RE: "The Daniel Ezra Mystery"
EXCERPT:
"I have found a mystery that I do not understand so I put it to you to ponder.??
I stumbled on this:A vast majority of the verses of Daniel chapter 7 are made up of words found??ONLY??in the book of Daniel and the book of Ezra. "
Blessings Clay,What you have actually "stumbled on," is that both Daniel and Ezra have portions in Aramaic, instead of only Hebrew.
John
Biblical AramaicBiblical Aramaic is the form of Aramaic that is used in the books of Daniel and Ezra in the Hebrew Bible. It should not be confused with the Aramaic paraphrases, explanations and expansions of the Hebrew scriptures, which are known as targumim.
Aramaic and Hebrew[edit]
Biblical Hebrew is the main language of the Hebrew Bible. Aramaic accounts for only about 250 verses out of a total of over 23,000. Biblical Aramaic is closely related to Hebrew, as both are in the??Northwest Semitic??language family. Some obvious similarities and differences are listed below:[8]
History[edit]
As??Old Aramaic??had served as a??lingua franca??in the??Neo-Assyrian Empire??from the 8th century BC,[2]??linguistic contact??with even the oldest stages of??Biblical Hebrew, the main language of the Hebrew Bible, is easily accounted for.
During the??Babylonian exile??of the Jews which began in the early 6th century BC, the language spoken by the Jews changed from Hebrew to Aramaic, and Aramaic square script replaced the??Paleo-Hebrew alphabet.[3]??After the??Achaemenid Empire??annexed the??Neo-Babylonian Empire??in 539 BC, Aramaic became the language of culture and learning. King??Darius the Great??declared[4]??Imperial Aramaic??to be the??official language??of the western half of his empire in 500 BC, and it is that Imperial Aramaic that forms the basis of Biblical Aramaic.[2]
Biblical Hebrew was gradually reduced to the status of a??liturgical language??and a language of theological learning, and the Jews of the??Second Temple period??that started in 516 BC would have spoken a western form of Old Aramaic until their partial??Hellenization??from the 3rd century BC and the eventual emergence of??Middle Aramaic??in the 3rd century AD.
Biblical Aramaic's relative chronology has been debated mostly in the context of??dating the Book of Daniel. In 1929, Rowley argued that its origin must be later than the 6th century BC and that the language was more similar to the??Targums??than to the??Imperial Aramaic??documents available at his time.[5]
Others have argued that the language most closely resembles the 5th-century BC??Elephantine papyri, and so is a good representative of typical Imperial Aramaic.[6]??Kenneth Kitchen??takes an agnostic position and states that the Aramaic of the Book of Daniel is compatible with any period from the 5th to early 2nd century BC.[7]