Region Palestine Writing system Hebrew alphabet Glottolog pale1261 | Era 150 BCE - 1200 CE ISO 639-3 jpa | |
Language family Afro-Asiatic
Semitic
Central Semitic
Northwest Semitic
Aramaic
Western Aramaic
Jewish Palestinian Aramaic | ||
Jewish Palestinian Aramaic was a Western Aramaic language spoken by the Jews in Roman and Byzantine Palestine in the late first millennium BCE - early first millennium CE. A dialect of this language was spoken by Jesus (see Language of Jesus).
There were some differences in dialect between Judaea and Galilee, and most surviving texts are in the Galilean dialect: Michael Sokoloff has published separate dictionaries of the two dialects.
Overview
After the defeat of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE, the center of Jewish learning in the land of Israel moved to Galilee. With the Arab conquest of the country in the 7th century, Arabic gradually replaced this language.
The most notable text in this dialect's corpus is the Jerusalem Talmud, which is still studied in Jewish religious schools and academically, although not as widely as the Babylonian Talmud, most of which is written in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic. There are some older texts in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, notably the Megillat Taanit: the Babylonian Talmud contains occasional quotations from these.
Many extant manuscripts in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic have been corrupted over the years of their transmission by Eastern Aramaic-speaking scribes freely correcting "errors" they came across (these "errors" actually being genuine Jewish Palestinian Aramaic features). To date, all formal grammars of the dialect fall victim to these corruptions, and there is still no published syntax.