After more than a decade of providing curricula in biblical Hebrew and Koine Greek, we are excited to offer our first book in Aramaic: Living Christian Aramaic: Introduction Part One ! As you might be aware, Christian Aramaic, also commonly known as Classical Syriac, is a different dialect of Aramaic from that found in the Hebrew Bible / Old [...]
Special guest post by Jordash Kiffiak, co-author of Living Christian Aramaic Syriac is not merely the dialect of Aramaic that provides learners with the largest body of Aramaic literature, including a lengthy catalog of Christian texts written in a Semitic language and related to the Bible and the earliest followers of Jesus. Syriac also [...]
I appreciated the title of a recent essay (June 9, 2014) by Seth Sanders on Religion Dispatches entitled, “Why the Argument Over Jesus’ Language is More Complicated and More Interesting Than Media Experts Have Claimed.” In fact, many of Sanders’ points that elucidated the complexity of the language situation in the first century resonated with [...]
Semitic influence on an ancient Greek writing has been discussed widely in Biblical Studies and Pseudepigraphical texts. In general, it is quite difficult to go deeper and to differentiate between Hebrew influence and Aramaic influence on a particular Greek text. The new volume, Randall Buth and R. Steven Notley, edd., The Language Environment of First-century [...]
We are finally able to provide the published text of the article on the "cry of dereliction" from the Brill volume, The Language Environment of First Century Judaea, Randall Buth and R Steven Notley edd., (Brill, 2014, ISBN 9789004263406). The PDF of Randall Buth, "The Riddle of Jesus' Cry from the Cross: the Meaning of [...]
A rather lengthy article "Hebraisti in Ancient Texts: Does ἑβραϊστί Ever Mean 'Aramaic'?" by Randall Buth and Chad Pierce has appeared in the Brill volume, The Language Environment of First Century Judaea, Randall Buth and R Steven Notley edd., (Brill, 2014, ISBN 9789004263406). The article looks at the meanings and claims about the meanings of [...]