What Is Aramaic?
Aramaic is one of the Semitic languages, an important group of languages known almost from the beginning of human history and including also Arabic, Hebrew, Ethiopic, and Akkadian (ancient Babylonian and Assyrian). It is particularly closely related to Hebrew, and was written in a variety of alphabetic scripts. (What is usually called "Hebrew" script is actually an Aramaic script.) (http://cal1.cn.huc.edu/)
Aramaic goes gack as early as 2nd Kings 18:26. Daniel 2 through 7 was written in Aramaic. The place of the Skull is called Golgotha (an Aramaic word).
Christian Aramaic Literature
Although Jesus spoke Aramaic, the Gospels are in Greek, and only rarely quote actual Aramaic words. Reconstruction of the Aramaic background of the Gospels remains a fascinating, but inordinately difficult area of modern scholarly research.
Christians in Palestine eventually rendered portions of Christian Scripture into their dialect of Aramaic; these translations and related writings constitute "Christian Palestinian Aramaic." (http://cal1.cn.huc.edu/)
What I have gathered is that Aramaic and Hebrew are just like American English and European English. Similar in many ways, but different in many ways...
Jonathon "Johnny" Ray
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