02-03-2009, 08:25 PM
The reference I thought I new of on this issue does not actually address it. It actually just says ?????? ?????? ?????????? So that's not really related. It was from 11QJN.
I do realise that this is a different dialect of Aramaic from the Peshitta, but I think that to find a Judean Aramaic text that used Shabbat idiomatically for "week" would be very strong evidence that it was common useage in that time. I don't think it would reduce the forcefulness of the point any at all because with Judean Aramaic being so heavily influenced by Hebrew we would expect its useage to be far more Hebrew and more Biblical. So we would not expect to see the term Shabbat used this way as much as we might expect to see it in Syriac.
I do realise that this is a different dialect of Aramaic from the Peshitta, but I think that to find a Judean Aramaic text that used Shabbat idiomatically for "week" would be very strong evidence that it was common useage in that time. I don't think it would reduce the forcefulness of the point any at all because with Judean Aramaic being so heavily influenced by Hebrew we would expect its useage to be far more Hebrew and more Biblical. So we would not expect to see the term Shabbat used this way as much as we might expect to see it in Syriac.