spin

I've cited the literature. You'll find some of his books on Amazon.


spin

ynquirer

Official Aramaic as lingua franca of the Middle East was replaced with Greek in the late 4th century BC, except in Judea where it was stuck to and degenerated into Middle Aramaic - so to speak, Jesus’ Aramaic. Counterintuitive supposition that Official Aramaic was still in use in the 2nd century (a full hundred and seventy years later) is ad hoc, that is, inferred from dating Daniel post-164, as no evidence of such use exists. The backward induction is simply circular.

:boohoo:

James Brown

Was Joseph Smith trying to fool anyone by writing the Book of Mormon in seventeenth-century English a la the King James Bible?

ynquirer

The problem is not whether or not Daniel’s author/s tried to fool others, but that you lack factual evidence they did.

arnoldo

Are you sure it was written first in Hebrew then translated in Aramaic? Allegedly, Porphyry, in his book, Against the Christians, claimed the Book of Daniel was originally written in greek.

Sheshonq

Apparently not, since the citations were given. Here's another data point indicating that Imperial Aramaic was still widespread in the 2nd century:

The conquest by Alexander the Great did not destroy the unity of Aramaic language and literature immediately. Aramaic that bears a relatively close resemblance to that of the fifth century BCE can be found right up to the early second century. The Seleucids imposed Greek in the administration of Syria and Mesopotamia from the start of their rule. In the third century, Greek overtook Aramaic as the common language in Egypt and Syria. However, a post-Achaemenid Aramaic continued to flourish from Judaea, through the Syrian Desert, and into Arabia and Parthia.

And another (page 19). AFter discussing how Greek supplanted Aramaic in Syria and Mesopotamia in the 4th century BC, and then supplanted it in Egypt and northern Palestine in the 3rd century BCE, the author states:

The retention of Imperial Aramaic in northwest Arabia, Judaea, Palmyra, Babylonia, and Parthia serves to underline national independence against the Seleucids and the Romans and cultural autonomy against Hellenism.

So if you have any such citations, then provide them. Otherwise, you're just handwaving.

spin

Porphyry was not a linguist.

(Linguistics as a study functionally originates in the 19th c. quest for the historical relationship between European languages, then became generalized in the 20th c. to deal with all aspects of all languages.)


spin

ynquirer

I suppose the citation(s) you here mention is the one provided with in post #507. It furnishes a link to a previous IIDB post. There you can find two links to the same website, namely, answers.com. If you take the pains to read the whole article to the end, you’ll find that it is a replica of another one published by Wikipedia. You now give us another two links, of which the first one is precisely to the wikiarticle you have cited before. In others words, you have given us, whether directly or indirectly, up to four links to the same wikitext. Ok, that’s fine. Yet, wikicitation is not citation proper - that‘s one of the first things I was emphatically taught by learned infidels.

Your last citation is more interesting. It’s a scholarly one. Curiously enough, you quote from a paragraph but not the next one in the same page, which is of crucial significance since it deals with the topic of evidence:

Biblical Aramaic includes Ezra 4:8-6:18; 7:12-26 (written in the 4th cent. B.C.) Dan 2:4b-7:28 (finished 164 B.C.); Gen 31:47; Jer 10:11. These texts were originally produced in Achaemenid Imperial Aramaic. (p.19)

This self explains. There are four texts in Achaemenid Imperial Aramaic - or Official Aramaic - in the Tanakh. A substantial portion of Ezra is ascribed to the 4th century. Two isolated verses from Genesis and Jeremiah remain undated. And the sole text ascribed to the 2nd century is the greater part of Daniel. The rest of the discourse - your quotation - is ex post rationalization from the presumption that Daniel was written in or about 164 B.C.

By the way, more careful writers type a question mark (164?) to denote that dating Daniel in the 2nd century is a conjecture not supported by factual evidence. See Efrem Yildiz, “The Aramaic Language and its Classification,” Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies, 14 No.1 (2000), p.34.

Sheshonq

1. "You suppose"? You didn't go to the link to find out, and are going to "suppose" your way to a conclusion about my citation?

2. It is not the citation from #507.

Except that it isn't. It is a different citation, in a different place, inside the same article. But the content is not the same as the post in # 507.

Uh, no. At most there are three citations to the same Wiki article. Moreover, the individual citations are not the same, so your point is somewhat lacking in any real substance.

Did you learn that lesson? Or no?

No, it doesn't. But let's watch you try to force-fit your conclusion onto the author's text.

Actually, there are none - not precisely. Notice the author at this point has moved on from discussing 2nd century Imperial Aramaic in general terms, and is now talking about Biblical Aramaic - something which the author plainly says is not quite the same. After listing the changes caused by stabilization of the Masoretic consonants and 'vocabulary creep. "Hence, Biblical Aramaic must be dealt with separately."

Uh, no. That is your assumption you would like to peddle to the rest of us, but you lack either proof or a convincing argument.

Additionally, the list of places that the author mentions as retaining Imperial Aramaic down to the 2nd century -- ie., northwest Arabia, Judaea, Palmyra, Babylonia, and Parthia - speaks of much wider scope of usage and cannot be explained by merely pointing to a few verses in Daniel.

In like fashion, your attempt to claim the fact of Imperial Aramaic persisting unto the 2nd century is ex post rationalization also falters on the same grounds: the geographic list of scope of usage is larger and wider than could be explained merely by invoking Daniel.

By "more careful writers" presumably you would mean "someone who believes in a 5th century dating". What the question mark points to is not the lack of factual evidence - as you assert - but the inability to nail down the year to a precise date. In point of fact, the question mark indicates the imprecision of the range of 167 - 164 BCE, a limitation of the dating which has been noted before.

ynquirer

Sheshong

Do you have evidence of use of Imperial Aramaic in the 2nd cent. other than Daniel or not?