The ancient Aramaic alphabet was used to write the Aramaic languages spoken by ancient Aramean pre-Christian tribes throughout the Fertile Crescent. It was also adopted by other peoples as their own alphabet when empires and their subjects underwent linguistic Aramaization during a language shift for governing purposes—a precursor to Arabization centuries later—including among Assyrians who permanently replaced their Akkadian language and its cuneiform script with Aramaic and its script,and among Jews,who adopted the Aramaic language as their vernacular and started using the Aramaic alphabet even for writing Hebrew,displacing the former Paleo-Hebrew alphabet..
Aramaic is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria,and quickly spread to Mesopotamia and eastern Anatolia where it has been continually written and spoken,in different varieties,for over three thousand years. Aramaic served as a language of public life and administration of ancient kingdoms and empires,and also as a language of divine worship and religious study. Several modern varieties,the Neo-Aramaic languages,are still spoken by Assyrians,and some Mandeans and Mizrahi Jews.
The Septuagint,sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy,and often abbreviated as LXX,is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Hebrew. The full Greek title derives from the story recorded in the Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates that "the laws of the Jews" were translated into the Greek language at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus by seventy-two Hebrew translators—six from each of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
Solomon Schechter was a Moldavian-born British-American rabbi,academic scholar and educator,most famous for his roles as founder and President of the United Synagogue of America,President of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America,and architect of American Conservative Judaism.
Yeshua was a common alternative form of the name Yehoshua in later books of the Hebrew Bible and among Jews of the Second Temple period. The name corresponds to the Greek spelling Iesous (Ἰησοῦς),from which,through the Latin IESVS/Iesus,comes the English spelling Jesus.
The Paleo-Hebrew script,also Palaeo-Hebrew,Proto-Hebrew or Old Hebrew,is the writing system found in inscriptions of Canaanite languages from the region of Southern Canaan,also known as biblical Israel and Judah. It is considered to be the script used to record the original texts of the Hebrew Bible due to its similarity to the Samaritan script,as the Talmud stated that the Hebrew ancient script was still used by the Samaritans. The Talmud described it as the "Libona'a script",translated by some as "Lebanon script". Use of the term "Paleo-Hebrew alphabet" is due to a 1954 suggestion by Solomon Birnbaum,who argued that "[t]o apply the term Phoenician [from Northern Canaan,today’s Lebanon] to the script of the Hebrews [from Southern Canaan,today’s Israel-Palestine] is hardly suitable". The Paleo-Hebrew and Phoenician alphabets are two slight regional variants of the same script.
Józef Tadeusz Milik was a Polish biblical scholar and a Catholic priest,researcher of the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) through the deserts of Judea/Jordan,and translator and editor of the Book of Enoch in Aramaic (fragments).
Christian Palestinian Aramaic (CPA) was a Western Aramaic dialect used by the Melkite Christian community in Palestine and Transjordan between the fifth and thirteenth centuries. It is preserved in inscriptions,manuscripts and amulets. All the medieval Western Aramaic dialects are defined by religious community. CPA is closely related to its counterparts,Jewish Palestinian Aramaic (JPA) and Samaritan Aramaic (SA). CPA shows a specific vocabulary that is often not paralleled in the adjacent Western Aramaic dialects.
Agnes Smith Lewis (1843–1926) and Margaret Dunlop Gibson (1843–1920),nées Smith,were English Semitic scholars and travellers. As the twin daughters of John Smith of Irvine,Ayrshire,Scotland,they learned more than 12 languages between them,specialising in Arabic,Christian Palestinian Aramaic,and Syriac,and became acclaimed scholars in their academic fields,and benefactors to the Presbyterian Church of England,especially to Westminster College,Cambridge.
Ben Sira,also known as Shimon ben Yeshua ben Eliezer ben Sira or Yeshua Ben Sirach,was a Hellenistic Jewish scribe,sage,and allegorist from Seleucid-controlled Jerusalem of the Second Temple period. He is the author of Sirach,also known as the "Book of Ecclesiasticus".
The Book of Sirach or Ecclesiasticus is a Jewish work,originally written in Hebrew. It consists of ethical teachings,from approximately 200 to 175 BCE,written by the Judahite scribe Ben Sira of Jerusalem,on the inspiration of his father Joshua son of Sirach. Joshua is sometimes called Jesus son of Sirach or Yeshua ben Eliezer ben Sira.
Loren T. Stuckenbruck is an historian of early Christianity and Second Temple Judaism,currently professor of New Testament at the University of Munich,in Germany. His work has exerted a significant impact on the field.
Michael Edward Stone is a professor emeritus of Armenian Studies and of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research deals with Armenian studies and with Jewish literature and thought of the Second Temple period. He is also a published poet.
Bible translations into Hebrew primarily refers to translations of the New Testament of the Christian Bible into the Hebrew language,from the original Koine Greek or an intermediate translation. There is less need to translate the Jewish Tanakh from the Original Biblical Hebrew,because it is closely intelligible to Modern Hebrew speakers. There are more translations of the small number of Tanakhas passages preserved in the more distantly related biblical Aramaic language. There are also Hebrew translations of Biblical apocrypha.
Biblical Hebrew orthography refers to the various systems which have been used to write the Biblical Hebrew language. Biblical Hebrew has been written in a number of different writing systems over time,and in those systems its spelling and punctuation have also undergone changes.
The New Testament was written in a form of Koine Greek,which was the common language of the Eastern Mediterranean from the conquests of Alexander the Great until the evolution of Byzantine Greek.
Hebrew and Aramaic papyri have increasingly been discovered from the 1960s onwards,although these papyri remain rare compared to papyri written in Koine Greek and Demotic Egyptian. The most valuable and religious texts were written on leather scrolls,parchment - such as the literary texts from Masada and Qumran,while papyrus was employed for cheaper,domestic use.
The personification of wisdom,typically as a righteous woman,is a motif found in religious and philosophical texts,most notably in the Book of Proverbs in the Hebrew Bible and other Jewish and Christian texts.
Gary A. Rendsburg is a professor of biblical studies,Hebrew language,and ancient Judaism at Rutgers University in New Brunswick,New Jersey. He holds the rank of Distinguished Professor and serves as the Blanche and Irving Laurie Chair of Jewish History at Rutgers University (2004–present),with positions in the Department of Jewish Studies and the Department of History.
