Jewish Palestinian Aramaic

Jewish Aramaic
Region	Levant
Era	150 BCE – 1200 CE
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic Central Semitic Northwest Semitic Aramaic Western Aramaic Jewish Aramaic
Dialects	Galilean dialect Judean dialect
Writing system	Aramaic alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	jpa
Glottolog	gali1269

Jewish Aramaic also known as Jewish Western Aramaic was a Western Aramaic language spoken by the Jews during the Classic Era in Judea and the Levant, specifically in Hasmonean, Herodian and Roman Judaea and adjacent lands in the late first millennium BCE, and later in Syria Palaestina and Palaestina Secunda in the early first millennium CE. This language is sometimes called Galilean Aramaic, although that term more specifically refers to its Galilean dialect.

The most notable text in the Jewish Western Aramaic corpus is the Jerusalem Talmud, which is still studied in Jewish religious schools and academically, although not as widely as the Babylonian Talmud, most of which is written in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic. There are some older texts in Jewish Western Aramaic, notably the Megillat Taanit: the Babylonian Talmud contains occasional quotations from these. Dead Sea Scroll 4Q246, found in Qumran, is written in this language as well.

There were some differences in the dialects between Judea and Galilee, and most surviving texts are in the Galilean dialect. Michael Sokoloff has published separate dictionaries of the two dialects. A Galilean dialect of Aramaic was probably a language spoken by Jesus.

Jewish Western Aramaic was gradually replaced by Arabic following the Muslim conquest of the Levant in the seventh century.

Grammar

Orthography

י, ו, א, ה are used to denote vowels. וו and יי are also used as replacements for their singular counterparts in the middle of words.

Sample Text

JPA	English
בת גבר אביינוס דאתרה	The daughter of an important man of the place
לית אפשר לאבילא למיכל מיניה	It is impossible for the mourner to eat from it
דחסיר אבר או יתיר אבר	Lacking a limb or having an extra limb

See also

• Christian Palestinian Aramaic
• Jewish Babylonian Aramaic
• Mandaic language
• Samaritan Aramaic language
• Western Neo-Aramaic

Sources

• Dalman, Gustaf (1905). Grammatik des jüdisch-palästinischen Aramäisch (2nd ed.). Leipzig: Leipzig, Hinrichs.
• Caspar Levias (1986). A Grammar of Galilean Aramaic. The Jewish Theological Seminary of America. ISBN 0-87334-030-2.
• Beyer, Klaus (1986). The Aramaic Language: Its Distribution and Subdivisions. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. ISBN 9783525535738.
• Gzella, Holger (2015). A Cultural History of Aramaic: From the Beginnings to the Advent of Islam. Leiden-Boston: Brill. ISBN 9789004285101.
• Sokoloff, Michael (1990). A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine Period. Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press. ISBN 9789652261014.
• Sokoloff, Michael (2003). A Dictionary of Judean Aramaic. Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press. ISBN 9789652262615.
• Sokoloff, Michael (2012a). "Jewish Palestinian Aramaic". The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook. Berlin-Boston: Walter de Gruyter. pp. 610–619. ISBN 9783110251586.
• Stevenson, William B. (1924). Grammar of Palestinian Jewish Aramaic. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 9781725206175.