didn’t transmit their traditions or achievements by text. Instead, these traditions were passed down orally from one generation to the next. The desire to maintain pre-Holocaust traditions relating to Ashkenazi culture has often been met with criticism by Jews in Eastern Europe.

In an ethnic sense, an Ashkenazi Jew is a descendant of the Jews who settled in the Central European region of “Ashkenaz.” For roughly 1,000 years, the Ashkenazim were a reproductively isolated population in Europe.

Despite living in many countries, with little inflow or outflow of countries from migration, conversion, or intermarriage with other groups, including other Jews. Since the mid-20th century, many Ashkenazi Jews have intermarried, both with members of other Jewish communities & non-Jews.

Religious persecution of the Jews in Western & Central Europe led to a significant migration of the Ashkenazi Jews into Eastern Europe. This resulted in a major cultural divide between Western/Central & Eastern Ashkenazi communities. In particular, this was reflected in the division of Yiddish into Western & Eastern Yiddish dialects. As well as in other cultural distinctions: traditions, food, dress, etc.

Initially, the Jews of Eastern Europe enjoyed relative freedom in terms of movement, being invited by the kings of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Over time, the situation was reversed. By the 19th century, the Jews in the West had gradually been integrated into the general society.

While the Eastern Ashkenazi maintained their strict Jewish traditions & were mostly confined to ghettos, especially in the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire, which incorporated a considerable amount of land where the Eastern Ashkenazi lived: Poland & Lithuania.

Well-known differences in practices include:

• Observance of Passover (Pesach)
  • Ashkenazi Jews traditionally refrain from eating legumes, grain, millet, & rice. Quinoa has become accepted as a food grain in North American communities. Sephardi Jews typically don’t prohibit these foods.
• Notwithstanding stricter requirements for the ACTUAL slaughter, Sephardi Jews permit the rear portions of an animal after proper Halakhic removal of the sciatic nerve. While many Ashkenazi Jews don’t.
• Ashkenazi Jews often name newborns after deceased family members, not after living relatives. Sephardi Jews often name their kids after their grandparents, even if those grandparents are still living. An exception to this is among Dutch Jews, where Ashkenazi for centuries used naming conventions otherwise attributed exclusively to Sephardim, such as Chuts. Chuts is the name given to Jews who immigrated to London from the Netherlands in the 1850s-1860s.
• Ashkenazi tefillins are wound toward the body, not away from it. Ashkenazim put on the tefillin while standing up. Other Jews generally do so while sitting down. A tefillin(s) is/are sets of small black leather boxes with leather straps having scrolls of parchment written with verses of the Torah inside.
• The prayer shawl (tallit/tallis) is worn by all Ashkenazi men AFTER marriage. Except for Western European Ashkenazi men who wear it from the bar mitzvah. In Sephardi or Mizrahi Judaism, the prayer shawl is commonly worn from early childhood.

The term Ashkenazi also refers to the Nusach Ashkenaz, the liturgical tradition used by Ashkenazi Jews in their siddur (prayer book). A nusach is defined by a liturgical tradition’s choice of prayers, the text of prayers & melodies used in the singing of prayers. 2 other major forms of nusach among Ashkenazi Jews are Nusach Sefard (not to be confused with the Sephardic ritual), which is the general Polish Hasidic nusach, and Nusach Ari, used by those in Chabad.

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Mysterium Esdrae II: The Curious Case of Nehemiah

This is the second in a series of guest posts by Fenna Capelle (Part I; Part III; Part IV). Fenna studies Hebrew and Aramaic Studies (research) (MA) at Leiden University.

As we concluded at the end of our last blog, the relationship between Ezra-Nehemiah and 1 Esdras, its dark, mysterious, apocryphal look-alike, invites closer examination. It is amusing to notice, even now as I read, research and write for this blog, how much I tend to favour the canonical texts that I grew up with: naturally, apocryphal texts must be secondary to canonical ones, which are ever unaltered and original. There is, however, an overall agreement that the editor(s)/author(s) of both Ezra-Nehemiah (written in Hebrew and interlined with some chapters in Aramaic) and 1 Esdras (composed in Greek) worked from a shared Semitic vorlage, i.e., a hypothetical/reconstructed source text that underlies a later manuscript and that editors or authors work from. The question remains, however, whether the Semitic text underlying 1 Esdras was exactly the same as Ezra-Nehemiah in its present form (Talshir and Talshir 1995; Talshir 1999, 269-270). It would be good, at the outset, to address an obvious question: what are some differences we observe between the two texts and how might we explain these variations?

Nehemiah, a Judean exile and cup-bearer to king Artaxerxes, is granted the king’s permission to return home and help rebuild the city of Jerusalem (Neh. 1:1-2:5), some 13 years after Ezra’s return from exile (see Pakkala 2008, 205-206):

Firstly, it is odd that the character of Nehemiah makes no appearance at all in the book of 1 Esdras, which seems to focus solely on the character of Ezra. As with solving any good mystery, one conjures up possible scenarios: either the author/editor of 1 Esdras has consciously omitted the character of Nehemiah, or 1 Esdras is simply an older, sans-Nehemiah version of the narrative. In this case, another scribe must, at some later stage, have added the Nehemiah material, leading to the form of the text in Ezra-Nehemiah (as Dieter Böhler argues in his 2003 article). I must concede, contrary to this, that most of the extra material (‘pluses’) is found in the book of 1 Esdras, not that of Ezra-Nehemiah – think, for example, of the story of the three guards. Zipporah Talshir, in a monograph dedicated to above matter, argues that 1 Esdras is a section deliberately cut out from the Ezra-Nehemiah sequence to form a framework for the story of the guards, that this lengthy addition is the text’s raison d’être (Talshir 1999). My point is that one would, in most cases, expect a more expansive, elaborate text to be later than a text that is less so — unless, of course, there is a good reason for deletion, as I, and others with me, think might be the case with Nehemiah (see Wright 2011, 145-163; paywalled).

The two texts, however, appear to differ somewhat in their view on these rebuilding efforts. 1 Esdras describes how Zerubbabel and co. “returned to Jerusalem and the rest of Judea, each to his own town” (1 Esd. 5:8 — N.B. all English translations of 1 Esdras taken from A New English Translation of the Septuagint). A few chapters later, when Ezra has returned and confronted the Israelite nation with their missteps, a large crowd gathers around him, weeping and repenting:

While Ezra was praying and making his confession, weeping and lying on the ground before the temple, there gathered around him a very great crowd of men and women and youths from Jerusalem, for there was great weeping among the multitude.

1 Esd. 8:88

1 Esdras makes it seem as if the city of Jerusalem is already repopulated by the time Ezra returns to reinstate YHWH’s law (Böhler 2003, 5). The parallel passage in the canonical book of Ezra, however, describes matters a bit differently:

Then all the people of Judah and Benjamin assembled at Jerusalem within the three days; it was the ninth month, on the twentieth day of the month. All the people sat in the open square before the house of God, trembling because of this matter and because of the heavy rain.

Ezr. 10:9 (all Biblical quotations taken from the New Revised Standard Version)

People gather from all over the place to hear Ezra speak. Jerusalem appears unpopulated as of yet, the rebuilding of which will eventually be Nehemiah’s task (Böhler 2003, 5).
Some years ago, Jacob Wright, professor of Hebrew at Candler School of Theology, published an article responding to this exact matter (Wright 2011, 145-163). He argues, in my opinion rather convincingly, that 1 Esdras has consciously eliminated Nehemiah from the historical record of the restoration. Given the array of exilic Biblical prophecies foretelling the rebuilding of Jerusalem (see, for example, Jer. 30:18; 31:38-40; Isa. 44:26-28; 49:14-20), it seems suspicious that the writer of 1 Esdras would fail to make the rebuilding explicit (apart from the few cases in which we may infer a rebuilt Jerusalem, as we have seen above). The reason for omission, Wright argues, may lie in the character of Nehemiah himself:

His explicit polemics against the priesthood (Neh.13), his presentation of a gubernatorial jurisdiction that extended to the temple (Neh.10), and his advocacy of a strong, militarized Judah that threatened the alliances of the aristocratic priests —these are just a few of the things that would have undoubtedly provoked the consternation of 1 Esdras’ pro-priestly authors.

Wright 2011, 150

Indeed, 1 Esdras seems, above all else, concerned with temple-service and priesthood. To return to the story of the three guards (of course missing from the canonical book): the insertion of this story allows for a buildup towards Zerubbabel’s temple-related quest: rebuilding of YHWH’s house, returning of the temple-vessels and rededication of the altar. If we follow Wright’s thinking, it seems probable that 1 Esdras relies on an already existing tradition where Ezra and Nehemiah were a two-for-one deal! The question, then, is how far this reshaping extends and what other traces of editorial intervention we might detect in the text. I propose we focus our next blogpost on one of these editorial interventions: the correspondence with king Artaxerxes to block construction of the temple and city.

Mysterium Esdrae II: The Curious Case of Nehemiah

This is the second in a series of guest posts by Fenna Capelle (Part I; Part III). Fenna studies Hebrew and Aramaic Studies (research) (MA) at Leiden University.

As we concluded at the end of our last blog, the relationship between Ezra-Nehemiah and 1 Esdras, its dark, mysterious, apocryphal look-alike, invites closer examination. It is amusing to notice, even now as I read, research and write for this blog, how much I tend to favour the canonical texts that I grew up with: naturally, apocryphal texts must be secondary to canonical ones, which are ever unaltered and original. There is, however, an overall agreement that the editor(s)/author(s) of both Ezra-Nehemiah (written in Hebrew and interlined with some chapters in Aramaic) and 1 Esdras (composed in Greek) worked from a shared Semitic vorlage, i.e., a hypothetical/reconstructed source text that underlies a later manuscript and that editors or authors work from. The question remains, however, whether the Semitic text underlying 1 Esdras was exactly the same as Ezra-Nehemiah in its present form (Talshir and Talshir 1995; Talshir 1999, 269-270). It would be good, at the outset, to address an obvious question: what are some differences we observe between the two texts and how might we explain these variations?

Nehemiah, a Judean exile and cup-bearer to king Artaxerxes, is granted the king’s permission to return home and help rebuild the city of Jerusalem (Neh. 1:1-2:5), some 13 years after Ezra’s return from exile (see Pakkala 2008, 205-206):

Firstly, it is odd that the character of Nehemiah makes no appearance at all in the book of 1 Esdras, which seems to focus solely on the character of Ezra. As with solving any good mystery, one conjures up possible scenarios: either the author/editor of 1 Esdras has consciously omitted the character of Nehemiah, or 1 Esdras is simply an older, sans-Nehemiah version of the narrative. In this case, another scribe must, at some later stage, have added the Nehemiah material, leading to the form of the text in Ezra-Nehemiah (as Dieter Böhler argues in his 2003 article). I must concede, contrary to this, that most of the extra material (‘pluses’) is found in the book of 1 Esdras, not that of Ezra-Nehemiah – think, for example, of the story of the three guards. Zipporah Talshir, in a monograph dedicated to above matter, argues that 1 Esdras is a section deliberately cut out from the Ezra-Nehemiah sequence to form a framework for the story of the guards, that this lengthy addition is the text’s raison d’être (Talshir 1999). My point is that one would, in most cases, expect a more expansive, elaborate text to be later than a text that is less so — unless, of course, there is a good reason for deletion, as I, and others with me, think might be the case with Nehemiah (see Wright 2011, 145-163; paywalled).

The two texts, however, appear to differ somewhat in their view on these rebuilding efforts. 1 Esdras describes how Zerubbabel and co. “returned to Jerusalem and the rest of Judea, each to his own town” (1 Esd. 5:8 — N.B. all English translations of 1 Esdras taken from A New English Translation of the Septuagint). A few chapters later, when Ezra has returned and confronted the Israelite nation with their missteps, a large crowd gathers around him, weeping and repenting:

While Ezra was praying and making his confession, weeping and lying on the ground before the temple, there gathered around him a very great crowd of men and women and youths from Jerusalem, for there was great weeping among the multitude.

1 Esd. 8:88

1 Esdras makes it seem as if the city of Jerusalem is already repopulated by the time Ezra returns to reinstate YHWH’s law (Böhler 2003, 5). The parallel passage in the canonical book of Ezra, however, describes matters a bit differently:

Then all the people of Judah and Benjamin assembled at Jerusalem within the three days; it was the ninth month, on the twentieth day of the month. All the people sat in the open square before the house of God, trembling because of this matter and because of the heavy rain.

Ezr. 10:9 (all Biblical quotations taken from the New Revised Standard Version)

People gather from all over the place to hear Ezra speak. Jerusalem appears unpopulated as of yet, the rebuilding of which will eventually be Nehemiah’s task (Böhler 2003, 5).
Some years ago, Jacob Wright, professor of Hebrew at Candler School of Theology, published an article responding to this exact matter (Wright 2011, 145-163). He argues, in my opinion rather convincingly, that 1 Esdras has consciously eliminated Nehemiah from the historical record of the restoration. Given the array of exilic Biblical prophecies foretelling the rebuilding of Jerusalem (see, for example, Jer. 30:18; 31:38-40; Isa. 44:26-28; 49:14-20), it seems suspicious that the writer of 1 Esdras would fail to make the rebuilding explicit (apart from the few cases in which we may infer a rebuilt Jerusalem, as we have seen above). The reason for omission, Wright argues, may lie in the character of Nehemiah himself:

His explicit polemics against the priesthood (Neh.13), his presentation of a gubernatorial jurisdiction that extended to the temple (Neh.10), and his advocacy of a strong, militarized Judah that threatened the alliances of the aristocratic priests —these are just a few of the things that would have undoubtedly provoked the consternation of 1 Esdras’ pro-priestly authors.

Wright 2011, 150

Indeed, 1 Esdras seems, above all else, concerned with temple-service and priesthood. To return to the story of the three guards (of course missing from the canonical book): the insertion of this story allows for a buildup towards Zerubbabel’s temple-related quest: rebuilding of YHWH’s house, returning of the temple-vessels and rededication of the altar. If we follow Wright’s thinking, it seems probable that 1 Esdras relies on an already existing tradition where Ezra and Nehemiah were a two-for-one deal! The question, then, is how far this reshaping extends and what other traces of editorial intervention we might detect in the text. I propose we focus our next blogpost on one of these editorial interventions: the correspondence with king Artaxerxes to block construction of the temple and city.

Mysterium Esdrae II: The Curious Case of Nehemiah

This is the second in a series of guest posts by Fenna Capelle (Part I; Part III; Part IV). Fenna studies Hebrew and Aramaic Studies (research) (MA) at Leiden University.

As we concluded at the end of our last blog, the relationship between Ezra-Nehemiah and 1 Esdras, its dark, mysterious, apocryphal look-alike, invites closer examination. It is amusing to notice, even now as I read, research and write for this blog, how much I tend to favour the canonical texts that I grew up with: naturally, apocryphal texts must be secondary to canonical ones, which are ever unaltered and original. There is, however, an overall agreement that the editor(s)/author(s) of both Ezra-Nehemiah (written in Hebrew and interlined with some chapters in Aramaic) and 1 Esdras (composed in Greek) worked from a shared Semitic vorlage, i.e., a hypothetical/reconstructed source text that underlies a later manuscript and that editors or authors work from. The question remains, however, whether the Semitic text underlying 1 Esdras was exactly the same as Ezra-Nehemiah in its present form (Talshir and Talshir 1995; Talshir 1999, 269-270). It would be good, at the outset, to address an obvious question: what are some differences we observe between the two texts and how might we explain these variations?

Nehemiah, a Judean exile and cup-bearer to king Artaxerxes, is granted the king’s permission to return home and help rebuild the city of Jerusalem (Neh. 1:1-2:5), some 13 years after Ezra’s return from exile (see Pakkala 2008, 205-206):

Firstly, it is odd that the character of Nehemiah makes no appearance at all in the book of 1 Esdras, which seems to focus solely on the character of Ezra. As with solving any good mystery, one conjures up possible scenarios: either the author/editor of 1 Esdras has consciously omitted the character of Nehemiah, or 1 Esdras is simply an older, sans-Nehemiah version of the narrative. In this case, another scribe must, at some later stage, have added the Nehemiah material, leading to the form of the text in Ezra-Nehemiah (as Dieter Böhler argues in his 2003 article). I must concede, contrary to this, that most of the extra material (‘pluses’) is found in the book of 1 Esdras, not that of Ezra-Nehemiah – think, for example, of the story of the three guards. Zipporah Talshir, in a monograph dedicated to above matter, argues that 1 Esdras is a section deliberately cut out from the Ezra-Nehemiah sequence to form a framework for the story of the guards, that this lengthy addition is the text’s raison d’être (Talshir 1999). My point is that one would, in most cases, expect a more expansive, elaborate text to be later than a text that is less so — unless, of course, there is a good reason for deletion, as I, and others with me, think might be the case with Nehemiah (see Wright 2011, 145-163; paywalled).

The two texts, however, appear to differ somewhat in their view on these rebuilding efforts. 1 Esdras describes how Zerubbabel and co. “returned to Jerusalem and the rest of Judea, each to his own town” (1 Esd. 5:8 — N.B. all English translations of 1 Esdras taken from A New English Translation of the Septuagint). A few chapters later, when Ezra has returned and confronted the Israelite nation with their missteps, a large crowd gathers around him, weeping and repenting:

While Ezra was praying and making his confession, weeping and lying on the ground before the temple, there gathered around him a very great crowd of men and women and youths from Jerusalem, for there was great weeping among the multitude.

1 Esd. 8:88

1 Esdras makes it seem as if the city of Jerusalem is already repopulated by the time Ezra returns to reinstate YHWH’s law (Böhler 2003, 5). The parallel passage in the canonical book of Ezra, however, describes matters a bit differently:

Then all the people of Judah and Benjamin assembled at Jerusalem within the three days; it was the ninth month, on the twentieth day of the month. All the people sat in the open square before the house of God, trembling because of this matter and because of the heavy rain.

Ezr. 10:9 (all Biblical quotations taken from the New Revised Standard Version)

People gather from all over the place to hear Ezra speak. Jerusalem appears unpopulated as of yet, the rebuilding of which will eventually be Nehemiah’s task (Böhler 2003, 5).
Some years ago, Jacob Wright, professor of Hebrew at Candler School of Theology, published an article responding to this exact matter (Wright 2011, 145-163). He argues, in my opinion rather convincingly, that 1 Esdras has consciously eliminated Nehemiah from the historical record of the restoration. Given the array of exilic Biblical prophecies foretelling the rebuilding of Jerusalem (see, for example, Jer. 30:18; 31:38-40; Isa. 44:26-28; 49:14-20), it seems suspicious that the writer of 1 Esdras would fail to make the rebuilding explicit (apart from the few cases in which we may infer a rebuilt Jerusalem, as we have seen above). The reason for omission, Wright argues, may lie in the character of Nehemiah himself:

His explicit polemics against the priesthood (Neh.13), his presentation of a gubernatorial jurisdiction that extended to the temple (Neh.10), and his advocacy of a strong, militarized Judah that threatened the alliances of the aristocratic priests —these are just a few of the things that would have undoubtedly provoked the consternation of 1 Esdras’ pro-priestly authors.

Wright 2011, 150

Indeed, 1 Esdras seems, above all else, concerned with temple-service and priesthood. To return to the story of the three guards (of course missing from the canonical book): the insertion of this story allows for a buildup towards Zerubbabel’s temple-related quest: rebuilding of YHWH’s house, returning of the temple-vessels and rededication of the altar. If we follow Wright’s thinking, it seems probable that 1 Esdras relies on an already existing tradition where Ezra and Nehemiah were a two-for-one deal! The question, then, is how far this reshaping extends and what other traces of editorial intervention we might detect in the text. I propose we focus our next blogpost on one of these editorial interventions: the correspondence with king Artaxerxes to block construction of the temple and city.

Mysterium Esdrae I: The Other Ezra

This is the first in a series of guest posts by Fenna Capelle (Part II; Part III; Part IV). Fenna studies Hebrew and Aramaic Studies (research) (MA) at Leiden University.

It is safe to say that the Biblical Apocrypha do not constitute the daily reading of a young person raised in a Dutch Reformed church, as I was. All the greater was my delight upon realising the insights this corpus of texts might offer us; valuable insights into the ways ancient communities engaged with scripture and interpreted the events of the world around them. The Biblical Apocrypha operate outside an established canon of scripture, whose relation to said canon can at times be elusive, as we shall see in the case of 1 Esdras. 1 Esdras is an apocryphal text that we find included amongst the texts of the Septuagint, an early Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. Whereas the Hebrew Bible has preserved just one version of the story of Ezra and Nehemiah, the Septuagint contains two: Esdras A (1 Esd.) and Esdras B (2 Esd.). The latter is a quite literal translation of the Hebrew and Aramaic book of Ezra-Nehemiah, yet, as we shall see at length throughout this series, Esdras A, or 1 Esdras, is not.

The book of 1 Esdras opens at the events described in the last chapters of 2 Chronicles: King Josiah leads a festive Passover ceremony at the temple (1 Esd. 1:1-22; 2 Chron. 35: 1-19). Josiah’s reign, however, is cut short, as an ill-advised war against Pharaoh Necho of Egypt proves fatal for him (1 Esd. 1:23-29; 2 Chron. 35: 1-19). Josiah is succeeded by a string of weak and impious kings, whose missteps result in exile. A good amount of time passes between the first and second chapter of 1 Esdras; by the time of 1 Esdras 2, the Babylonian empire has fallen into the hands of the Persians, following King Cyrus’ conquest of Babylon in 539 BC. This same Cyrus the Great issues a decree that allows the Judean exiles to return home and take with them the temple vessels that King Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the first temple (Ezr. 1:1-11; 1 Esd. 2:1-15. About the temple vessels, see also Dan. 5:2,23). Thus, the first wave of exiles returns in the days of Cyrus, led by a Judean official named Sheshbazzar.

Upon their return, they are met by varying communities of people that had continued to populate the land of Judah throughout the period of exile (for historical insight into the situation in Judah throughout the exilic period, I recommend Lester Grabbe’s article ‘The Reality of the Return’; paywalled). These remnant communities, however, do not look favourably upon the returnees’ desire to restore Jerusalem and the temple. As such, a letter is sent to the Persian king, who is now not Cyrus but Artaxerxes I (more about the chronology of Persian kings will follow in a later blogpost). The letter argues that if the returnees’ construction plans are realised, the Persian Empire may lose the province of Judah. Persuaded, the king agrees to halt rebuilding efforts in Jerusalem. (1 Esd. 2:16-30; Ezr. 4:7-24). The construction work will not be resumed until the reign of Darius I, prompted by a fortunate turn of events at a party.

1 Esdras 3:1-5:6 tells of a grand banquet organised by king Darius, during which three of the king’s bodyguards propose a contest: each is to answer the question, “What is the strongest thing known to man?”. Darius, excited at the idea of a competition, summons many nobles before whom the guards are to offer speeches on this matter. The first bodyguard makes a case for wine; the second, diplomatically so, states that a king is strongest of all; the third says ‘women’. Darius, especially pleased with the third answer (or rather, not willing to displease his concubine, Apame), declares the third guard victorious. This guard happens to be none other than Zerubbabel (cf. 1 Chronicles 3), the grandson of king Jehoiachin, and the governor of Judah (see the book of Haggai). As a reward for his speech, the king grants Zerubbabel one wish. Thus, Zerubbabel entreats Darius to honour his vow to rebuild the temple, a request to which the king agrees. The ban on the construction is lifted, and a second wave of returnees arrives in Judah, led by Zerubbabel. Upon their return, the altar is rededicated, daily sacrifice resumed and the foundations for the temple are laid (1 Esd. 5:47-73; Ezr. 3:1-4:5).

These restorations, in true Biblical fashion, are celebrated with much fanfare, trumpets, dances and shouting. The noise of the jubilant masses, however, attracts the opponents of the temple, who again manage to halt construction. In response to the opposition, the prophets Haggai and Zechariah rally support to continue building. The support comes in the form of two Judean officials who advice king Darius to initiate a search in the imperial archives for king Cyrus’s initial edict (the document granting permission to rebuild the temple). The edict is found and Darius commands construction to be resumed to fulfill Cyrus’s decree. The last section of 1 Esdras centres around the figure of Ezra, who comes to Judah with a third wave of returnees (1 Esd. 8:1-9:55). Upon arriving, Ezra is horrified to learn that many Judeans had given themselves in marriage to non-Israelite women. Ezra returns, Torah in hand, to exhort the people, encouraging them to annul these mixed marriages. Thus, under Ezra’s purview, the nation turns again to God and Torah.

In this series of blogposts I will aim to address multiple things: in the first blog following this introduction I would like to discuss some tensions that arise when we compare the canonical and apocryphal texts. The observant reader may already have noticed that, although the book of 1 Esdras is generally in keeping with the Hebrew, or what we call the Masoretic Text (MT), we can spot some serious divergence (see figure 2 below and also Grabbe 2021; paywalled). These differences will help us approach questions of intertextual relationship: to what did both texts owe their current shape? Does Ezra-Nehemiah rely on 1 Esdras, or vice versa? Do both maybe stem from a common “ancestor text” that both texts interpret in different ways and add things to? If things are added or omitted, what might be a good reason for a writer to do so?

In the third part of this series, I will make a brief case-study of the letter to King Artaxerxes. In a genuine effort not to confuse the reader too much, I will discuss some of the confusion that exists around the correspondence with Artaxerxes, which features in both the MT and 1 Esdras (Ezr. 4:7-24; 1 Esd. 2:16-30). The fourth and final blogpost will continue with the same bit of correspondence, arguing that the repositioning of this letter in the book of 1 Esdras is rather a sensible thing to do from a narrative perspective, and fits an overall tendency that we detect in the book. Finally, having weighed the information, I would like to propose that the author(s)/editor(s) of 1 Esdras might have worked with a version of the story that is really quite similar to Ezra-Nehemiah – we will see how there is clearly an editorial and revisionary hand at work in 1 Esdras. In other words, I’ll put forth an argument in favour of, to steal a fancy phrase from Lisbeth Fried “the priority of Ezra-Nehemiah” (Fried 2011).

Mysterium Esdrae I: The Other Ezra

This is the first in a series of guest posts by Fenna Capelle (Part II; Part III). Fenna studies Hebrew and Aramaic Studies (research) (MA) at Leiden University.

It is safe to say that the Biblical Apocrypha do not constitute the daily reading of a young person raised in a Dutch Reformed church, as I was. All the greater was my delight upon realising the insights this corpus of texts might offer us; valuable insights into the ways ancient communities engaged with scripture and interpreted the events of the world around them. The Biblical Apocrypha operate outside an established canon of scripture, whose relation to said canon can at times be elusive, as we shall see in the case of 1 Esdras. 1 Esdras is an apocryphal text that we find included amongst the texts of the Septuagint, an early Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. Whereas the Hebrew Bible has preserved just one version of the story of Ezra and Nehemiah, the Septuagint contains two: Esdras A (1 Esd.) and Esdras B (2 Esd.). The latter is a quite literal translation of the Hebrew and Aramaic book of Ezra-Nehemiah, yet, as we shall see at length throughout this series, Esdras A, or 1 Esdras, is not.

The book of 1 Esdras opens at the events described in the last chapters of 2 Chronicles: King Josiah leads a festive Passover ceremony at the temple (1 Esd. 1:1-22; 2 Chron. 35: 1-19). Josiah’s reign, however, is cut short, as an ill-advised war against Pharaoh Necho of Egypt proves fatal for him (1 Esd. 1:23-29; 2 Chron. 35: 1-19). Josiah is succeeded by a string of weak and impious kings, whose missteps result in exile. A good amount of time passes between the first and second chapter of 1 Esdras; by the time of 1 Esdras 2, the Babylonian empire has fallen into the hands of the Persians, following King Cyrus’ conquest of Babylon in 539 BC. This same Cyrus the Great issues a decree that allows the Judean exiles to return home and take with them the temple vessels that King Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the first temple (Ezr. 1:1-11; 1 Esd. 2:1-15. About the temple vessels, see also Dan. 5:2,23). Thus, the first wave of exiles returns in the days of Cyrus, led by a Judean official named Sheshbazzar.

Upon their return, they are met by varying communities of people that had continued to populate the land of Judah throughout the period of exile (for historical insight into the situation in Judah throughout the exilic period, I recommend Lester Grabbe’s article ‘The Reality of the Return’; paywalled). These remnant communities, however, do not look favourably upon the returnees’ desire to restore Jerusalem and the temple. As such, a letter is sent to the Persian king, who is now not Cyrus but Artaxerxes I (more about the chronology of Persian kings will follow in a later blogpost). The letter argues that if the returnees’ construction plans are realised, the Persian Empire may lose the province of Judah. Persuaded, the king agrees to halt rebuilding efforts in Jerusalem. (1 Esd. 2:16-30; Ezr. 4:7-24). The construction work will not be resumed until the reign of Darius I, prompted by a fortunate turn of events at a party.

1 Esdras 3:1-5:6 tells of a grand banquet organised by king Darius, during which three of the king’s bodyguards propose a contest: each is to answer the question, “What is the strongest thing known to man?”. Darius, excited at the idea of a competition, summons many nobles before whom the guards are to offer speeches on this matter. The first bodyguard makes a case for wine; the second, diplomatically so, states that a king is strongest of all; the third says ‘women’. Darius, especially pleased with the third answer (or rather, not willing to displease his concubine, Apame), declares the third guard victorious. This guard happens to be none other than Zerubbabel (cf. 1 Chronicles 3), the grandson of king Jehoiachin, and the governor of Judah (see the book of Haggai). As a reward for his speech, the king grants Zerubbabel one wish. Thus, Zerubbabel entreats Darius to honour his vow to rebuild the temple, a request to which the king agrees. The ban on the construction is lifted, and a second wave of returnees arrives in Judah, led by Zerubbabel. Upon their return, the altar is rededicated, daily sacrifice resumed and the foundations for the temple are laid (1 Esd. 5:47-73; Ezr. 3:1-4:5).

These restorations, in true Biblical fashion, are celebrated with much fanfare, trumpets, dances and shouting. The noise of the jubilant masses, however, attracts the opponents of the temple, who again manage to halt construction. In response to the opposition, the prophets Haggai and Zechariah rally support to continue building. The support comes in the form of two Judean officials who advice king Darius to initiate a search in the imperial archives for king Cyrus’s initial edict (the document granting permission to rebuild the temple). The edict is found and Darius commands construction to be resumed to fulfill Cyrus’s decree. The last section of 1 Esdras centres around the figure of Ezra, who comes to Judah with a third wave of returnees (1 Esd. 8:1-9:55). Upon arriving, Ezra is horrified to learn that many Judeans had given themselves in marriage to non-Israelite women. Ezra returns, Torah in hand, to exhort the people, encouraging them to annul these mixed marriages. Thus, under Ezra’s purview, the nation turns again to God and Torah.

In this series of blogposts I will aim to address multiple things: in the first blog following this introduction I would like to discuss some tensions that arise when we compare the canonical and apocryphal texts. The observant reader may already have noticed that, although the book of 1 Esdras is generally in keeping with the Hebrew, or what we call the Masoretic Text (MT), we can spot some serious divergence (see figure 2 below and also Grabbe 2021; paywalled). These differences will help us approach questions of intertextual relationship: to what did both texts owe their current shape? Does Ezra-Nehemiah rely on 1 Esdras, or vice versa? Do both maybe stem from a common “ancestor text” that both texts interpret in different ways and add things to? If things are added or omitted, what might be a good reason for a writer to do so?

In the third part of this series, I will make a brief case-study of the letter to King Artaxerxes. In a genuine effort not to confuse the reader too much, I will discuss some of the confusion that exists around the correspondence with Artaxerxes, which features in both the MT and 1 Esdras (Ezr. 4:7-24; 1 Esd. 2:16-30). The fourth and final blogpost will continue with the same bit of correspondence, arguing that the repositioning of this letter in the book of 1 Esdras is rather a sensible thing to do from a narrative perspective, and fits an overall tendency that we detect in the book. Finally, having weighed the information, I would like to propose that the author(s)/editor(s) of 1 Esdras might have worked with a version of the story that is really quite similar to Ezra-Nehemiah – we will see how there is clearly an editorial and revisionary hand at work in 1 Esdras. In other words, I’ll put forth an argument in favour of, to steal a fancy phrase from Lisbeth Fried “the priority of Ezra-Nehemiah” (Fried 2011).

Mysterium Esdrae I: The Other Ezra

This is the first in a series of guest posts by Fenna Capelle (Part II; Part III; Part IV). Fenna studies Hebrew and Aramaic Studies (research) (MA) at Leiden University.

It is safe to say that the Biblical Apocrypha do not constitute the daily reading of a young person raised in a Dutch Reformed church, as I was. All the greater was my delight upon realising the insights this corpus of texts might offer us; valuable insights into the ways ancient communities engaged with scripture and interpreted the events of the world around them. The Biblical Apocrypha operate outside an established canon of scripture, whose relation to said canon can at times be elusive, as we shall see in the case of 1 Esdras. 1 Esdras is an apocryphal text that we find included amongst the texts of the Septuagint, an early Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. Whereas the Hebrew Bible has preserved just one version of the story of Ezra and Nehemiah, the Septuagint contains two: Esdras A (1 Esd.) and Esdras B (2 Esd.). The latter is a quite literal translation of the Hebrew and Aramaic book of Ezra-Nehemiah, yet, as we shall see at length throughout this series, Esdras A, or 1 Esdras, is not.

The book of 1 Esdras opens at the events described in the last chapters of 2 Chronicles: King Josiah leads a festive Passover ceremony at the temple (1 Esd. 1:1-22; 2 Chron. 35: 1-19). Josiah’s reign, however, is cut short, as an ill-advised war against Pharaoh Necho of Egypt proves fatal for him (1 Esd. 1:23-29; 2 Chron. 35: 1-19). Josiah is succeeded by a string of weak and impious kings, whose missteps result in exile. A good amount of time passes between the first and second chapter of 1 Esdras; by the time of 1 Esdras 2, the Babylonian empire has fallen into the hands of the Persians, following King Cyrus’ conquest of Babylon in 539 BC. This same Cyrus the Great issues a decree that allows the Judean exiles to return home and take with them the temple vessels that King Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the first temple (Ezr. 1:1-11; 1 Esd. 2:1-15. About the temple vessels, see also Dan. 5:2,23). Thus, the first wave of exiles returns in the days of Cyrus, led by a Judean official named Sheshbazzar.

Upon their return, they are met by varying communities of people that had continued to populate the land of Judah throughout the period of exile (for historical insight into the situation in Judah throughout the exilic period, I recommend Lester Grabbe’s article ‘The Reality of the Return’; paywalled). These remnant communities, however, do not look favourably upon the returnees’ desire to restore Jerusalem and the temple. As such, a letter is sent to the Persian king, who is now not Cyrus but Artaxerxes I (more about the chronology of Persian kings will follow in a later blogpost). The letter argues that if the returnees’ construction plans are realised, the Persian Empire may lose the province of Judah. Persuaded, the king agrees to halt rebuilding efforts in Jerusalem. (1 Esd. 2:16-30; Ezr. 4:7-24). The construction work will not be resumed until the reign of Darius I, prompted by a fortunate turn of events at a party.

1 Esdras 3:1-5:6 tells of a grand banquet organised by king Darius, during which three of the king’s bodyguards propose a contest: each is to answer the question, “What is the strongest thing known to man?”. Darius, excited at the idea of a competition, summons many nobles before whom the guards are to offer speeches on this matter. The first bodyguard makes a case for wine; the second, diplomatically so, states that a king is strongest of all; the third says ‘women’. Darius, especially pleased with the third answer (or rather, not willing to displease his concubine, Apame), declares the third guard victorious. This guard happens to be none other than Zerubbabel (cf. 1 Chronicles 3), the grandson of king Jehoiachin, and the governor of Judah (see the book of Haggai). As a reward for his speech, the king grants Zerubbabel one wish. Thus, Zerubbabel entreats Darius to honour his vow to rebuild the temple, a request to which the king agrees. The ban on the construction is lifted, and a second wave of returnees arrives in Judah, led by Zerubbabel. Upon their return, the altar is rededicated, daily sacrifice resumed and the foundations for the temple are laid (1 Esd. 5:47-73; Ezr. 3:1-4:5).

These restorations, in true Biblical fashion, are celebrated with much fanfare, trumpets, dances and shouting. The noise of the jubilant masses, however, attracts the opponents of the temple, who again manage to halt construction. In response to the opposition, the prophets Haggai and Zechariah rally support to continue building. The support comes in the form of two Judean officials who advice king Darius to initiate a search in the imperial archives for king Cyrus’s initial edict (the document granting permission to rebuild the temple). The edict is found and Darius commands construction to be resumed to fulfill Cyrus’s decree. The last section of 1 Esdras centres around the figure of Ezra, who comes to Judah with a third wave of returnees (1 Esd. 8:1-9:55). Upon arriving, Ezra is horrified to learn that many Judeans had given themselves in marriage to non-Israelite women. Ezra returns, Torah in hand, to exhort the people, encouraging them to annul these mixed marriages. Thus, under Ezra’s purview, the nation turns again to God and Torah.

In this series of blogposts I will aim to address multiple things: in the first blog following this introduction I would like to discuss some tensions that arise when we compare the canonical and apocryphal texts. The observant reader may already have noticed that, although the book of 1 Esdras is generally in keeping with the Hebrew, or what we call the Masoretic Text (MT), we can spot some serious divergence (see figure 2 below and also Grabbe 2021; paywalled). These differences will help us approach questions of intertextual relationship: to what did both texts owe their current shape? Does Ezra-Nehemiah rely on 1 Esdras, or vice versa? Do both maybe stem from a common “ancestor text” that both texts interpret in different ways and add things to? If things are added or omitted, what might be a good reason for a writer to do so?

In the third part of this series, I will make a brief case-study of the letter to King Artaxerxes. In a genuine effort not to confuse the reader too much, I will discuss some of the confusion that exists around the correspondence with Artaxerxes, which features in both the MT and 1 Esdras (Ezr. 4:7-24; 1 Esd. 2:16-30). The fourth and final blogpost will continue with the same bit of correspondence, arguing that the repositioning of this letter in the book of 1 Esdras is rather a sensible thing to do from a narrative perspective, and fits an overall tendency that we detect in the book. Finally, having weighed the information, I would like to propose that the author(s)/editor(s) of 1 Esdras might have worked with a version of the story that is really quite similar to Ezra-Nehemiah – we will see how there is clearly an editorial and revisionary hand at work in 1 Esdras. In other words, I’ll put forth an argument in favour of, to steal a fancy phrase from Lisbeth Fried “the priority of Ezra-Nehemiah” (Fried 2011).

#RICHARD #BOYLE #2ND #VISCOUNT #SHANNON
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Very cool: there's a 14th-century #Greek translation of some biblical books including Daniel that switches to a (pseudo-)Doric dialect for the #Aramaic section!

brill.com/view/journals/...

Very cool: there's a 14th-century #Greek translation of some biblical books including Daniel that switches to a (pseudo-)Doric dialect for the #Aramaic section!

brill.com/view/journals/...

Very cool: there's a 14th-century #Greek translation of some biblical books including Daniel that switches to a (pseudo-)Doric dialect for the #Aramaic section!

brill.com/view/journals/...

Very cool: there's a 14th-century #Greek translation of some biblical books including Daniel that switches to a (pseudo-)Doric dialect for the #Aramaic section!

brill.com/view/journals/...

Very cool: there's a 14th-century #Greek translation of some biblical books including Daniel that switches to a (pseudo-)Doric dialect for the #Aramaic section!

brill.com/view/journals/...

Dumah

In Hebrew & Aramaic, it means “silence.”

He’s an angel mentioned in Rabbinic & Islamic literature as an angel who has authority over the wicked dead. He’s popular in Yiddish folklore. I.B. Singer’s Short Friday (1964), a collection of stories, mentions Dumah as a “thousand-eyed angel of Death armed with a fiery rod or flaming sword.

Duma(h) or Doumah (Aramaic) is the angel of silence & the stillness of death. Dumah is also the prince of Hell, & the angel of vindication.

The Zohar speaks of him as having “tens of thousands of angels of destruction” under him & as being “Chief of demons in Gehinnom (Hell) with 12,000 myriads of attendants, all charged with the punishment of the souls of sinners.” 3 angels of destruction are appointed to him. He & his fellow angels torment the sinners every day of the week except on Shabbat. Shabbat is the Jewish Sabbath day. Like the Christian Sunday.

According to hadiths mentioned in Al-Suyuti’s al-Haba’ik, Azrael hands over the souls of the deceased unbelievers to Dumah.

Dumah is the name of the 1 of the 7 compartments of Gehenna.

In the video game Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, Dumah is the name of a boss character. He’s the vampire brother of Raziel, & along with Turel is the 1 who is cast into the Abyss on Kain’s orders. In reference to the meaning of his name, when finally confronted, he is killed by vampire hunters, & his corpse is sitting silently on a throne.

Dumah shows up in the TV show & comic book The Sandman (by Neil Gaiman; DC Comics). Specifically in “The Season of Mists.” Dumah, along with Ramiel, becomes the keeper of Hell after Lucifer abandons his throne/realm.

An angel named Dumah appears in the wildly popular CW show called Supernatural (“Carry on my wayward son…” Sorry, we’ll show ourselves out…). In this show, Dumah is portrayed as a woman, played by Erica Cerra.

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A little bit of Lycian

Lycian is a first-millennium BCE language of the Anatolian family, a subgroup of Indo-European. It was written with its own, funky alphabet, and as such it is currently relevant to my interests. One of the longest texts happens to be a Lycian-Greek-Imperial Aramaic trilingual:

Reading up on Lycian in Melchert (2008; paywalled) the other day, I was really interested to read that the letters transliterated as b, g, d were fricatives: [β], [ɣ], [ð]. They seem to have shifted from the expected *b, *g, *d, based both on reconstruction and the letters used. This raises two short questions, to which I welcome your input:

1. As in Modern Greek, the otherwise unvoiced stops p, t, k were voiced after nasals. So, just like Modern Greek, Lycian can add a dummy nasal to write a voiced stop in other positions, as in Ñtarijeus– for Darius. How cool is that?
2. This looks very similar to what happened to Greek at some point. Could this be some kind of effect of Greek-Lycian contact? Does Modern Greek have a Lycian substrate?!

Quoting Ñtarijeus– reminds me of the other point I wanted to make:

Cases such as hrppi “above” or sñta (a numeral) seem to indicate that liquids and nasals had syllabic allophones, and the standard view is that the special letters ñ and m̃ stand for syllabic nasals. This may have been true when the graphemes were invented, but this analysis cannot account for postvocalic occurrences such as qãñti “they slay.” The gemination in hrppi (see below) argues that at the phonetic level the pronunciation was [hərp.pi] with an anaptyctic vowel. If one makes the reasonable inference that the same is true for nasals (sñta=[sənta]), then one may make the generalization that ñ and m̃ occur only in syllable-final position. This distribution suggests that they are unreleased allophones of the nasal consonants.

Melchert (2008: 50)

Melchert’s reasoning seems sound to me (although, shouldn’t that be [sənda]?), but I balk at the mention of unreleased nasals. Are these phonetically possible? If the air doesn’t come out your nose, how do you know it’s a nasal? Do any other languages have this?

Instead, maybe the Lycian lenition of voiced plosives we just saw can help us out here too. While this also relies on exotic sounds, perhaps we are dealing with lenition of the nasal stops too. If prevocalic *n and *m lenited to [ð̃] and [β̃], but syllable-final *n and *m remained nasal stops, a reshuffling of the letter signs makes for a plausible distribution that, at least, only relies on sounds that we can imagine how to pronounce: n spells [ð̃], ñ spells [n], m spells [β̃], and m̃ spells [m].

That’s all for now; don’t forget to Lyc and subscribe.

A little bit of Lycian

Lycian is a first-millennium BCE language of the Anatolian family, a subgroup of Indo-European. It was written with its own, funky alphabet, and as such it is currently relevant to my interests. One of the longest texts happens to be a Lycian-Greek-Imperial Aramaic trilingual:

Reading up on Lycian in Melchert (2008; paywalled) the other day, I was really interested to read that the letters transliterated as b, g, d were fricatives: [β], [ɣ], [ð]. They seem to have shifted from the expected *b, *g, *d, based both on reconstruction and the letters used. This raises two short questions, to which I welcome your input:

1. As in Modern Greek, the otherwise unvoiced stops p, t, k were voiced after nasals. So, just like Modern Greek, Lycian can add a dummy nasal to write a voiced stop in other positions, as in Ñtarijeus– for Darius. How cool is that?
2. This looks very similar to what happened to Greek at some point. Could this be some kind of effect of Greek-Lycian contact? Does Modern Greek have a Lycian substrate?!

Quoting Ñtarijeus– reminds me of the other point I wanted to make:

Cases such as hrppi “above” or sñta (a numeral) seem to indicate that liquids and nasals had syllabic allophones, and the standard view is that the special letters ñ and m̃ stand for syllabic nasals. This may have been true when the graphemes were invented, but this analysis cannot account for postvocalic occurrences such as qãñti “they slay.” The gemination in hrppi (see below) argues that at the phonetic level the pronunciation was [hərp.pi] with an anaptyctic vowel. If one makes the reasonable inference that the same is true for nasals (sñta=[sənta]), then one may make the generalization that ñ and m̃ occur only in syllable-final position. This distribution suggests that they are unreleased allophones of the nasal consonants.

Melchert (2008: 50)

Melchert’s reasoning seems sound to me (although, shouldn’t that be [sənda]?), but I balk at the mention of unreleased nasals. Are these phonetically possible? If the air doesn’t come out your nose, how do you know it’s a nasal? Do any other languages have this?

Instead, maybe the Lycian lenition of voiced plosives we just saw can help us out here too. While this also relies on exotic sounds, perhaps we are dealing with lenition of the nasal stops too. If prevocalic *n and *m lenited to [ð̃] and [β̃], but syllable-final *n and *m remained nasal stops, a reshuffling of the letter signs makes for a plausible distribution that, at least, only relies on sounds that we can imagine how to pronounce: n spells [ð̃], ñ spells [n], m spells [β̃], and m̃ spells [m].

That’s all for now; don’t forget to Lyc and subscribe.

A little bit of Lycian

Lycian is a first-millennium BCE language of the Anatolian family, a subgroup of Indo-European. It was written with its own, funky alphabet, and as such it is currently relevant to my interests. One of the longest texts happens to be a Lycian-Greek-Imperial Aramaic trilingual:

Reading up on Lycian in Melchert (2008; paywalled) the other day, I was really interested to read that the letters transliterated as b, g, d were fricatives: [β], [ɣ], [ð]. They seem to have shifted from the expected *b, *g, *d, based both on reconstruction and the letters used. This raises two short questions, to which I welcome your input:

1. As in Modern Greek, the otherwise unvoiced stops p, t, k were voiced after nasals. So, just like Modern Greek, Lycian can add a dummy nasal to write a voiced stop in other positions, as in Ñtarijeus– for Darius. How cool is that?
2. This looks very similar to what happened to Greek at some point. Could this be some kind of effect of Greek-Lycian contact? Does Modern Greek have a Lycian substrate?!

Quoting Ñtarijeus– reminds me of the other point I wanted to make:

Cases such as hrppi “above” or sñta (a numeral) seem to indicate that liquids and nasals had syllabic allophones, and the standard view is that the special letters ñ and m̃ stand for syllabic nasals. This may have been true when the graphemes were invented, but this analysis cannot account for postvocalic occurrences such as qãñti “they slay.” The gemination in hrppi (see below) argues that at the phonetic level the pronunciation was [hərp.pi] with an anaptyctic vowel. If one makes the reasonable inference that the same is true for nasals (sñta=[sənta]), then one may make the generalization that ñ and m̃ occur only in syllable-final position. This distribution suggests that they are unreleased allophones of the nasal consonants.

Melchert (2008: 50)

Melchert’s reasoning seems sound to me (although, shouldn’t that be [sənda]?), but I balk at the mention of unreleased nasals. Are these phonetically possible? If the air doesn’t come out your nose, how do you know it’s a nasal? Do any other languages have this?

Instead, maybe the Lycian lenition of voiced plosives we just saw can help us out here too. While this also relies on exotic sounds, perhaps we are dealing with lenition of the nasal stops too. If prevocalic *n and *m lenited to [ð̃] and [β̃], but syllable-final *n and *m remained nasal stops, a reshuffling of the letter signs makes for a plausible distribution that, at least, only relies on sounds that we can imagine how to pronounce: n spells [ð̃], ñ spells [n], m spells [β̃], and m̃ spells [m].

That’s all for now; don’t forget to Lyc and subscribe.

A little bit of Lycian

Lycian is a first-millennium BCE language of the Anatolian family, a subgroup of Indo-European. It was written with its own, funky alphabet, and as such it is currently relevant to my interests. One of the longest texts happens to be a Lycian-Greek-Imperial Aramaic trilingual:

Reading up on Lycian in Melchert (2008; paywalled) the other day, I was really interested to read that the letters transliterated as b, g, d were fricatives: [β], [ɣ], [ð]. They seem to have shifted from the expected *b, *g, *d, based both on reconstruction and the letters used. This raises two short questions, to which I welcome your input:

1. As in Modern Greek, the otherwise unvoiced stops p, t, k were voiced after nasals. So, just like Modern Greek, Lycian can add a dummy nasal to write a voiced stop in other positions, as in Ñtarijeus– for Darius. How cool is that?
2. This looks very similar to what happened to Greek at some point. Could this be some kind of effect of Greek-Lycian contact? Does Modern Greek have a Lycian substrate?!

Quoting Ñtarijeus– reminds me of the other point I wanted to make:

Cases such as hrppi “above” or sñta (a numeral) seem to indicate that liquids and nasals had syllabic allophones, and the standard view is that the special letters ñ and m̃ stand for syllabic nasals. This may have been true when the graphemes were invented, but this analysis cannot account for postvocalic occurrences such as qãñti “they slay.” The gemination in hrppi (see below) argues that at the phonetic level the pronunciation was [hərp.pi] with an anaptyctic vowel. If one makes the reasonable inference that the same is true for nasals (sñta=[sənta]), then one may make the generalization that ñ and m̃ occur only in syllable-final position. This distribution suggests that they are unreleased allophones of the nasal consonants.

Melchert (2008: 50)

Melchert’s reasoning seems sound to me (although, shouldn’t that be [sənda]?), but I balk at the mention of unreleased nasals. Are these phonetically possible? If the air doesn’t come out your nose, how do you know it’s a nasal? Do any other languages have this?

Instead, maybe the Lycian lenition of voiced plosives we just saw can help us out here too. While this also relies on exotic sounds, perhaps we are dealing with lenition of the nasal stops too. If prevocalic *n and *m lenited to [ð̃] and [β̃], but syllable-final *n and *m remained nasal stops, a reshuffling of the letter signs makes for a plausible distribution that, at least, only relies on sounds that we can imagine how to pronounce: n spells [ð̃], ñ spells [n], m spells [β̃], and m̃ spells [m].

That’s all for now; don’t forget to Lyc and subscribe.

A little bit of Lycian

Lycian is a first-millennium BCE language of the Anatolian family, a subgroup of Indo-European. It was written with its own, funky alphabet, and as such it is currently relevant to my interests. One of the longest texts happens to be a Lycian-Greek-Imperial Aramaic trilingual:

Reading up on Lycian in Melchert (2008; paywalled) the other day, I was really interested to read that the letters transliterated as b, g, d were fricatives: [β], [ɣ], [ð]. They seem to have shifted from the expected *b, *g, *d, based both on reconstruction and the letters used. This raises two short questions, to which I welcome your input:

1. As in Modern Greek, the otherwise unvoiced stops p, t, k were voiced after nasals. So, just like Modern Greek, Lycian can add a dummy nasal to write a voiced stop in other positions, as in Ñtarijeus– for Darius. How cool is that?
2. This looks very similar to what happened to Greek at some point. Could this be some kind of effect of Greek-Lycian contact? Does Modern Greek have a Lycian substrate?!

Quoting Ñtarijeus– reminds me of the other point I wanted to make:

Cases such as hrppi “above” or sñta (a numeral) seem to indicate that liquids and nasals had syllabic allophones, and the standard view is that the special letters ñ and m̃ stand for syllabic nasals. This may have been true when the graphemes were invented, but this analysis cannot account for postvocalic occurrences such as qãñti “they slay.” The gemination in hrppi (see below) argues that at the phonetic level the pronunciation was [hərp.pi] with an anaptyctic vowel. If one makes the reasonable inference that the same is true for nasals (sñta=[sənta]), then one may make the generalization that ñ and m̃ occur only in syllable-final position. This distribution suggests that they are unreleased allophones of the nasal consonants.

Melchert (2008: 50)

Melchert’s reasoning seems sound to me (although, shouldn’t that be [sənda]?), but I balk at the mention of unreleased nasals. Are these phonetically possible? If the air doesn’t come out your nose, how do you know it’s a nasal? Do any other languages have this?

Instead, maybe the Lycian lenition of voiced plosives we just saw can help us out here too. While this also relies on exotic sounds, perhaps we are dealing with lenition of the nasal stops too. If prevocalic *n and *m lenited to [ð̃] and [β̃], but syllable-final *n and *m remained nasal stops, a reshuffling of the letter signs makes for a plausible distribution that, at least, only relies on sounds that we can imagine how to pronounce: n spells [ð̃], ñ spells [n], m spells [β̃], and m̃ spells [m].

That’s all for now; don’t forget to Lyc and subscribe.

After years of wondering, I finally realized what the cal.huc.edu logo says (the innovative #Aramaic kaph threw me off): 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤊𐤋𐤄 ʾrm klh 'all of Aram' (lit. 'Aram, all of it'), a quote from one of the Sefire steles.

New paper: Arabic in the Nabataean papyri

An online preview of my new article with Sigrid Kjær, ‘Arabic in the Nabataean papyri, including P.Yadin 7’, appeared on the Journal of Semitic Studies website last weekend.

Abstract: The impact of Arabic and Ancient North Arabian on the Nabataean corpus is well known. While Arabisms in the Nabataean inscriptions have received significant attention, the small, yet crucial corpus of Nabataean papyri remains relatively understudied in this regard. In this study, we reassess the possible North Arabian loanwords, especially those suggested by the first editors of the papyri and by Ada Yardeni in various separate studies. Based on the criteria of phonology, morphology, and attestation, we conclude that roughly half of the suggested examples cannot plausibly be attributed to borrowing from Arabic or other North Arabian languages. The low but significant number of remaining, plausible Arabisms strongly cluster in the semantic field of legal and financial technology, supporting the view that Arabic influence on Nabataean may have been more restricted in scope than has long been thought.

Enjoy!

New paper: Arabic in the Nabataean papyri

An online preview of my new article with Sigrid Kjær, ‘Arabic in the Nabataean papyri, including P.Yadin 7’, appeared on the Journal of Semitic Studies website last weekend.

Abstract: The impact of Arabic and Ancient North Arabian on the Nabataean corpus is well known. While Arabisms in the Nabataean inscriptions have received significant attention, the small, yet crucial corpus of Nabataean papyri remains relatively understudied in this regard. In this study, we reassess the possible North Arabian loanwords, especially those suggested by the first editors of the papyri and by Ada Yardeni in various separate studies. Based on the criteria of phonology, morphology, and attestation, we conclude that roughly half of the suggested examples cannot plausibly be attributed to borrowing from Arabic or other North Arabian languages. The low but significant number of remaining, plausible Arabisms strongly cluster in the semantic field of legal and financial technology, supporting the view that Arabic influence on Nabataean may have been more restricted in scope than has long been thought.

Enjoy!

New paper: Arabic in the Nabataean papyri

An online preview of my new article with Sigrid Kjær, ‘Arabic in the Nabataean papyri, including P.Yadin 7’, appeared on the Journal of Semitic Studies website last weekend.

Abstract: The impact of Arabic and Ancient North Arabian on the Nabataean corpus is well known. While Arabisms in the Nabataean inscriptions have received significant attention, the small, yet crucial corpus of Nabataean papyri remains relatively understudied in this regard. In this study, we reassess the possible North Arabian loanwords, especially those suggested by the first editors of the papyri and by Ada Yardeni in various separate studies. Based on the criteria of phonology, morphology, and attestation, we conclude that roughly half of the suggested examples cannot plausibly be attributed to borrowing from Arabic or other North Arabian languages. The low but significant number of remaining, plausible Arabisms strongly cluster in the semantic field of legal and financial technology, supporting the view that Arabic influence on Nabataean may have been more restricted in scope than has long been thought.

Enjoy!

New paper: Arabic in the Nabataean papyri

An online preview of my new article with Sigrid Kjær, ‘Arabic in the Nabataean papyri, including P.Yadin 7’, appeared on the Journal of Semitic Studies website last weekend.

Abstract: The impact of Arabic and Ancient North Arabian on the Nabataean corpus is well known. While Arabisms in the Nabataean inscriptions have received significant attention, the small, yet crucial corpus of Nabataean papyri remains relatively understudied in this regard. In this study, we reassess the possible North Arabian loanwords, especially those suggested by the first editors of the papyri and by Ada Yardeni in various separate studies. Based on the criteria of phonology, morphology, and attestation, we conclude that roughly half of the suggested examples cannot plausibly be attributed to borrowing from Arabic or other North Arabian languages. The low but significant number of remaining, plausible Arabisms strongly cluster in the semantic field of legal and financial technology, supporting the view that Arabic influence on Nabataean may have been more restricted in scope than has long been thought.

Enjoy!

New paper: Arabic in the Nabataean papyri

An online preview of my new article with Sigrid Kjær, ‘Arabic in the Nabataean papyri, including P.Yadin 7’, appeared on the Journal of Semitic Studies website last weekend.

Abstract: The impact of Arabic and Ancient North Arabian on the Nabataean corpus is well known. While Arabisms in the Nabataean inscriptions have received significant attention, the small, yet crucial corpus of Nabataean papyri remains relatively understudied in this regard. In this study, we reassess the possible North Arabian loanwords, especially those suggested by the first editors of the papyri and by Ada Yardeni in various separate studies. Based on the criteria of phonology, morphology, and attestation, we conclude that roughly half of the suggested examples cannot plausibly be attributed to borrowing from Arabic or other North Arabian languages. The low but significant number of remaining, plausible Arabisms strongly cluster in the semantic field of legal and financial technology, supporting the view that Arabic influence on Nabataean may have been more restricted in scope than has long been thought.

Enjoy!

Judah’s Aramean period

A few weeks ago, I was startled to learn about this inscription (and a few more like it) from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud, in northeastern Sinai:

Kuntillet ‘Ajrud, although it’s in present-day Egypt, is culturally a northern Israelite (= Samarian) site. Quite a few inscriptions were found there, dating to around 800 BCE, and mostly in Israelite Hebrew, which by this time had started to develop its own script, Paleo-Hebrew, different from what was used for Phoenician and Aramaic. The inscriptions like the one in the picture, however, are weird in two regards. First, their Hebrew is in the southern, Judahite dialect, not in the northern, Israelite one. And second, the script is not Paleo-Hebrew, but what I’d like to call Northern Levantine, the sister script I just mentioned that is used for Phoenician and a range of other Northwest Semitic languages—but normally not Hebrew!

There’s some debate about whether (all of) these inscriptions are really in Judahite Hebrew and not, say, Phoenician. But if they are (the one on the image seems clear enough), why the weird script? The editors of the Kuntillet ‘Ajrud inscriptions don’t really know either, but suggest some kind of Phoenician influence in Judah at this time. I don’t know of any other evidence to suggest that, and it seems ad hoc.

But why this Phoenician fixation? Unless I’m missing something serious, there aren’t any consistent differences at this time between the Phoenician script proper and the broader North Levantine script as it was also used for Ammonite, Sam’alian, and, again, Aramaic. Here’s a nice Old Aramaic inscription so you can check.

Unlike the Phoenician hypothesis, I think there may be sufficient evidence for Aramean, specifically Damascene influence on Judah, around the same time that Hazael of Damascus was exerting influence all over the place:

17 At that time King Hazael of Aram went up, fought against Gath, and took it. But when Hazael set his face to go up against Jerusalem, 18 King Jehoash of Judah took all the votive gifts that Jehoshaphat, Jehoram, and Ahaziah, his ancestors, the kings of Judah, had dedicated, as well as his own votive gifts, all the gold that was found in the treasuries of the house of the Lord and of the king’s house, and sent these to King Hazael of Aram. Then Hazael withdrew from Jerusalem.

2 Kings 12:17-18 (NRSVUE)

This event, commonly dated around 830 BCE, does not get a lot of follow-up in the Bible. But this is overlord behaviour. When Sennacherib besieges Jerusalem and has to be bought off, that’s a major event of the Assyrian period. When Nebuchadnezzar besieges Jerusalem (the first time) and takes the Temple vessels as tribute, that’s the Babylonian period. Could it be that at the same time that Hazael was conquering his Aramean neighbours and defeating the Israelites in Transjordan (2 Kings 10:32-33), Judah entered a mini Aramean period? If so, it wouldn’t be crazy for scribal training in Damascus-dominated Judah to teach the newly emergent script of its Syrian overlords.

But in the end, Judahite Hebrew is normally written with Paleo-Hebrew, not a Northern Levantine script like Aramaic. So, what, did they switch at some point? Well,

8 Then Amaziah sent messengers to King Jehoash son of Jehoahaz son of Jehu of Israel, saying, “Come, let us look one another in the face.” 9 King Jehoash of Israel sent word to King Amaziah of Judah, “A thornbush on Lebanon sent to a cedar on Lebanon, saying, ‘Give your daughter to my son for a wife,’ but a wild animal of Lebanon passed by and trampled down the thornbush. 10 You have indeed defeated Edom, and your heart has lifted you up. Be content with your glory and stay at home, for why should you provoke trouble so that you fall, you and Judah with you?”

11 But Amaziah would not listen. So King Jehoash of Israel went up; he and King Amaziah of Judah faced one another in battle at Beth-shemesh, which belongs to Judah. 12 Judah was defeated by Israel; everyone fled home. 13 King Jehoash of Israel captured King Amaziah of Judah son of Jehoash son of Ahaziah at Beth-shemesh; he came to Jerusalem and broke down the wall of Jerusalem from the Ephraim Gate to the Corner Gate, a distance of four hundred cubits. 14 He seized all the gold and silver and all the vessels that were found in the house of the Lord and in the treasuries of the king’s house, as well as hostages; then he returned to Samaria.

2 Kings 14:8-14 (NRSVUE)

This is several decades and one or two generations later: Amaziah of Judah is Jehoash of Judah’s son, and Jehoash of Israel is the grandson of Hazael’s contemporary Jehu of Israel. And again, what we see here is typical overlord-vassal behaviour. It seems fair to say that here, Judah is (re)entering a period of Samarian dominance. Wresting Judah from Damascus as part of the larger Israelite campaign against Aram of this time seems like a good reason for Jehoash to have sent his armies south, perhaps a better reason than Amaziah being a bit of a blowhard.

That provides us with a natural setting for Judah to switch to the Samarian-promoted Paleo-Hebrew script attested in most of the Judahite Hebrew epigraphy. When we next get information about Judah’s geopolitical situation, it’s the late eighth century and they’re wisely switching allegiance to the Neo-Assyrian Empire. While the Assyrians used Aramaic for administration in the western part of their empire (the Aramaic-derived script used for Hebrew today is still called ktav ashuri, ‘Assyrian writing’), I’m not sure they would have cared enough to enforce the use of Northern Levantine all over the place for local, non-Aramaic languages too. You need Persians for that level of organization.

So, between ca. 830 and 790, we’ve got a window where it might have made more sense for Judahite scribes to write like Arameans than like northern Israelites. I’ll have to double check (especially the material from Arad), but I think the timing works out for the use of Northern vs. Southern Levantine for Judahite Hebrew corresponding to Damascene vs. Samarian dominance. Why exactly Aramaic-Judahite-Hebrew-writing scribes would have been leaving (Yahwistic!) religious plaster inscriptions at a waystation in the desert in Sinai, however, remains a mystery to me for now.

Judah’s Aramean period

A few weeks ago, I was startled to learn about this inscription (and a few more like it) from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud, in northeastern Sinai:

Kuntillet ‘Ajrud, although it’s in present-day Egypt, is culturally a northern Israelite (= Samarian) site. Quite a few inscriptions were found there, dating to around 800 BCE, and mostly in Israelite Hebrew, which by this time had started to develop its own script, Paleo-Hebrew, different from what was used for Phoenician and Aramaic. The inscriptions like the one in the picture, however, are weird in two regards. First, their Hebrew is in the southern, Judahite dialect, not in the northern, Israelite one. And second, the script is not Paleo-Hebrew, but what I’d like to call Northern Levantine, the sister script I just mentioned that is used for Phoenician and a range of other Northwest Semitic languages—but normally not Hebrew!

There’s some debate about whether (all of) these inscriptions are really in Judahite Hebrew and not, say, Phoenician. But if they are (the one on the image seems clear enough), why the weird script? The editors of the Kuntillet ‘Ajrud inscriptions don’t really know either, but suggest some kind of Phoenician influence in Judah at this time. I don’t know of any other evidence to suggest that, and it seems ad hoc.

But why this Phoenician fixation? Unless I’m missing something serious, there aren’t any consistent differences at this time between the Phoenician script proper and the broader North Levantine script as it was also used for Ammonite, Sam’alian, and, again, Aramaic. Here’s a nice Old Aramaic inscription so you can check.

Unlike the Phoenician hypothesis, I think there may be sufficient evidence for Aramean, specifically Damascene influence on Judah, around the same time that Hazael of Damascus was exerting influence all over the place:

17 At that time King Hazael of Aram went up, fought against Gath, and took it. But when Hazael set his face to go up against Jerusalem, 18 King Jehoash of Judah took all the votive gifts that Jehoshaphat, Jehoram, and Ahaziah, his ancestors, the kings of Judah, had dedicated, as well as his own votive gifts, all the gold that was found in the treasuries of the house of the Lord and of the king’s house, and sent these to King Hazael of Aram. Then Hazael withdrew from Jerusalem.

2 Kings 12:17-18 (NRSVUE)

This event, commonly dated around 830 BCE, does not get a lot of follow-up in the Bible. But this is overlord behaviour. When Sennacherib besieges Jerusalem and has to be bought off, that’s a major event of the Assyrian period. When Nebuchadnezzar besieges Jerusalem (the first time) and takes the Temple vessels as tribute, that’s the Babylonian period. Could it be that at the same time that Hazael was conquering his Aramean neighbours and defeating the Israelites in Transjordan (2 Kings 10:32-33), Judah entered a mini Aramean period? If so, it wouldn’t be crazy for scribal training in Damascus-dominated Judah to teach the newly emergent script of its Syrian overlords.

But in the end, Judahite Hebrew is normally written with Paleo-Hebrew, not a Northern Levantine script like Aramaic. So, what, did they switch at some point? Well,

8 Then Amaziah sent messengers to King Jehoash son of Jehoahaz son of Jehu of Israel, saying, “Come, let us look one another in the face.” 9 King Jehoash of Israel sent word to King Amaziah of Judah, “A thornbush on Lebanon sent to a cedar on Lebanon, saying, ‘Give your daughter to my son for a wife,’ but a wild animal of Lebanon passed by and trampled down the thornbush. 10 You have indeed defeated Edom, and your heart has lifted you up. Be content with your glory and stay at home, for why should you provoke trouble so that you fall, you and Judah with you?”

11 But Amaziah would not listen. So King Jehoash of Israel went up; he and King Amaziah of Judah faced one another in battle at Beth-shemesh, which belongs to Judah. 12 Judah was defeated by Israel; everyone fled home. 13 King Jehoash of Israel captured King Amaziah of Judah son of Jehoash son of Ahaziah at Beth-shemesh; he came to Jerusalem and broke down the wall of Jerusalem from the Ephraim Gate to the Corner Gate, a distance of four hundred cubits. 14 He seized all the gold and silver and all the vessels that were found in the house of the Lord and in the treasuries of the king’s house, as well as hostages; then he returned to Samaria.

2 Kings 14:8-14 (NRSVUE)

This is several decades and one or two generations later: Amaziah of Judah is Jehoash of Judah’s son, and Jehoash of Israel is the grandson of Hazael’s contemporary Jehu of Israel. And again, what we see here is typical overlord-vassal behaviour. It seems fair to say that here, Judah is (re)entering a period of Samarian dominance. Wresting Judah from Damascus as part of the larger Israelite campaign against Aram of this time seems like a good reason for Jehoash to have sent his armies south, perhaps a better reason than Amaziah being a bit of a blowhard.

That provides us with a natural setting for Judah to switch to the Samarian-promoted Paleo-Hebrew script attested in most of the Judahite Hebrew epigraphy. When we next get information about Judah’s geopolitical situation, it’s the late eighth century and they’re wisely switching allegiance to the Neo-Assyrian Empire. While the Assyrians used Aramaic for administration in the western part of their empire (the Aramaic-derived script used for Hebrew today is still called ktav ashuri, ‘Assyrian writing’), I’m not sure they would have cared enough to enforce the use of Northern Levantine all over the place for local, non-Aramaic languages too. You need Persians for that level of organization.

So, between ca. 830 and 790, we’ve got a window where it might have made more sense for Judahite scribes to write like Arameans than like northern Israelites. I’ll have to double check (especially the material from Arad), but I think the timing works out for the use of Northern vs. Southern Levantine for Judahite Hebrew corresponding to Damascene vs. Samarian dominance. Why exactly Aramaic-Judahite-Hebrew-writing scribes would have been leaving (Yahwistic!) religious plaster inscriptions at a waystation in the desert in Sinai, however, remains a mystery to me for now.

Another nice one: Imperial #Aramaic אגור 'temple' (neutral) > later Aramaic 'shrine, altar' (pagan or otherwise heterodox)

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:qbe3b7ljafblsyy4dhkkgj7t/post/3mie7szwmm22h

Another nice one: Imperial #Aramaic אגור 'temple' (neutral) > later Aramaic 'shrine, altar' (pagan or otherwise heterodox)

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:qbe3b7ljafblsyy4dhkkgj7t/post/3mie7szwmm22h

Another nice one: Imperial #Aramaic אגור 'temple' (neutral) > later Aramaic 'shrine, altar' (pagan or otherwise heterodox)

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:qbe3b7ljafblsyy4dhkkgj7t/post/3mie7szwmm22h

Another nice one: Imperial #Aramaic אגור 'temple' (neutral) > later Aramaic 'shrine, altar' (pagan or otherwise heterodox)

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:qbe3b7ljafblsyy4dhkkgj7t/post/3mie7szwmm22h

Another nice one: Imperial #Aramaic אגור 'temple' (neutral) > later Aramaic 'shrine, altar' (pagan or otherwise heterodox)

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:qbe3b7ljafblsyy4dhkkgj7t/post/3mie7szwmm22h

Finally made the connection between Imperial #Aramaic לחן 'temple servant', feminine לחנה,* and Biblical and later Aramaic לְחֵנָה 'concubine', 'wench' or something like that. * That's 𐡋𐡇𐡍 and 𐡋𐡇𐡍𐡄 for my fellow Unicode freaks

Finally made the connection between Imperial #Aramaic לחן 'temple servant', feminine לחנה,* and Biblical and later Aramaic לְחֵנָה 'concubine', 'wench' or something like that. * That's 𐡋𐡇𐡍 and 𐡋𐡇𐡍𐡄 for my fellow Unicode freaks

Finally made the connection between Imperial #Aramaic לחן 'temple servant', feminine לחנה,* and Biblical and later Aramaic לְחֵנָה 'concubine', 'wench' or something like that. * That's 𐡋𐡇𐡍 and 𐡋𐡇𐡍𐡄 for my fellow Unicode freaks

Finally made the connection between Imperial #Aramaic לחן 'temple servant', feminine לחנה,* and Biblical and later Aramaic לְחֵנָה 'concubine', 'wench' or something like that. * That's 𐡋𐡇𐡍 and 𐡋𐡇𐡍𐡄 for my fellow Unicode freaks

Finally made the connection between Imperial #Aramaic לחן 'temple servant', feminine לחנה,* and Biblical and later Aramaic לְחֵנָה 'concubine', 'wench' or something like that. * That's 𐡋𐡇𐡍 and 𐡋𐡇𐡍𐡄 for my fellow Unicode freaks

I'm learning #Akkadian, and whatever happy neurochemical is prompted by recognizing old friends, I love that seeing a cognate for a term I already know in a different Semitic language triggers the same response.
eqlum = field
Why hello, old חקל!
šemûm
Good to see you again, שמע!
#Hebrew #Aramaic

I'm learning #Akkadian, and whatever happy neurochemical is prompted by recognizing old friends, I love that seeing a cognate for a term I already know in a different Semitic language triggers the same response.
eqlum = field
Why hello, old חקל!
šemûm
Good to see you again, שמע!
#Hebrew #Aramaic

I'm learning #Akkadian, and whatever happy neurochemical is prompted by recognizing old friends, I love that seeing a cognate for a term I already know in a different Semitic language triggers the same response.
eqlum = field
Why hello, old חקל!
šemûm
Good to see you again, שמע!
#Hebrew #Aramaic

This war-torn village is fighting to keep Christ’s language alive https://www.byteseu.com/1874417/ #Aramaic #AramaicJesus #Conflicts #jesus #JesusChrist #maaloula #MaaloulaSyria #NativeAramaicSpeakers #Syria #SyriaAramaic

This war-torn village is fighting to keep Christ’s language alive

Rebuilding with words Linguistic obstacles remain: a splintered diaspora, an Arabic-dominated social media, and a workforce and educational…
#Conflict #Conflicts #War #Aramaic #aramaicjesus #Jesus #jesuschrist #maaloula #maaloulasyria #nativearamaicspeakers #Syria #syriaaramaic
https://www.europesays.com/2849755/

https://www.europesays.com/iran/21573/ This war-torn village is fighting to keep Christ’s language alive #aramaic #AramaicJesus #jesus #JesusChrist #maaloula #MaaloulaSyria #NativeAramaicSpeakers #Syria #SyriaAramaic

Hey, I reconstructed some #Aramaic letter names! Going back to around 500 BCE, I guess. The similarity to #Greek is usually explained via #Phoenician, but we don't actually have any Phoenician letter names AFAIK.

Hey, I reconstructed some #Aramaic letter names! Going back to around 500 BCE, I guess. The similarity to #Greek is usually explained via #Phoenician, but we don't actually have any Phoenician letter names AFAIK.

Hey, I reconstructed some #Aramaic letter names! Going back to around 500 BCE, I guess. The similarity to #Greek is usually explained via #Phoenician, but we don't actually have any Phoenician letter names AFAIK.