Aramaic lexicons often stratify the language into its many overlapping periods and dialects with diachronic implications for their entries. These technical abbreviations are difficult for non-Aramaic specialists to hold in mind. For example, the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon (CAL) is a magnificent tool. The corpora of an item’s attested usage are, as a rule, listed in chronological order, although the lexicon is an ongoing project. Plus, if you hover your mouse over the abbreviated chrono-dialect, a contextual tooltip provides the full technical term. What that term encompasses however, in terms of absolute chronology, is not always easy to track down *quickly*. For my own sake, therefore, here is a gathering of the (again, overlapping) terms up through late antiquity.
| Abbrev. | Chrono-Dialect | Chronology | Corpus (e.g.) |
|---|---|---|---|
| OA | Old Aramaic | 10th/9th– 7th c. BC | Tell Halaf Altar (ca 900, Syria) Tell Fakhariyeh bilingual (ca. 875, Syria); Tell Dan Stele (ca. 800, Palestine); Sefire Treaty a, b, c (ca. 750, Syria); Assur Ostracon (ca. 650, Iraq) |
| IA | Imperial (Official) Aramaic • Achaemenid • Hellenistic and Roman (Middle ↓) • Biblical and Qumran (↓) | 6th c. BC– AD 2nd c. | Elephantine papyri, Arshama letters, Hermopolis papyri (all in Egypt); Bactrian documents (Afghanistan); Bisitun (Behistun) inscription (Iran); Uruk incantation (non-alphabetic, Iraq) |
| BA | Biblical Aramaic | 6th– 5th c. BC | Gen 31:47 [toponym]; Jer 10:11; Daniel 2:4b–7:28; Ezra 4:8–6:18; 7:12–26 |
| — | Middle Aramaic • Palestinian and Arabian – Nabatean (Nab) – Qumran – Murabbaʾat (– Earliest PTA ↓) • Syrian and Mesopotamian – Palmyrene – Parthian – Edessen/Old Syriac – Hatran (– Earliest JBA ↓) | ca. 200 BC– AD 200 | Nab: tomb inscriptions, graffiti from Egypt Qumran: Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen); Targum Job (11QtgJob); I Enoch (4QEn); Tobit (4QTob); Testament of Levi (4QLevi) |
| JLA | Jewish Literary Aramaic • JLA Early Targums (JLAtg) (• Western ↓) (• Syriac ↓) (• Eastern ↓) • Late JLA (LJLA) | AD 2nd– 7th c. | JLAtg: TgOnk; TgJ (Jonathan of the Prophets) LJLA: TgPsJon; TgPs; TgJob; (medeival) Tobit; misc. Cairo Geniza texts |
| — | Western • (Jewish) Palestinian Aramaic – Palestinian (Y.) Targum (PTA) – Galilean (Gal) • Christian Palestinian (CPA) • Samaritan (Sam) | ↑ | Jewish: Bar Kochba letters, ossuary inscriptions PTA: Cairo Geniza mss., other targumim Gal: Pal. Talmud (Yerushalmi), other rabbinic CPA: biblical mss., catechism of Cyril, homilies Sam: SamTgJ, midrashim, liturgical |
| — | Eastern • Jewish Babylonian (JBA) • Syriac (Syr) • Mandaic (Man) | ↑ | JBA: Bab. Talmud (Bavli), Geonic, magic bowls Syr: biblical mss., homilies, letters, coins |
Bibliography
- Cook, Edward. 2022. Biblical Aramaic and Related Dialects: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (pages 1–15).
- Fitzmyer, Joseph A. 1979. “The PHases of the Aramaic Language.” Pages 57–84 in A Wandering Aramean: Collected Aramaic Essays. Missoula, MT: Scholars Press (pages 60–63).
- Gzella, Holger. 2021. Aramaic: A History of the First World Language, trans. Benjamin D. Suchard. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans (pages 31–32).
- Kaufman, Stephen A., et al. 1987–2026. The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon. Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati. https://cal.huc.edu.
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