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Ethpathakh versus Ephphatha
#10
Paul Younan Wrote:I think you're missing my point. The roots in question are attested to in both Hebrew and Aramaic texts (they are in fact primitive Semitic roots), from before Christ's time and after Christ's time. Any "Galilean" or "Samaritan" Aramaic speaking person would know what ra'am and ragesh meant, and would have used the words, especially if they also knew their Hebrew scripture.

At the same time, Jesus could have said `azabthani on the cross as he would have known it, and yet we have shabaqthani. :-)

I do not think he would have chosen a word outside of his mother dialect such as ragash (as "tumult/rage") to use as a nickname for some of his closest followers, especially given that in his own dialect it had a very different meaning (as in my "boot" example). It would be like a Syriac speaker using khesda in place of taibutha, in other words, very unlikely.

Quote:Any absence you notice in a relatively small corpus (and the sampling you have of "Galilean" and "Samaritan" Aramaic is tiny) is probably purely coincidental. I think your sampling size is way too small, and you put way too much emphasis on a tiny data set.

I was merely looking at the appropriate Targums with my two examples as you had brought them up. Overall, ra`am is missing from the entirety of the Galilean and Samaritan corpi, which is quite sizable (as they include Talmud Yerushalemi, the various Rabbah commentaries and a plethora of other Rabbinic works which all have passages where such words would be readily used), and all uses of ragash fall under "to perceive" or "to be aware." It's simply an Eastern/Western split, and where all Eastern texts attest a very common word, and all Western texts do not mention it once even in the same contexts with ample opportunity, it's quite significant.

This is like what I mentioned about som; it just doesn't occur in Western dialects. Every occasion where (for example) Syriac or Jewish Babylonian Aramaic would use som (as in phrases like Abba, b-idaikh sa'em 'na rukhi) we find in the Galilean corpus either nathan or yahab. Som doesn't occur once in Galilean or Samaritan.

Quote:The fact that Christ spoke to people from Galilee, Judea, Samaria and Syria shows that He spoke in several dialects, much like modern speakers of Neo-Aramaic do today.

All dialects of the day were certainly intelligible to some degree; however, Jesus and his early companions were very well known to be Galileans simply from their speech, which was markedly different. (Mark 14:70 et al.) Rabbis in Talmud Bavli even tease and deride Galileans for being "sloppy" with their speech to JBA standards (but, of course, was perfectly fine for JPA standards).

Also, modern Neo-Aramaic dialects are far, far more fragmented than they were back in Jesus' time (and far, far more mutually unintelligible) which is what necessitates learning more than one. Someone who speaks Kfarze Turoyo cannot readily understand someone speaking Jub'addin Ma'loula, nor can someone who speaks Sandu Barzani understand Urmi Assyrian (which are even more closely related). Heck, both Lishana Deni speakers and Assyrian speakers can pretty much understand Chaldean speakers, but they have some difficulty understanding each other! :-)

In Jesus' day it wasn't nearly that disjoint, but each dialect did have it's very distinct quirks that left other dialects' speakers either laughing at the other's "poor form" or scratching their chin. The worst case scenario that I've found is that some early Rabbis forbade Galileans from reciting in the Synagogues for fear that they misspeak or mispronounce something and offend God, himself. So aye, there were (pardon the pun) pronounced differences that their speakers stuck to. :-)

Quote:Finally, I wouldn't be considering C.P.A. at all in this discussion, as that is a very late dialect and is very heavily influenced by Greek.

Indeed, it is a later dialect. I was merely using it as an illustration of how where ra`am was (for example) more common among other contemporary dialects, especially those with direct influence, and despite that CPA still opted for its own dialectical form rather than use the far more common (and at that point more universal) Eastern Aramaic word.

(And as a point of order, Syriac has plenty of Greek in it too... but then again, nearly every language that came in contact with Greek ended up with plenty of Greek in it, and fast. Rome may have conquered Greece... :-) )

Peace,
-Steve
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Messages In This Thread
Ethpathakh versus Ephphatha - by LawrenceRaymond - 11-10-2012, 10:35 PM
Re: Ethpathakh versus Ephphatha - by SteveCaruso - 11-11-2012, 01:29 AM
Re: Ethpathakh versus Ephphatha - by Paul Younan - 11-11-2012, 02:31 AM
Re: Ethpathakh versus Ephphatha - by SteveCaruso - 11-12-2012, 09:28 PM
Re: Ethpathakh versus Ephphatha - by Paul Younan - 11-12-2012, 10:31 PM
Re: Ethpathakh versus Ephphatha - by Paul Younan - 11-12-2012, 10:44 PM
Re: Ethpathakh versus Ephphatha - by SteveCaruso - 11-13-2012, 03:39 AM
Re: Ethpathakh versus Ephphatha - by Paul Younan - 11-13-2012, 05:35 AM
Re: Ethpathakh versus Ephphatha - by SteveCaruso - 11-13-2012, 06:40 AM
Re: Ethpathakh versus Ephphatha - by Paul Younan - 11-13-2012, 07:06 AM
Re: Ethpathakh versus Ephphatha - by SteveCaruso - 11-13-2012, 08:25 AM
Re: Ethpathakh versus Ephphatha - by Paul Younan - 11-13-2012, 02:10 PM
Re: Ethpathakh versus Ephphatha - by SteveCaruso - 11-13-2012, 05:34 PM
Re: Ethpathakh versus Ephphatha - by Paul Younan - 11-13-2012, 06:11 PM
Re: Ethpathakh versus Ephphatha - by Paul Younan - 11-19-2012, 10:13 PM
Re: Ethpathakh versus Ephphatha - by SteveCaruso - 11-20-2012, 01:09 AM
Re: Ethpathakh versus Ephphatha - by judge - 12-05-2012, 01:23 AM

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