RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Arabians Aram
and probably other deities were adopted by the Arameans; the Syrian god Tammuz (Ezek. viii. 14) is of Assyrian origin.
The Aramaic language belongs to the northern division of the Semitic family; it includes an Eastern and a Western branch. To the latter belongs the so-called Biblical Aramaic (Jer. x. 2; Dan. ii. 4-vii. 28; Ezra iv.-8, vi.18; vii. 12-26; cf. Gen. xxxi.47), which since the time of Jerome (ad Dan., ii. 4) has been erroneously called " Chaldaic." According to II Kings xviii. 26, Aramaic was understood in Jerusalem in the time of the kings, though not by the common people. At an early 4. The time it was the lingua franca of Nearer Aramaic Asia, and occupied a position similar Language, to that of the English or French languages of to-day. About the middle of the second century B.C., the Aramaic had become the vernacular in Syria, Palestine, and the neighboring countries. To the Western Aramaic belongs also a great part of Jewish literature (Targums, Palestinian Gemara, etc.), the Samaritan, the idiom of the so-called Nabatffian inscriptions of the Sinaitic peninsula, the Palmyrene inscriptions, etc. The most important branch of the Eastern Aramaic is the so-called Syriac, usually designated as the " Edessene language "; its literature is almost exclusively Christian, and spread even into Persia. The division of these Syriac-speaking Christians into Nestorians and Monophysites resulted in the cultivation of an East Syriac (Nestorian, Persian) and West Syriac (Jacobitic, Roman) dialect. The oldest Syriac document still extant is the translation of the Old and New Testaments which probably belongs to the end of the second Christian century. (See Bible Versions, A, III.) To the Eastern Aramaic belongs also the language of the Babylonian Talmud, a Jewish transformation of the Syriac; the Mandaean (called also Sabian), the dialects in which the holy writings of the Mandaeans (q.v.) are written; and certain dialects, still spoken about Tur Abdin on the upper Tigris, in certain parts east and north of Mosul, in the neighboring mountains of Kurdistan, and on the Western side of Lake Urumiah. The Western Aramaic dialects are more closely allied to the Hebrew than the Eastern Aramaic, and not only strongly influenced the Hebrew, but finally displaced it. Just when this took place can not be determined, but at the time of Jesus the vernacular in Palestine was exclusively Aramaic. Also see Mesopotamia.
W VOLCKf.
The Arameans were the most widely distributed of the Semitic families in their permanent settlements in pre-Christian times. Till 5- Extent the end of the seventh century b.c. of Arame- they were found as seminomads an Settle- with enormous herds of cattle on ments. both sides of the lower Tigris east of Babylonia. As shepherds and «? traders they moved west and north from «me immemorial along the course of the Euphrates as far as the mountains, also crossing we river into Syria in occasional bands. After we downfall of the Egyptian and Hittite regimes n Syria they occupied that region in large
numbers in the twelfth century b.c, and soon became there the controlling power, a position which, as far as race and language were concerned, they maintained till many centuries after the Christian era. They thus extended from the western border of Elam, as far as the Mediterranean; anywhere in this immense area the Arameans were at home. They had the instinct and the habit of travel and trade. Even as shepherds they were not like the Bedouin Arabs, for they kept their flocks and herds mainly for sale in the markets 6. Activity of the cities, near which they were and Enter- usually found. As traders they were prise of the for land traffic what the Phenicians Arameans. were on the sea. The range of their activity and enterprise is indicated by the fact that in the eighth century b.c. Aramaic inscriptions were written in Assyria east of the middle Tigris, and in the extreme northwest of Syria; that Aramaic was then understood in Palestine (II Kings xviii. 26); and that soon thereafter the Semitic alphabet, with Aramaic endings to the names of the letters, was introduced into Greece from Asia Minor. The Arameans were, in fact, the successors of the old Babylonians in the control of the business and commerce of western Asia, and it was from their system of writing (not from the Phenician) that the later alphabets of most of the civilized world were derived.
For Biblical history the most important Ara-
mean settlements were those about the middle
Euphrates in upper Mesopotamia, and those in
southern Syria and northern Palestine which are
usually represented in modern versions by the
name "Syrian." The former region
7. The was Aramean from very early times,
Arameans even when under Babylonian control
of Meso- in the fourth and third millenniums
potamia. b.c. The center of the community
was Charran (Haran), on the river
Balich, one of the greatest trading cities of the
ancient East. It was a seat of the worship of the
moon-god, corresponding to Ur on the lower
Euphrates. Hence the clan of Terah, to which
Abraham belonged, when on its western migration
from Ur halted at Charran and settled in its
neighborhood, between that city and the Euphrates.
This district is the Paddan-Aram of P, which is
shown by Gen. xxxi. 21 to have been east of the
Euphrates. Aram Naharaim, used by other writers
for the same region, does not mean " Aram of the
two rivers " (Euphrates and Tigris), but merely
" Aram of the rivers," and therefore does not
include Mesopotamia in the wider sense as the
Septuagint translates it. Probably the right
reading is Naharim (" rivers "), in accordance with
the Amarna form Na'rima.
This region was the ancestral home of Israel, as is indicated in the traditions of Re- 8. Their becca and Laban, of Leah and Rachel, Place in as well as in the saying " a wander- Biblical ing Aramean was thy father" (Deut. History, xxvi. 5, R. V., margin). After the establishment of Israel in Palestine and of the southern Arameans in the intervening Syrian territory, little is beard from the sa-
Aram Arcani