REALM OF RESEARCH: Aramaic Problem of Daniel—2

Aramaic Official Language of Persia

The domination of the Aramaic language A spread more widely and more rapidly under the Persians, and it is a recognized fact that Aramaic was used as the official language throughout the entire Persian Empire. The great historical Behistun inscription of Darius I, carved in Persian, Babylonian, and Elamite cuneiform high on a rock in eastern Mesopotamia, gave to Rawlinson the key for the decipherment of these ancient scripts and languages in modern times. The text of this document was also distributed on papyri in Aramaic among the peoples of the provinces. One of these copies has been found in Elephantine, an Upper Egyptian island in the Nile.1 A decree of Darius II of the year 419 B.C., ordering the keeping of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, was also written in Aramaic and sent to the Jews in Egypt in this form.2

The dry climate and the protecting sand of Egypt have preserved scores of Aramaic documents. In Elephantine and Aswan there were found covered by the sand various documents of a Jewish colony of mercenaries during the years 1898-1908, many of which were published from 1906 to 1908. More than eighty documents preserved from these two places have been published. All are written on papyrus and in Aramaic. They contain official letters and reports, contracts, and a storybook, and were written between the years 495 and 400 B.C., as far as they are dated. Among them is part of a correspondence with dignitaries in Jerusalem mentioning well-known persons from the book of Nehemiah. These papyri are also a mine of information concerning the political and economical life of the Jews in Egypt and their corrupted religious practices. As original Aramaic Jewish documents of the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, they furnish, furthermore, much material to compare their language with that of the book of Ezra.

Another set of complete Aramaic letters, from the same time, were discovered at Hermopolis West (Upper Egypt) in December, 1944. Besides providing additional comparative material for linguistic studies, their special value lies in the fact that these letters confirm the worship of other gods and the "queen of heaven," which the idolatrous Jews in Egypt worshiped in Jeremiah's time. (Jer. 44:17 ff.) 3

After the fifth century B.C. the flow of Aramaic documents slows down, but never ceases entirely. Egypt has provided documents on papyri and potsherds up to about 300 B.C. Aramaic coins from all parts of the Near East were in use until Hellenistic times. Rock and tomb inscriptions dating from the pre-Hellenistic and early Hellenistic period have been found in Arabia, Jordan, Syria, and Asia Minor. These are followed by the numerous Aramaic inscriptions of the north, Arabic Nab ateans, and these in turn by the inscriptions of Palmyra in the north Syrian Desert.4

Dating of Aramaic Portions of Bible

This wealth of documents ranging from the eighth century B.C. down into Christian times shows the development of the Aramaic language through the centuries, and permits us to give to the Aramaic portions of the Bible their proper place in this development. (-Historical changes in grammar and orthography are taking place in the development of every language, of course.) The demonstration of a few characteristic changes which took place in the Aramaic language, though technical, will make this point clear.5 (Those not interested in the linguistic details may skip the next four paragraphs.)

A study of the available texts shows that certain sibilants (like s) were gradually replaced by their corresponding dentals (like d). Up to the sixth century .B.C. the relative pronoun was exclusively sy ('') ; and the demonstrative pro nouns were z ('), sn (!'), and snh ( n3r ). After a transitory stage, when 23; ('') and dy ('"0 were used side by side for the relative, and s and d (•"'), sn and dn (P), snh and dnh (7131) for the demonstrative pronoun (as in the Elephantine papyri of the fifth century B.C.), forms with the dental d were used exclusively after the fourth century B.C. Biblical Aramaic has only dy as a relative pronoun, and d' (**"t) and dnh (7121) as demonstrative pronouns, revealing the fact that the Aramaic portions of Ezra and Daniel represent a stage in the development of the language when & had been definitely replaced by d in the pronouns, which happened after the fifth century B.C.

Another change is noticeable in one of the preformative consonants in the causative stems; k (H), existing until the fifth century, began to be replaced by ' (**). The Egyptian papyri of the fifth century B.C. have the causative h; but in Biblical Aramaic several of these forms begin with ', and h is still retained in most causative verb forms, showing that in this respect Biblical Aramaic represents a time when the change of the causative preformative had begun.

The same observation can be made in the consonantic designation of the ending a, for which the Biblical Aramaic used h and ', and the Aramaic texts up to the end of the fourth century B.C. used mostly h and very seldom.

The suffix pronouns show also a very clear development. In texts up to the fourth century B.C., the third person plural of the suffix pro nouns ends in m (°~), being replaced in later Aramaic texts by n (1). In Ezra the forms hian, ~hm, and -km, once -kwn (H71-, B7T-, 02-r P 3-) are found, but Daniel has exclusively the endings n. The last example is one of those showing that the Aramaic of Ezra seems to represent a slightly earlier stage of development of the language than the Aramaic of the book of Daniel.

These few examples, which could be increased by several more, show clearly that the Biblical Aramaic has to be dated later than the fifth- and fourth-century papyri from Egypt, but earlier than the Aramaic in use in the first century B.C., for which we again have a multitude of inscriptions. It is not easy to determine the exact place -of the Biblical Aramaic between the end of the fourth and the beginning of the first century, because comparatively few Aramaic texts exist coming from the third and second centuries B.C., and those existing are short and not so revealing. Scholars who believe that Daniel is a late book, reflecting the historical events of the second century B.C., will naturally emphasize the differences existing between the fifth to fourth century Aramaic and that of the Bible, and will emphatically state that the latter represents the Aramaic of the second century B.C.

But the unbiased scholar will also find many similarities between the Biblical Aramaic and the Aramaic found in the papyri of the fifth century B.C. This is clearly expressed by the first editors of the two finds of Aswan and Elephantine papyri. When Sayce and Cowley published the first eleven of these papyri they wrote:

"Much of the interest of the texts lies in the many points of contact which they show with Palestinian Aramaic as represented by the books of Ezra and Daniel. The differences are due no doubt partly to the difference of locality, partly also perhaps to the popular style of the deeds as compared with the literary character of B[iblical] A [ramaic]." 6

Sachau's judgment was very similar when he published some papyri of the second discovery a. few years later:

"The language in which they have been written is identical in every way with that of the Aramaic chapters of the books of Ezra and Daniel, and their phrase ology presents close contacts with that of the official documents in the book of Ezra."7

These statements clearly show that the similarities between the fifth to fourth centuries" Aramaic and the Biblical Aramaic are great. We are, therefore, justified to date the Aramaic portions of Ezra and Daniel in their present forms rather in the third than in the second century B.C.

Authenticity of Aramaic Portions of Ezra

Before the discovery of the Elephantine papyri the Aramaic portions of the book of Ezra were held in very low esteem by most critical scholars. And even now one finds some critics who still cling to the old view that these documents are falsifications, as R. H, Pfeiffer does in his work, Introduction to the Old Testament, which is widely used as a textbook in theological seminaries, and is considered the most up-to-date work in its field:

"In view of the disagreement of these documents with historical facts, as well as in view of their obvious Jewish character and linguistic characteristics, the most plausible conclusion is that 'all the Persian documents in Ezra are no less spurious than those in Josephus, Antiquities n -.4, 9.' ... They were written by the author of the narratives in which they are contained, one or two centuries after the time of Darius I—if not later." 8

But the number of scholars who accept the Aramaic portions of Ezra as authentic has increased very greatly since the discovery of the Elephantine papyri. Before that tirrie it seemed unlikely to many that letters between the Persian governor and his king, and vice versa, would have been written in Aramaic, as those quoted in Ezra 4:7-22; 5:6-17; 6:4-12, and royal decrees like the one issued by Artaxerxes I (Ezra 7:12-26). But some Elephantine papyri contain an Aramaic correspondence between the Jews in Egypt and the Persian governor in Palestine, and a decree of Darius II sent to the Jews concerning the keeping of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, revealing that official letters and decrees were issued by the Persian Government in Aramaic, a fact which had been denied by the critics.

These authentic documents, showing many similarities with the Biblical documents quoted by Ezra, have convinced many scholars of their authenticity. Eduard Meyer, the great German historian, a scholar of first rank, who vigorously defended the Aramaic portions of Ezra, wrote in 1896 that all objections to their authenticity would disappear if we should ever find a great number of -official Persian decrees." That was before the discovery of the Egyptian . papyri. And when his hope had been realized he wrote with satisfaction:

"This prediction has been fulfilled in an unexpected way and to an extent of which the boldest imagination had not dared to dream. An Egyptian city, the border fortress Elephantine, has presented us with a great number of documents from a Jewish community of the Persian period, among them numerous private documents, letters, also several decrees of the Persian government, and requests of the Jewish community to it; and these documents, resurrected from the debris, agree in form and words with the documents contained in Ezra in such detailed ways that no doubt concerning their authenticity can exist any more." 10

A great number of scholars followed Meyer, and today scores of statements can be collected from commentators and other scholars defending the authenticity of the Aramaic portions of Ezra. These scholars do not seem to find difficulty in reconciling a fifth-century authorship with a third-century form in which these portions exist. The natural explanation for this apparent inconsistency was the assumption that the Bible texts underwent periodical revisions in the matter of grammar and orthography, up to the time of Rabbi Akiba (A.D. 50-134), who was influential in convincing the Jews, after the loss of Jerusalem in A.B. 70, that every letter and word was sacred, and should not be changed. But the oldest known Hebrew manuscript dated from the tenth century A.D., and the real status of Biblical manuscripts dating from before the Christian Era was entirely un known and a matter of conjecture.

—To be concluded in July