Learn Aramaic

The Elephantine papyri is a body of texts from 5 B.C. mostly written in Imperial Aramaic from Elephantine-a Jewish fortress on an island in the Upper Nile near Aswan in Persian-ruled Egypt.The name Elephantine is what Greek called it.Jews called it Yebu. These texts are manuscripts of Jewish soldiers and their community who were settled there by the Persians to defend the borders with Nubia. What are the Elephantine manuscripts about. The manuscripts number hundreds and most of them are written in the Aramaic language,apparently the mother tongue of the local Jews.Though some of them are in Ancient Egyptian (Demotic and Hieratic) ,Coptic and Greek.These are mostly documents of the local Jewish community concerning many matters  such as legal,marriage,commerce,religion and politics.Some are letters,like the letter below from the local Jewish community to Persian king Bagoas-governor of Judaea asking him to rebuild the Jewish temple in Yebu-Elephantine which Egyptian troops wit...

"Syriac language" in Syriac is leshana suryaya .In the image below it is written in the Estrangelo script. Syriac was a dialect of Aramaic which first appeared in writting in the 1st century A.D and flourished between the 4th-8th centuries.

This is the beginnig of Psalm 102 Jesus Prayer in Syriac. Mar Yeesho Msheeha breh d Alaha rahhem al xattaya Lord Jesus Christ Son of God have mercy on me,a sinner vocabulary Mar-lord Yeesho Msheeha-Jesus Christ breh-son,an older word for son is bar d-of alaha-God rahhem (verb)- to show mercy,to love al-a xattaya-sinner

In the Syriac script  a dot is positioned over or under the letter to mark a vowel.If you do not use such a dot sometimes ambiguities arise .Such is the case of the words malka-king and melka-advise.They are written  exactly the same way but pronounced different.The only way to differentiate between them is by using a dot to mark the different vowels. mlk' or malka or melka king or advise malka king melka advise Read also vowels in Aramaic .

The name Martha is thought to come from Hebrew and it means 'mistress'.Here is how it is written in the Aramaic block script (Hebrew) and the Syriac Estrangelo. Martha appears in the New Testament as the sister of Lazarus and Mary of  Bethany.According to the text she witnessed her brother's resurrection by Jesus.

Fish in Syriac is nuna.In the image below the word is written in Syriac Estrangelo.

The Lamsa Bible is an English translation of the Old and New Testament based on the Syriac Aramaic Peshitta. It was translated by George M Lamsa in 1933 who claimed that his translation of the New Testament is more accurate than all those based on Greek texts because,according to him, the Syriac version is older and it is the original. This claim is not accepted by mainstream scholars which maintain that the New Testament was originally written in Greek. Between his translation and the others based on Greek texts,say King James' translation,differences can be found.Take for example the famous phrase cried out by Jesus on the cross: God why have you forsaken me? In the Lamsa Bible this phrase is rendered as Eli,Eli lema sabachtan? -God for this I was spared?Lamsa claim that the Greek phrase was a mistranlation of the original Syriac and therefore his version is more accurate.