[B-Greek] ARISTEAS 11, SYRIAKH, and language clarity in Greek

Randall Buth randallbuth at gmail.com
Tue Apr 3 14:24:54 EDT 2007


There is often confusion on words like SYRIAKH and EBRAIKH among
students of Koine Greek. Here is a passage from ARISTEAS that has
somehow gotten into the modern scholarly landscape 'upsidedown',
thanks to a widely read citation in Matthew Black.

ARISTEAS 11, unicode:
ὁ δὲ Δημήτριος εἶπεν
Ἑρμηνείας προσδεῖται·
χαρακτῆρσι γὰρ ἰδίοις κατὰ Ἰουδαίων χρῶνται,
καθάπερ Αἰγύπτιοι τῇ τῶν γραμμάτων θέσει,
καθὸ καὶ φωνὴν ἰδίαν ἔχουσιν.
ὑπολαμβάνονται Συριακῇ χρῆσθαι·
τὸ δ᾿ οὐκ ἔστιν, ἀλλ᾿ ἕτερος τρόπος.

O DE DHMHTRIOS EIPEN
ERMHNEIAS PROSDEITAI,
XARAKTHRSI GAR IDIOIS KATA IOUDAIWN XRWNTAI,
KAQAPER AIGUPTIOI TH TWN GRAMMATWN QESEI,
KAQO KAI FWNHN IDIAN EXOUSIN.
UPOLAMBANONTAI SURIAKH XRHSQAI,
TO DE OUK ESTIN, ALL' ETEROS TROPOS

Demetrios said
"it needs translation,
for they use the own characters according to Judaeans
just as Egyptians when placing letters,
because they have their own sound.
They are assumed to use the Syrian (=Aramaic) language,
but it isn't, but a different manner (of speech).

Matthew Black, while explaining his view of EBRAISTI, added a bizarre
comment and reference to Aristeas, AAGA-3, p.48,
"The use of the term 'Hebrew' to refer to Aramaic is readily
explicable, since it described the peculiar dialect of Aramaic which
had grown up in Palestine since the days of Nehemiah and which was
distinctively Jewish (with a distinctive Hebrew script associated with
it, and a large proportion of borrowings from classical hebrew). It is
these differences to which the letter of Aristeas is referring and not
to two different languages, Hebrew and Aramaic (Syriac).footnote 3
   [[footnote 3:
... 'They (the Hebrew Scriptures) need to be translated', answered
Demetrius, 'for in the country of the Jews they use a peculiar
alphabet, and speak a peculiar dialect. They are supposed to use the
Syriac tongue, but this is not the cae; their language is quite
different.' The reference is to the peculiar dialect of Aramaic spoken
by the Jews, a dialect of West Aramaic; quite different from Syriac,
the dialect of East Aramaic which was in regular use as the standard
Aramaic language.]] "


This a a classic textbook that most NT scholars have cut their teeth
on. Surprising, Black's comments and viewpoint on this text are often
echoed, despite blatant mistakes and anachronisms.
What kind of mistakes?
1. In the third century BCE the standard Aramaic was not 'Syriac' but
a continuation of Imperial Aramaic.
2. Jewish literary Aramaic in the third century BCE would have been
quite close to what we find in earlier Elephantine and later Qumran.
This is could not have been the "different kind of language" that
Demetrios is referring to.
3. There was hardly a distinctive, non-Aramaic script used by Jews for
Aramaic. It was the opposite, the Judeans were using an Aramaic script
for their Hebrew!
4. The obvious context, admitted by Black, is the Jewish Scriptures.
Those are truly written in a different language from Aramaic: the
Bible (OT) was not written in Aramaic, it was written in Hebrew.
Contra Black, Aristeas 11 is clearly referring to the language of the
Hebrew Bible, in Hebrew, of course.
5. SYRIAKH is the Greek word for Aramaic, for all Aramaic. It is not
restricted to the later Edessian dialect known today as 'Syriac'.
SYRISTI is what the Aramaic of Daniel is called in the LXX, it is the
Aramaic of the RabShaqe in Isaia 36. It is 'Aramaic' in Aristeas' day
and in Josephus' day.

The biggest surprise in all of this is how a viewpoint like Black's
about Aristeas, can be so wrong and yet remain in a third edition of a
much quoted work.

Anyway, back to b-Greek concerns,  Aristeas 11 is one of many Greek
texts where one sees the Greek word for Aramaic: SURIAKH and SYRISTI.
Aristeas itself testifies to a common ancient perception within a
neighboring country to Judea that  thought of Judea as using Aramaic.
But it also corrects that perception by saying that the case was
different and that the language of Judea and the Scriptures needs
special translation.

It is not the purpose of the Greek list to explore how both can be
true, that Judea both used SYRIAKH /Aramaic according to outsider
perception and yet also another language. This note merely points out
how the word SYRISTI is used. Unsurprisingly, Josephus also uses
SYRISTI // SYRIAKH correctly and consistantly. But that is another
story.

Randall

-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη πληθυνθείη
שלום לכם וברכות
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
randallbuth at gmail.com


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