08.1. Introduction

8.1. Introduction

You know more words of the Old Testament languages, Hebrew and Aramaic, than you thought. Christians often use Hebrew names for God, such as Elohim (God), Yahweh (proper name of God, often translated LORD), Adonai (Lord), Tseba’ot (Hosts), Elyon (Almighty) and Shaddai (Almighty, He who is sufficient). A few English words were taken directly from Hebrew.

There are some Aramaic words in the New Testament, such as:

·    Talitha koum ‘Little girl, I say to you, get up’ (Mark 5:41).

·    Abba ‘Father’ (Mark 14:36).

·    Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’(Mark 15:34).

·    Maranatha (1 Corinthians 16:22). The word transliterated maranatha, may mean: ‘Our Lord, Come!’(Marana-tha) or ‘Our Lord has come!’(Maran-atha).

8.1.1. Languages of the Old Testament The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and some parts in Aramaic. Almost 99% of the Old Testament was written in the Hebrew language (23,213 verses). The Aramaic section is very small. It consists of a few chapters and verses in Genesis (Genesis 31:47, two words); Ezra (4:8-6:18; 7:12-26); Jeremiah (Jeremiah 10:11); Daniel (2:4-7:28).

8.1.2. Name of the languages The language of the Israelites is called yehudit, the ‘language of Judah’ (2 Kings 18:26; Isaiah 36:11; Nehemiah 13:24; 2 Chronicles 32:18) and shephat Kena’an (literally: lip of Canaan) ‘language of Canaan’ (Isaiah 19:18). The name ‘Hebrew’ ivrît does not appear in the Old Testament.

Aramaic (’ārāmît) is called Syriack (see Daniel 2:4) and ‘Syrian language’ (2 Kings 18:26; Ezra 4:7; Isaiah 36:11) in the KJV. A previous generation of Old Testament scholars called the Aramaic language Chaldean.

8.1.3. Language family

Hebrew and Aramaic are related languages. They belong to the Semitic language group within the Afro-asiatic language families. The Semitic languages were the predominant language groups of the Middle East. In scholarly research, these languages are classified into two groups according to their geographic distribution: (1) East Semitic and (2) West Semitic languages. The East Semitic group has only one language, Akkadian, the language of the Babylonians and Assyrians. The West Semitic group is divided into the Northwest (present day Lebanon and Syria) and the Southwest (Arabian Peninsula and Ethiopia) Semitic language. The Northwest has three main families: (1) Amorite and Ugaritic, (2) Canaanite languages, and (3) Aramaic. Hebrew belongs to the Canaanite language group, together with Phoenician, Punic, Moabite, Edomite, and Ammonite. It is no wonder that Hebrew was called ‘the language of Canaan’ (Isa. 19:18).

Figure 1: Map of the Semitic languages