THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
cred writers of the Mesopotamian Arameans. According to Judges iii.S, 10a king, Cushan-rishathaim, overran the whole western country including the land of Israel, which he held for eight years. Another brief notice is to the effect that Hadarezer king of the Arameans of Zobah, had the assistance of troops from beyond the river against King David (II Sam. x. 16).
Much more important for Israel was the group of communities on the northeast of Palestine, of which the most famous was Damascus, the greatest city and state ever controlled by the 9. Cities Arameans. Damascus, however, as and States a city, was much older than the in Southern Aramean immigration of the twelfth Syria. and eleventh centuries B.C., and was doubtless an Amorite trading-post in the old days of Babylonian supremacy. Indeed, it is doubtless true that the Arameans occupied Amorite settlements, just as the contemporary Israelites occupied those of the Canaanites. These " Syrian " states, southwest of Damascus, and on the lower slopes of Hermon, are first heard of in connection with the wars of David about 980 b.c. (II Sam. viii. and x.), the passage referring to the wars of Saul (I Sam. xiv. 47) bsing based on a confused reminiscence of later conditions. To Zobah (at first the most powerful state), Geshur, and Beth-Rehob on the east of the upper Jordan must be added Tob (Judges xi. 3, 5; II Sam. x. 6, 8); and to Maachah on the west must be added Hamath, to be distinguished from " Hamath the Great " (Amos vi. 2), the more famous city on the Orontes in Middle Syria. This Hamath lay northwest of the city of Dan, and beside it ran the road leading west and north to the valley of the Litany and Orontes (Coelesyria). Hence the " entering in of Hamath " marked the northern boundary of Israel, as did also the neighboring city of Dan. All of these cities and petty states were long debatable ground between Damascus and northern Israel. They lay, however, within the natural domain of Damascus, and ultimately became Syrian.
Israel's relations with the kingdom of Damascus did much to determine its destiny After Damascus and the sister states had been 10. The made tributary to David, a new Arameans regime in Damascus put that city of Damas- at the head of the Syrian Arameans cus and in the days of Solomon (c. 945 B.C.), Israel. and threw off the yoke of Israel (I Kings xi. 23 sqq.). The next step was the annexation of northern Naphtali (already, as above stated, in large part Aramean), in the reign of Baasha, by Benhadad I. (about 890 B.C.). This was the beginning of a war which lasted a century, and which would certainly have resulted in the ruin of Israel, if it had not been for the repeated attacks made upon Damascus by the great Assyrian power. Israel suffered most from Benhadad II, and Hazael of Damascus. Only once is a truce mentioned between the two countries (I Kings xx. 34; xxii. 1), which lasted over two years (S55-S.53 B.C.) and was favored by an exceptional combination of the western states against
an Assyrian invasion under Shalmaneser II., so that in Sf>) b.c Benhadad and Ahab were found fighting side by side in defense of the West-land. The war, when resumed, was for a time disastrous to the Hebrews, so that in the reigns of Jehu an ; Jehoahaz, Hazael of Damascus and his successor held not only northern but probably also southern Israel in subjection. At length in the reign of Joash of Israel in 797 B.C. Damascus was taken by Adad-nirari III., of Assyria, and Aramean domination came to an end. Damascus, however, retained its independence, which it held till it was converted into a Roman province after the capture of the city by Tiglath-Pileser III. in 732 b.c.
Damascus, however, still retained its commercial importance and remained the business and social center of Aramean influence in southern Syria, which increased with the extinction of the small western nationalities. Indeed, the unifying process through which the whole of western 11. Spread Asia passed under the domination of
of Ara- Assyria, the later Babylonian, and mean Influ- the Persian empires, was materially
ence in hastened by the trade and commerce Later Times, of the ubiquitous Arameans. Palestine itself gradually became Aramean in speech, if not materially so in population. The prevalence of the Aramaic language for many centuries after the Arameans had ceased to have any great political importance is the most striking proof of the manifold activity of the people. Originally one of the three great north Semitic dialects, along with the Babylonian (Assyrian) and Canaanitic (Hebrew), it had practically displaced the other two as a living speech by the second century b.c. Thus it happens that not only were considerable portions of two Old Testament books written in Aramaic but also all of these books had to be popularly explained in Aramaic and translated into that language, in the form of the Targums, before and after the Christian era. Moreover, the language of the later Old Testament books generally is more or less colored by Aramaic, and Jesus and his disciples spoke an Aramaic dialect (Matt, xxvii. 46, and elsewhere). But the chief literary use of Aramaic came after the close of the canon, Edessa (modern Orfa) in upper Mesopotamia having succeeded to much of the business and importance of the neighboring Charran which remained pagan. A great Christian school was founded there in the second century, and this became the center of the vast " Syriac " literature.
J. F. McCurdy.
Bibliography: For history, etc., consult C. von Lengerke, Kenaan, i. 218 sqq., Konigsberg, 1844; C. Ritter, Erdkunde, parts x. and xvi., Berlin, 1843, 1852; T. Noldeke, Namen und Wohnsitze der Aramaer, in Ausland, xl. (1867), nos. 33-34, also 'Ao-cnipios, Stipios, 2upo«, in Hermes, v. (1871) 443-468, and Die Namen der aramdischen Nation und Sprache, in ZDMG, xxv. (1871) 113-131. For the people, A. Featherman, Social History of the Races of Mankind, ii., London, 1881; H. Spencer, Descriptive Sociology, v. Asiatic Races, London, 1876. For the religion, F. Bathgen, Beitrage zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte, Berlin, 1888, and Noldeke's review of the same in ZDMG, xlii. (1888) 470-487. For the Aramaic language, E. Renan, Histoire gfnerale et systeme compare des langues semitiques, Paris, 1863; T. Noldeke, Die semitischen Sprachen, pp. 31- 47, Leipsic, 1889; idem, Grammatik der neu-syrischen Spra-