CHALDEE PARAPHRASES 201
CHALDEES
Biblical and Targomical Chaldee. Winer, however, regaxding linguistical characteristics chiefly, distin- goishes three grades of its parity : the hmguage, as ImumI in the Targnm of Onkelos, as most free ttom Hebraisms ; the Biblical Chaldee, which, as it frequent- ly intermixes certain peculiarities of Hebrew (as the n of the article, the plural ending D-:-, the dual form, and the conjugation I£ophar)y ranks below the first class ; and the idiom of the other Targums, which not only abounds with foreign words, but possesses sever- al peculiar formations bordering on those of the Syr- iac and of Rabbinical Hebrew. See Taroum. The language of the Talmud is also usually called Chaldee ; and, if we except the Mishnah (which is written in an idiom not so very far removed from Biblical Hebrew, with a tincture of Chaldee), it is true of the Gemaras that they are written in such very corrupl Chaldee that their idiom is more properly designated as the Tal- modical diAlect. See Talmup.
Under the article Aramaah Lanouaob have ^n noticed those several features which the Chaldee pos- sesses in common with the Syriac ; and it now remains to define those, certainly not marked, characteristics by which it is distinguished from it. These are — ^the imdominance of the a sound where the Syriac has o ; the avoidance of diphthongs and of otiant letters ; the use of dagesb-forte ; the regular accentuation of the last syllable ; and the formation of the infinitives, ex- cept in Pea/, without the prefbrmative 73. The mode of writing is also much less defective than in Syriac. — Kitto, s. V.
Works auxiliary to the study of the Chaldee : — Gbaxxars : Cellarius, Grammat, Ling, Chald. (Cizse, 1684); Opitz, Chcddaismus Targwn. Talmud. Rabbin. (Kiel, 1696) ; Hegelmaier, Chaldaism Biblici funda- meiUa (T&b. 1770) ; J. D. Michaelis, Grammatica ChaU dcdca (G5tting. 1771); Hexel, Amotistmg turn Ckaid. (Lemgo, 1787) ; Schroeder, Institui. ad Chaldaism, Bib- Ham (1787, 1810); Wittich, Grundz&ge d. bibl. u. targ. Ckaldaismta (Leipzig, 1824); Hirzel, De Chaidaimi bibUci orig. et catct, criHca (Lips. 1830) ; Dietrich, De tfrmtmis ChaJdaid proprietaie ; Longfield, Introduction to Chaldee (Lond. 1859) ; Riggs, Manual of Chald. Lan- guage (N. Y. 1858) ; Guriel (a Chaldsean priest), Ele- ncH'a lingua Ckaldaica (Rome, 1860) ; FQrst, Lehrge- biude der aram. Idiome (Leipz. 1835). The best man- ual is Winer's GrammaOk (Lpz. 1824), 2d ed. transla- ted by Professor Hackett, Grammar of the Chaldee Language as contained in the Bible and Targums (N. Y. 1851). The most complete Lexicon is Buxtorf's Ijoicon ChaUUco-talmudico-rabbinicum (Basil, 1689 ; a new ed. by Fische and Gelbe is announced, Lpz. 1866 8q., 4to). There are also Landau's Rabbinisch-aramd- itchrdeutsches Worterb. (Prague, 1819-24), new ed. by Sperling (Lcmbcrg, 1857); Levy, Chald, Wdrterbuch (Lpz. 1866, sq.). The Biblical Chaldee words are con- tained in the Heb. lexicons. Chrestobiiathies have been edited by Baner (Norimb. 1792) ; J. Jahn (Wien, 1800); Grimm (Lemgo, 1801) ; Winer, Chald. Lesebuch fl. d. Targumim, m. Anmerk. u. Wortregister (Leipzig, 1825); P. Ewald, '' Pirke Aboth^' vbers. u, erklart n^ punctirtemTexle u. Wortregister (Erlang. 1825); Petennann (Berol. 1840). The Biblical Chaldee is contained m the Heb. Bible.
Chaldee ParaphraBes. See TABonifs. , Chal'deea (or "Chaldawms," Hebrew Kasdim\ O-rtrbS, Sept. XaX^oToc, Chald. 'pK'jb?, i^KI^-jiS?) appear m Scripture, until the time of the Captivity, as the people of the country which has Babylon for its capital (2 Kings xxv; Isa. xiii, 19; xxiii^ 18; comp. Isa. xlviii, 14; Jer. xxi, 4 ; xxxii, 2 sq. ; Ezek. xxii, 15* etc.), and which is itself termed Shinar C^rSTS); but in the book of Daniel, while this meaning is' still feand (v, 80, and ix, 1), a new sense shows itself. The Chaldasns are there classed with the magidaaa and i
astronomers, and evidently form a sort of priest class, who have a peculiar ** tongue" and '* learning" (i, 4), and are consulted by the king on religious subjects. The same variety appears in profane writers. Be- rosus, the native historian, himself a Chaldsean in the narrower sense (Tatian, Or. adv. Gr. 68), uses the term only in the wider sense, while Herodotus, Diodorus, Strabo, and the later writers almost universally em- ploy it to signify a sect or portion of the people whom they regard either as priests or as philosophers. With this view, however, is joined another, namely, that the Chaldseans are the inhabitants of a particular part of Babylonia, vb. the country bordering on the Persian Gulf and on Arabia (Strab. xvi, 1, § 6 ; Ptol. v, 20, 3). See Babylonia.
1. It appears that the Chaldieans (Kaldai or Kaldi) were in the earliest times merely one of the many Cushite tribes inhabiting the great alluvial plain known afterwards as Chaldna or Babylonia. Their special seat was probably that southern portion of the country which is found to have so late retained the name of Chaldaoa. Here was Ur " of the Chaldees," the modem Mugheir, which lies south of the Euphra- tes, near its Junqtion with the Shat el-Hie. Hence would readily come those ** three bands of Chaldsoans" who were instruments, simultaneously with the Sab»- ans, in the afiiiction of Job (i, 15-17). In process of time, as the Kuldi grew in power, their name grad- ually prevailed over that of the other tribes inhabiting the country, and by the pra of the Jewish Captivity it had begun to be used generally for all the inhabitants of Babylonia. We may suspect that when the name is appUed by Berosus to the dynasties which preceded the Assyrian, it is by way ofprolepsis. The dynasty of Nabopolassar, however, was (it is probable) really ChaldsBan, and this greatly helped to establish the wider use of the appellation. It had thus come by this time to have two senses, both ethnic ; in the one it was the special appellative of a particular race, to whom it had belonged from the remotest time's ; in the other it designated the nation at large in which this race was predominant. — Smith, s. v. Probably it was a branch of the same people that are spoken of in Greek writers as an uncultivated tribe of mountain- eers, on the Carduchian mountains, in the neighbor- hood of Armenia, whom Xenophon describes as brave and fond of freedom (Cgrop. i, 81; Anab. iv, 8, 4, 7, 8, 25). In Hab. i, 6-10, the Chaldfloans are spoken of in corresponding terms. The circumstance, moreover, that a Shemitic dialect is found to have prevailed in Babylon, corroborates the idea that the ChaldsBans were of a mixed character. See CuALDiSA.