10-16-2014, 08:40 PM
Although Classical Syriac wasn't the dialect that Jesus spoke (he spoke early Galilean), learning Classical Syriac as your first Aramaic language is a solid thing to do as it's a very strong tradition with a large, well-studied corpus and a very strong New Testament tradition (the Peshitta) as well.
Archive.org has a lot of old grammars for Syriac online, but some of them are a bit dated. Two common ones are:
Uhlemann's Syriac Grammar - https://archive.org/details/uhlemannssyriacg00uhle
and
N?ldeke's Compendious Syriac Grammar - https://archive.org/details/CompendiousSyriacGrammar
If you can get your hands on a copy of Robinson's "Paradigms and Exercises in Syriac Grammar" I highly recommend it. It's usually available on eBay or Amazon for cheap.
If you're interested in Galilean Aramaic, I'm on-again-off-again working on online classes over at http://www.AramaicNT.org. Hopefully soon on-again as I'm finishing up my own grammar of the dialect and have a few children's books in the publication pipeline.
Peace,
-Steve
Archive.org has a lot of old grammars for Syriac online, but some of them are a bit dated. Two common ones are:
Uhlemann's Syriac Grammar - https://archive.org/details/uhlemannssyriacg00uhle
and
N?ldeke's Compendious Syriac Grammar - https://archive.org/details/CompendiousSyriacGrammar
If you can get your hands on a copy of Robinson's "Paradigms and Exercises in Syriac Grammar" I highly recommend it. It's usually available on eBay or Amazon for cheap.
If you're interested in Galilean Aramaic, I'm on-again-off-again working on online classes over at http://www.AramaicNT.org. Hopefully soon on-again as I'm finishing up my own grammar of the dialect and have a few children's books in the publication pipeline.
Peace,
-Steve