New Testament translation from Aramaic. When and why did the mention of the evil one (Satan) appear in the prayer "Our Father"? English translation

A.

> Languages ​​of Scripture Texts

> No translation is able to fully convey all the features of the original text. Reading biblical texts in translations, we sometimes do not even guess about all the diversity of the original; a detailed commentary is only to some extent able to make up for the flaw in our reading in the form of a description and analysis of these features.

> Thus, in many editions of Bible translations into modern languages, the entire text of Holy Scripture appears as prosaic. However, in the original, a significant portion of the sacred texts are poems. This applies not only to psalms and other monuments of Old Testament hymnography, which were designed for musical performance. The speeches of most of the prophets are also poetry. Attempts by modern scholars to recreate the Aramaic text of the speeches of Jesus Christ also led to the conclusion that these were poetic texts. True, the ancient poetry of the Semitic peoples did not know rhyme or strict poetic dimensions: it was built on other principles, which included, in particular, rich alliteration - the repetition of homogeneous consonants, which gave the verse a special sound and intonation expressiveness. The poetic design of the speech did not pursue purely aesthetic goals. It contributed to better memorability of statements - after all, in those days there were no tape recorders, and only a few owned shorthand. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the listeners of the prophets remembered for a long time what they heard and literally passed it on to others. (In some modern editions of the Bible - including the Brussels editions in Russian - the verse sections of the text are broken down, allowing the reader to at least take into account the poetic nature of the text.)

> In general, the impression of the literary merits of biblical books that arises from the reader in translation turns out to be incorrect, if only because of the many inconsistencies in the grammatical structure of Hebrew and Aramaic, on the one hand, and most European languages, on the other. The apparent elongation and ponderousness of many passages appear only in translations, but are absent in the original. For example, many readers think that the Bible is overloaded with possessive pronouns ("mine", "yours", "yours", "him", "our", etc.), which appear in those places where it is quite possible without them. get along; at the same time, in the ancient Semitic languages, the role of these pronouns is played by suffixes attached to the root stems of nouns, which do not at all make the text heavier or give it additional stretching.

> For a person who has not studied the languages ​​of the Bible, the most striking images of these languages ​​are proper names - names found on any page of Scripture, geographical names, etc. However, the appearance that the sound of ancient languages ​​is heard in them is deceiving. Biblical names over the centuries have become the property of all Christian nations; yet all of them have undergone serious changes in the course of the historical development of various languages. It is not immediately possible to guess that Ivan, John, Jan, Giovanni, Hovhannes and Jean are one and the same name; nevertheless, they are all transformed variants of the Hebrew name Yehochanan... In the Russian Synodal Translation of Holy Scripture, most biblical proper names are preserved in the form in which they appeared in the Slavic Bible. Only a few Old Testament names and titles are verified according to the Hebrew text. The Old Slavonic translation, in turn, reproduced the Greek transmission of Hebrew and Aramaic names in its Byzantine sound; however, the phonetics of the Greek language has undergone some changes since Hellenistic times - some of the letters and letter combinations were read differently than at the time of the Seventy Commentators or Apostles. Distortions occurred at the previous stage: Hebrew and Aramaic words, when written in Greek, also underwent changes (for example, the Hebrew name Yehoshua[in the Aramaic version - Yeshua] in Greek began to be transmitted as Jesus; in Byzantine times, with the previous spelling, it was already read as Jesus- hence the Slavic and Russian spelling Jesus[or Old Believer form Jesus]). Some names from the languages ​​of neighboring peoples underwent an even more complex transformation: for example, the name of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar known to us from the Russian text of the Bible has little to do with the sound of the name of this monarch in his native Akkadian language - Nabu-kudurri-utsur(in Hebrew, it was first transmitted as Nebukadrezzar and then distortedly - Nebukadnezzar; hence the Greek transmission Nebuchadnezzar, in the Byzantine reading, got into the Old Church Slavonic and Russian translations).

> All of the above are just the most striking, on the surface examples of the inferiority of translations. Of course, reading the Bible freely in the original languages ​​requires many years of preparation and is by no means a prerequisite for studying the Scriptures. At the same time, at the present stage of the development of biblical studies, serious research is inconceivable without a deep knowledge of the languages ​​in which the holy books are written.

> 1. Hebrew language ()

> All the original canonical books of the Old Testament are written in the Hebrew language (with the exception of a few Aramaic inclusions ...), as well as the original text of most of the Deuterocanonical books - If, Sir, Var, 1 Makk and, possibly, Tov <{книги Иудифи, Премудрости Иисуса, сына Сирахова, пророка Варуха, 1-я книга Маккавейская и книга Товита}> (it is possible that it was created in Aramaic); the original text of most of the second canonical books has not survived (except for a number of passages, including large fragments of Sire; however, the fact of the existence of some originals in the first centuries of Christianity is documented).

> Hebrew, called in the Old Testament itself the "language of Canaan" (Isa.19-18) or "Hebrew" (4 Kings 18:26), was the language spoken by the Jews until the last centuries of the old era, when it began to be ousted from everyday life by the Aramaic and was preserved as a spoken language in a rather narrow environment, predominantly, educated Jews. Nevertheless, in addition to the books of the Old Testament (its vocabulary is approximately 8000 words), almost no written monuments have survived from this period, with the exception of a few inscriptions. A significant proportion of the vocabulary of the spoken language remains unknown. Some words are found in the entire Old Testament no more than once, which makes us strongly doubt the adequacy of their understanding. The extant extra-biblical literature in the Hebrew language (Qumran texts, Talmud) was created already in the era when it was leaving everyday use; therefore, the usefulness of this literature for understanding the language of the Old Testament is very small.

> It was the process of gradual disappearance of the Hebrew language as a spoken language that led to the emergence of the problem of editing the texts of Scripture. The Hebrew texts of the sacred books still functioned in the Jewish environment - primarily in synagogue worship. Since Hebrew was not a spoken language for most Jews, it was difficult to read texts that were written in consonant writing (letters expressed only consonants; vowels were not indicated). Therefore, approximately in the 5th century. AD the work of Masoretic editors began, the result of which was the supply of the entire text with diacritical marks denoting vowel sounds, as well as accents marking intonation (which, in turn, introduced syntactic clarity). In many places, the Masoretic edition is controversial among Bible students. Comparative analysis shows that many semantic differences between the Masoretic text and the Septuagint are caused by different vocalizations of the same words, as well as by the difference in the placement of punctuation marks. Thus, each such discrepancy poses a question for biblical scholars: which of the texts corresponds in this case to the primary meaning?

> 2. Aramaic ()

> From the time of the Babylonian captivity, Aramaic dialects began to spread among the Jews, gradually replacing Hebrew as a spoken language. In several places in the Old Testament, this so-called Biblical Aramaic is imprinted in writing, organically fitting into the Hebrew text frame and being fixed in the canon of the Masoretic text: we are talking about several fragments - Ezd 4.8-6.18; 7.12-26; Jer 10.11 Dan 2.4 - 7.28 (the fragment of Chapter 3, absent in the Masoretic text and preserved only in the Septuagint, is probably also based on the Aramaic original). There is an assumption that the Book of Tobit was originally written in Aramaic (by the way, its Aramaic version has survived).

> By the time of Jesus Christ, the main spoken language of Palestine had become different from Biblical Aramaic, Judeo-Palestinian Aramaic: it is this that is most often implied by "Hebrew" in the New Testament (cf. Acts 21:40; 26.14) and other texts of that time. The various dialects of this language were quite different from each other (as is clear from the New Testament, the dialect of the Galileans was different from the dialect of the inhabitants of Judea); in the Aramaic written monuments at the turn of the old and new eras (the Genesis apocrypha from Qumran, targums, midrash), different dialects were captured.

> Judeo-Palestinian Aramaic was the native language of Christ, His inner circle, the apostles. In the Greek text of the Gospels, individual Aramaic words and expressions are recorded: cf. Mk 5.41; 7.34; 15:34 (Russian translation brings them to us already in a strong distortion). Attempts by scientists to recreate - at least approximately - the appearance of Jesus' speeches, translating them from Greek back into Aramaic, have yielded results that exceed all expectations: before the eyes of researchers appeared texts with very vivid poetic features. It is the Aramaic "sayings" (logias) of Jesus, which are reported in the beginning. II century Papias of Hierapolis (by "Hebrew" Papias means Aramaic) have been preserved for quite a long time by the oral tradition of Christians; they also became the source of the synoptic Gospels.

> The opinion that the texts of the Gospels themselves were originally written in Aramaic now finds little support among scholars.

> 3. Greek language ()

> The common Greek language (Koine), into which the Hebrew and Aramaic sacred texts were translated, as well as other sacred books, became widespread in the Hellenistic era in many countries that formed on the ruins of the empire of Alexander the Great. It was on Koine that such famous authors as Polybius (+ 122 BC), Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BC - c. 50 AD), Josephus Flavius ​​( c. 37 - c. 100).

> In the III-II centuries. BC. in Alexandria, where most of the Jews no longer understood the Hebrew language, using mainly Koine, the sacred books were translated into Greek (the famous Septuagint, or the translation of the Seventy Commentaries). Of course, the Greek text of the Septuagint reveals a clear influence of the Hebrew language - in the abundance of lexical borrowings, Hebrew syntactic constructions, phraseology.

> In the same milieu of the Alexandrian Jews, books were written directly in Greek that were close to the biblical tradition in content; two of them were included in the number of the second canonical books of Holy Scripture - Prem and 2Macc.

> All the books of the New Testament are written on Koine. They, in turn, exhibit a noticeable influence of the language of the Septuagint.

> The Greek language of the various books of the Bible affixes different levels of literary quality. In the Septuagint, the language of the Pentateuch and the Book of Isaiah is distinguished by high literary merit, in the New Testament - the creations of Luke and Paul.

B.

> Scripture translations

> Already in ancient times, it was clear to the bearers of the religion of Revelation that in order for the Scripture to fulfill its function among different nations, it must be translated into languages ​​they understand. This, in particular, is evidenced by the appearance in the Old Testament times of the translation of the Seventy. <{Септуагинта; обычно сокращенно обозначают буквами LXX}> There were other translations of the books of the Old Testament: the translation of Aquila, the Pontic Greek who converted to Judaism, performed c. AD 140 and which is a faithful reflection of the Hebrew text (only a few fragments have survived from it); the text of Theodosion, a Jew from Ephesus, who edited around 180 A.D. some Greek text, perhaps simply revising the LXX text (with regard to the Book of Daniel, the Church prefers this text over the LXX); the text of Symmachus, a Samaritan who converted to the Christian faith (from the very few surviving passages, it can be concluded that he strove for careful literary processing). In the III century. Origen based his “exemplary” work on various versions of the Greek text of the Old Testament, comparing six or more basic versions in order to identify their overlaps with Hebrew and create a uniform version. This monumental work has been almost completely lost; only isolated fragments have survived from it. There is also another edition of the LXX, written by Lucian (after AD 300), which spread mainly in Antioch.

> In the first centuries of Christianity, Greek was a kind of international language, which was spoken in almost all areas of the Roman Empire, especially in its eastern provinces. This explains the fact that the texts that had a doctrinal meaning in Christianity were predominantly in Greek. At the same time, Latin was the main spoken language in the western regions of the Roman Empire. Therefore, already from the II century. Latin translations of the books of Holy Scripture appear. The earliest known Latin translation is conventionally called "Vetus Latina" (ie, "ancient Latin" [version]), or "Itala" ("Italic"). Based on the translation works begun in 382 by St. Jerome, another version of the Latin text was formed, known as "Vulgate" (from the Latin "vulgata" - "generally accepted"). All the books of the Old Testament (the original canonical texts), as they appear in the Vulgate, were translated by St. Jerome directly from Hebrew, and in many places the literal translation is supplemented with a semantic arrangement. The Gospels, as presented in the Vulgate, are the result of the work of St. Jerome, who checked "Vetus Latina" against the Greek text. All the other books of the Old Testament are also simply the result of verifying the Vetus Latina against the Greek text, which St. Jerome.

> It was the Vulgate that was used by the Catholic Church throughout the Middle Ages and was officially proclaimed at the Council of Trent as the official canonical text. However, it should be borne in mind that the definition of the Council of Trent referred to the Latin text of the Vulgate as a model of legal, not critical authenticity - that is, it meant, first of all, the canonical list of sacred books and the completeness of their content. The translation itself was recognized as convincing, although not free from shortcomings (which are the places of inaccurate or erroneous translation, some conjunctions, short explanatory inserts, interpretations of a frankly messianic character, translation of proper names, as if they were common nouns, not quite clarified geography, etc.).

> In addition to Latin, the Holy Scriptures were translated into many other languages ​​of Christian peoples in the first centuries of our era. These ancient translations are for us not only a valuable testimony of how the living word of God was preached to various nations; in many ways, they provide researchers with invaluable assistance in identifying the original text, as well as the correct interpretation of many controversial passages.

> Already in the III century. biblical texts begin to be translated into Coptic, in the 4th century. - into Gothic and Syrian, in the V century. - Old Armenian, Georgian and Geez (Ethiopian), in the VII century. - into Arabic, in the VIII century. - into Nubian and Sogdian. ()

> In the IX century. Sts. Cyril and Methodius, preaching Christianity among the Slavic peoples, begin the translation of the Holy Scriptures into the Old Slavonic language. In the following centuries, their work continues, improved and edited. Gradually, several versions of the Old Church Slavonic text are being formed (this explains the difference between the texts currently used by the Russian Orthodox Church in the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate, on the one hand, and the Old Believers, on the other).

> It is known that the translation activity of Sts. Cyril and Methodius were attacked by some part of the clergy of their day. At that time, the theory of "three languages", "according to which Scripture should not exist in languages ​​other than Hebrew, Greek and Latin, was already quite widespread. Gradually, various modified versions of this approach, although they did not become an official teaching, nevertheless prevailed as in In both the West and the East of Christendom, rare attempts to translate the Bible into new languages ​​met with strong opposition from church authorities.

> A significant breakthrough was outlined with the beginning of the Reformation. As Protestantism spread, translations of the Bible into living languages ​​began to appear.

> However, in modern times, both Catholics and Orthodox were able to gradually overcome the previous conservative approach to the problem of translating Holy Scripture and return to the practice of the first Church, which sought to carry the word of God to all peoples in their languages. Taking into account all the positive experience of the past, the Second Vatican Council proclaims: “It is necessary that Christians should have wide access to the Holy Scriptures. For this reason, the Church from the very beginning adopted as her own, the most ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament, called the Translation of the Seventy; she always respects other oriental translations and Latin translations, mainly the translation called the Vulgate, but since the word of God must be available at all times, the Church takes care with maternal concern that proper and accurate translations are made into different languages, predominantly from the original texts of the sacred books. If, under favorable conditions and with the approval of the church authorities, they are made in cooperation even with brethren separated from us, they can be used by all Christians "(DV, 22).

Literal translation of the prayer Our Father from the Aramaic language, read and feel the difference:

Oh Breathing Life
Your name shines everywhere!
Free up space
To plant Your presence!
Imagine in your imagination
Your "I can" now!
Clothe Your desire in all light and form!
Sprout bread through us and
Insight for every moment!
Untie the knots of failure that bind us
As we free the rope
with which we hold back the wrongs of others!
Help us not to forget our Source.
But free us from the immaturity of not being in the Present!
Everything arises from You
Vision, Strength and Song
From meeting to meeting!
Amen. Let our next actions grow from here.

****
When and why did the mention of the evil one (Satan) appear in the prayer "Our Father"?
In the ancient Church Slavonic there is no evil one: "... and do not lead us into an attack, but save us from hostility." Who added the "onion" to the main prayer of Jesus Christ?

The Lord's Prayer, known to every Christian from childhood, is a concentrated exposition of all Christian doctrine, while at the same time it is one of the most perfect literary works ever recorded in writing.

This is the generally accepted view of the short Lord's Prayer that Jesus taught His disciples.

How is this possible? After all, many volumes were needed for a complete exposition of religious teachings in other religions. And Jesus did not even ask His disciples to write down her every word.

Just during the Sermon on the Mount, He said (Matthew 6,9: 13):

"Pray like this:

Our Father, who art in heaven!



And leave us our debts,
as we also leave our debtor.
And don't lead us into temptation
but deliver us from the evil one. "

But this is not the only version of the translation of the Lord's Prayer into Russian. In the author's edition of the Gospel of 1892, there is a slightly different version:

"Our Father who exists in heaven!
hallowed be thy name; let your kingdom come;
Thy will be done on earth as well as on heaven;
hlb our daily give us for this day;
and forgive us our debts;
our debtors;
and do not lead us into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one; "

In the modern, canonical edition of the Bible (with parallel passages), we find almost the same version of the translation of the Prayer:

"Our Father who art in heaven!
hallowed be thy name; Thy kingdom come;
Thy will be done, as in heaven, on earth;
Give us our daily bread for this day;
and forgive us our debts;
just as we forgive our debtors;
And don't lead us into temptation
but deliver us from the evil one; "

In the Old Church Slavonic translation, the Prayer (if written in the modern alphabet) sounds closer to the first version:

"Our Father, who art in heaven!
Hallowed be Thy name! Thy kingdom come;
Thy will be done like in heaven and on earth.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And leave us our debts,
as if we also leave our debtor.
And do not lead us to attack,
but deliver us from the evil one. "

These translations use different words to refer to the same concepts. “Forgive us” and “leave us”, “attack” and “temptation”, “like you are in heaven” and “who art in heaven” mean the same thing.

There is no distortion of the meaning and spirit of the words given by Christ to His disciples, in none of these options. But comparing them, one can come to the important conclusion that literal transmission of the Words of Jesus is not only impossible, but not obligatory.

In the English translations of the Gospels, you can find several different options, but all of them can be considered authentic, because in them the meaning of the Prayer and its spirit are conveyed adequately.

The Lord's Prayer became widespread immediately after the crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus. This is evident at least from the fact that it was found in such distant points as the city of Pompeii (that is, it was there before Pompeii was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D.)

At the same time, the original text of the Lord's Prayer has not reached us in its original form.

Translated into Russian, the Lord's Prayer sounds the same in the Gospels of Matthew (6: 9-13) and Luke (11: 2-4). We find the same text in the KJV Gospels (King James Version) in English.

If we take the Greek primary source, we will be surprised to find that the familiar words "who art in heaven", "Thy will be done in heaven and on earth" and "Deliver us from the evil one" are absent in the Gospel of Luke.

There are many versions explaining the reasons for the disappearance of these words in the Gospel of Luke and their appearance in translations, and subsequently in modern Greek editions of the Gospel. We will not dwell on this, for it is not the letter that is important to us, but the spirit of the great Prayer.

Jesus did not instruct us to pray by memorizing His words literally. He simply said, "Pray this way," that is, "pray this way."

Konstantin Glinka

"Our Father" in translation from Aramaic

Today in the morning I dreamed that I was walking with someone unfamiliar across the stony desert and looking at the sun-drenched sky. Suddenly I noticed that either a carved gilded casket or a book in the same binding was rapidly approaching us.

Before I had time to tell my friend that objects are falling from the sky so easily in the desert, and it’s good that it’s not on my head, when I realized that the object was flying right at me. A second later, he crashed to my right, where my friend was supposed to be. I was so stunned that I woke up before I looked in the direction of the unfortunate comrade.

The morning began unusually: on the Internet I came across "Our Father" in the language of Jesus. The translation from Aramaic shocked me so much that I was late for work, checking if it was a fake. I found that 15 years ago, theologians had the expression "primacy of Aramaic ”.

That is, as far as I understand, the Greek primary source was previously the dominant authority in theological disputes, but absurdities were noticed in it that could arise when translating from the original language. In other words, the Greek version is not primary.

The Aramaic version of the Gospel ("Peshitta", in the Edesian dialect of the Aramaic language) exists, but it is a translation from Greek.

True, as it turned out, not complete. And not only in the sense of the absence of some parts: there are places in it that have been preserved in a more ancient form, since they were already written in Aramaic.

This also applies to the famous main prayer of Christians "Our Father".
*******
And if you translate literally:

Abwoon d "bwashmaya
Nethqadash shmakh
Teytey malkuthakh
Nehwey tzevyanach aykanna d "bwashmaya aph b" arha.
Hawvlah lachma d "sunqanan yaomana

Wela tahlan l "nesyuna ela patzan min bisha.
Metol dilakhie malkutha wahayla wateshbukhta l "ahlam almin.
Ameyn.
Abwoon d "bwashmaya (Official translation: Our Father!)

Literal: Abwoon translates as Divine parent (fruitful emanation of light). d "bwashmaya - the sky; the root shm - light, flame, a divine word that appears in space, the ending aya - says that this radiance occurs everywhere, at any point in space

Nethqadash shmakh (Official translation: Hallowed be Thy name)

Literal: Nethqadash translates to cleansing or an item to sweep away the litter (to clear a place for something). Shmakh - spreading (Shm - fire) and letting go of inner vanity, gaining silence. Literal translation - clearing the space for the Name.

Teytey malkuthakh (Official translation: Thy kingdom come)

Literal: Tey translates to come, but double repetition means mutual desire (sometimes - marriage bed). Malkuthakh is traditionally translated as kingdom, symbolically - the fruitful hand, gardens of the earth; wisdom, purification of the ideal, making it personal for oneself; come home; yin (creative) hypostasis of fire.

Nehwey tzevyanach aykanna d "bwashmaya aph b" arha. (Official translation: Thy will be done on earth as in heaven)

Literal: Tzevyanach translates as will, but not strength, but the desire of the heart. One of the translations is naturalness, origin, the gift of life. Aykanna means constancy, embodiment in life. Aph is personal focus. Arha - earth, b "- means living; b" arha - combination of form and energy, spiritualized matter.
Hawvlah lachma d "sunqanan yaomana (Official translation: Give us our daily bread for this day)

Literal: Hawvlah translates to give (gifts of the soul and material gifts). lachma - bread, essential, vital for the maintenance of life, understanding of life (chma - growing passion, growth, increase). D "sunqanan - needs, what I can own, how much I could bear; yaomana - necessary to maintain the spirit, vitality.

Washboqlan khuabayn aykana daph khan shbwoqan l "khayyabayn.
(Official translation: And forgive us our debts, just as we forgive our debtors)
Literal: Khuabayn translates as debt, internal accumulated energies that destroy us; in some texts, instead of khuabayn, there is wakhtahayn, which translates as frustrated hopes. Aykana - letting go (passive voluntary action).

Wela tahlan l "nesyuna (Official translation: And do not lead us into temptation)

Literal: Wela tahlan is translated as “don't let us enter”; l "nesyuna - illusion, hesitation anxiety, gross matter; symbolic translation - wandering mind.

Ela patzan min bisha. (Official translation: but deliver us from the evil one)

Literal: Ela - immaturity; symbolic translation - inappropriate actions. Patzan - to untie, give freedom; min bisha - from evil

Metol dilakhie malkutha wahayla wateshbukhta l "ahlam almin. (Official translation: For yours is the kingdom and power and glory forever.)

Literal: Metol dilakhie translates to the idea of ​​owning something that bears fruit (plowed land); malkutha - kingdom, kingdom, symbolic translation - "I can"; wahayla - the concept of vitality, energy, tuning in unison, sustaining life; wateshbukhta - glory, harmony, Divine power, symbolic translation - generating fire; l "ahlam almin - from century to century.

Ameyn. (Official translation: Amen.)

Ameyn - act of will, affirmation, oath-taking. Instills strength and spirit into everything created

Aramaic

I. The first time the Aramaic language is used in the Bible is in Genesis 31:47, where Laban names a stone pile in Aramaic, while Jacob gives it a Hebrew name. It is difficult to establish exactly how ancient the Aramaic language is. Albright considers it established that this language originated from one of the West Semitic dialects, which was spoken in northwestern Mesopotamia at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. Obviously, traces of this dialect are visible in the messages from the archive →. According to Albright, this dialect was spoken by the Jewish patriarchs before their resettlement to Palestine. There they adopted the local Canaanite dialect. But this statement raises some doubts. One of the earliest Aramaic inscriptions, the Kilammu inscription, is believed to date back to the 2nd half of the 9th century BC. It was found at Zinjirli along with later inscriptions, probably from the 8th century BC. Science also has an inscription of Zakir dating back to the beginning of the 8th century BC. (→, III). The ancient Aramaic language of this inscription still has much in common with Canaanite. The influence of the Canaanite as well as the Akkadian languages ​​is especially great in the Kilammu inscription, so that some researchers refuse to admit that this text was written in Aramaic.

II. The Aramaic language, previously (on the basis of Dan 2: 4) mistakenly considered Chaldean, became widespread (2 Kings 18:26) and eventually, displacing Hebrew, became spoken, having become the language of the Jewish people by the time of Jesus. The written Hebrew language, in which most of the OT was written, was no longer used as a spoken language. As among the Assyrians and Babylonians - Akkadian, and later in the Roman Empire - Greek, so in the Persian kingdom - Aramaic became the language of official documents and international communication (see also the Book of Ezra). The Jews of the diaspora who lived in Egypt also spoke Aramaic. This is found in Jewish documents on papyrus dating back to the 5th and 4th centuries BC, found at Elephantine (in Upper Egypt). In the period after the Babylonian captivity, the Hebrew language could only be heard in synagogues when reading Scripture. At the same time, the translator presented the read text in a free translation into the Aramaic language. Since such an exposition was too free, then subsequently there was a need for written translation. In Aramaic it was called → (= "translation"). Over time, the Aramaic language was supplanted by Arabic.

III. Aramaic, along with Canaanite and Hebrew, belongs to the northwestern Semitic languages, and in turn is subdivided into western and eastern Aramaic. Written monuments in Western Aramaic include:
1) Ancient Aramaic inscriptions: inscriptions from Zinjirli together with the inscriptions of Kilammu and Zakir, Nabatean inscriptions (1st century BC - 1st century AD), inscriptions from Palmyra (1st century BC - 3rd century AD), Sinai inscriptions (I -IV centuries A.D.);
2) Biblical Aramaic: two words in Gen. 31:47 (see I); Jer 10:11 Dan 2: 4 - Dan 7:28; Ride 4: 8 - Ride 6:18; Ride 7: 12-26;
3) Aramaic language of Jewish papyri and other documents from Egypt (5th and 4th centuries BC);
4) Aramaic language of the Jewish Targums (translations), as well as the Jerusalem and Palestinian Talmuds (II-V centuries AD);
5) Samaritan is the language of translation of the Samaritan Pentateuch (used as a purely literary literary until the Middle Ages, that is, even after there were no speakers of this language;
6) The Christian-Palestinian Aramaic language of the Melkite Christians who lived in Palestine (V-VIII centuries AD);
7) Novoarameyskiy, which is still spoken in a small area in the Anti-Lebanon mountains.

IV. East Aramaic includes:
1) Judeo-Aramaic Babylonian Talmud (IV-VI centuries A.D.);
2) Mandean - the language of the pagan Gnostics from the Mandean sect (from the 4th century AD);
3) Syriac is the written language of the Syrian Church in northern Syria and Mesopotamia in the 3rd-14th centuries. It originated from the Edessa dialect, the oldest inscriptions on which date back to the 1st century A.D. The name "Syriac" is explained by the fact that Christians who spoke Eastern Aramaic called themselves surye... They borrowed this word from the Greek, where sura- abbreviation from assurioi... Semitic name of this people aramaye, Akkadian arime, they used only in the sense of "pagans";
4) New Aramaic dialects in Mesopotamia, which are now spoken in Mosul and Tur-Abdin, as well as in Armenia, where Novo-Syrian from Urmia also became a written language.

Probably, the first post is worth repeating the message from which - at the suggestion and with the direct participation of some friends - this community began.

I'll start with the New Testament... Oleg Shevkun prompted me to study ancient Greek (probably without knowing it himself) in 2000. We then translated together in Amsterdam. I don’t remember what he said then, but his words infected me with the confidence that you can learn Greek on your own. And so in the fall I took up Machen, whom I defeated in about six months. Even before reaching the end of the self-instruction book, from the 20th lesson he began to read the New Testament in Greek. I did not have my own copy then, but Pasha Begichev made my friend ( pavel_begichev ), to whom some missionary presented an obsolete and unnecessary Nestle-Aland 24th or 25th edition. I started reading right from the place where I was then reading the Russian Bible (I remember that somewhere in the pastoral epistles). At first I didn’t understand so much, but I still persisted in reading. As I got to the end of Machen's tutorial, I understood more.

A short time later - already the next spring (2001) - a good man gave me a Wallace textbook (Daniel Wallace. Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics).

In the introductory lessons, I read about the stylistic features of New Testament authors' speech and began to read more systematically, from simple to complex. First I reread all of John (the Gospel, three letters and Revelation). Then all the letters signed with the name of Paul (Romans - Philemon). Then the Synoptic Gospels, ending with Luke, then - Acts, and last of all - the Hebrews. It took me about 1 year to first read the New Testament in Greek. Then I reread the entire New Testament again. Now I was more prepared for reading and could read in a row. The vocabulary accumulated during this time allowed me to read, almost without looking at the dictionary, so the second time I re-read the New Testament, probably in about six months. Of course, some of the books — the ones I preached — I did not read twice, but many times. It seemed to me that I could quote Romans and 2 Peter at once in Greek. Now, of course, much has been forgotten ...

With the reading of the Old Testament it was much more difficult. If the Greek language is similar in structure to Russian, and I knew many roots from medicine, philosophy or the English language, then Hebrew was like a language from another planet. Not a single association, all words are the same length and eerily similar to each other, root letters are lost and disappear, so that Nathan turns into fly- yes, yes, it's the same root! Had to be sophisticated: the sea yam, blood give, Ahab loved Jezebel ... (the reader understands it!) :-) In general, it took more than one month until I acquired a minimal vocabulary and learned to more or less consistently recognize weak roots in various forms. But I continued to read diligently.

Here is how it was. As far as I remember, I began to study Hebrew at the beginning of 2004. After completing the initial grammar, I began to read the Old Testament in Hebrew - again from the place where I read the Bible in Russian at that time, these were minor prophets. At first I understood very little. In 2005 he began to read the Old Testament from the beginning and in a row, according to the arrangement of the books in the Hebrew Bible. Having read to the end of the Pentateuch, I was already quite fluent in reading narrative (narrative) texts. All this time, for convenience, I used the edition of "Holy Scriptures in Russian and Hebrew":

In the autumn that same year, I entered the Masters, where I immersed myself even more in the world of the Old Testament. It turned out that many ThM students regularly and fairly fluently read Hebrew. An example for me was Abner Chow, who carried the Stuttgart edition of the Hebrew Bible with him every day and read it without a dictionary during recess. The compulsory course in the seminary was the Aramaic language, where we read and translated all the Aramaic parts of the Old Testament. Subsequently, I took up the study of Classical Syriac, which is one of the Aramaic dialects. Therefore, when I got to the books of Ezra and Daniel in independent reading, it was already much easier. By this time, I was already using A Reader's Hebrew and Greek Bible, which a good friend gave me. In this very handy edition, at the bottom of each page there are translations of words that occur less than 30 times for Greek, less often 25 times for Aramaic, and less often 100 times for Hebrew, so you don't have to constantly search for rarer words in lexicons.

Well, in general, I read, read, read ... And after six years I finished reading :-) Of course, at this time I periodically read the New Testament books as well. Of course, in Greek, for no translation can replace the original or compare with it! Martin Luther wrote quite rightly in his address to the advisers of all cities in the German land:

... it is a sin and a shame that we do not know the book intended ... for us, nor the language and word of our Lord. And even more sinful and harmful is the fact that we do not strive to learn languages, especially now that God has provided us with such an opportunity, has given us instructors, books, and everything that is needed for this, and also pushes us to this and readily opens His book to us.

If that was true five hundred years ago, how much more true is it now!