Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Aramaic" in English language version.
Aramaic itself consists of a great number of language forms (and indeed languages), spoken and written in many different scripts over a period of 3000 years.
The earliest of the Aramaic finds known to us is the so-called "Carpentras stele"...
[Partial English translation]: "The Aramaic language name comes from its gentile founder, Aram (Gen 10:22), in the same manner as the Slavic languages Bohemian, Polish, Vandal etc. Multiple dialects are Chaldean, Syrian, Samaritan."; Latin Original: Linguae Aramaeae nomen à gentis conditore, Aramo nimirum (Gen. X 22) desumptum est, & complectitur, perinde ut Lingua Sclavonica, Bohemican, Polonican, Vandalicam &c. Dialectos plures, ceu sunt: Chaldaica, Syriaca, Samaritana.
The designations Syria and Syrian were derived from Greek usage long before Christianity. When the Greeks became better acquainted with the Near East, especially after Alexander the Great overthrew the Achaemenian empire in the 4th century B.C., they restricted the name Syria to the lands west of the Euphrates. During the 3rd century B.C., when the Hebrew Bible was translated by Jewish scholars into the Greek Septuagint for the use of the Hellenized Jews of Alexandria, the terms for 'Aramean' and 'Aramaic' in the Hebrew Bible, were translated into 'Syrian' and 'the Syrian tongue' respectively. [Footnote: "The Authorized Version of the Bible continued to use the same terms that the Septuagint had adopted. In 1970, the New English Bible, published by Oxford and Cambridge University presses, and translated by biblical scholars drawn from various British universities, went back to the original Hebrew terms, using Aram and Arameans for Syria and Syrians respectively."] In Palestine itself, according to Noldeke, the Jews and later the Christians there referred to their dialect of Aramaic as Syriac; in Babylon, both Greeks and Persians called the Arameans Syrians. The second-century B.C. Greek historian Posidonius, a native of Syria, noted that 'the people we [Greeks] call Syrians were called by the Syrians themselves Arameans….for the people in Syria are Arameans'."
Les livres du Nouveau Testament furent immédiatement traduits dans fa langue du pays. Or ces livres étaient écrits dans la langue des Grecs, et offraient par conséquent les expressions et les dénominations en usage chez'ce peuple. Or les noms de Syrie, de Syriens se trouvaient souvent employés dans les livres fondamentaux du christianisme. Les habitants des pays situés entre la Méditerranée et l'Euphrate, se voyant désignés par une dénomination qui leur était étrangère, mais qui se trouvait en quelque sorte consacrée par l'autorité des livres qu'ils vénéraient à tant de titres, ne crurent pas sans doute pouvoir rejeter ce nom, et l'adoptèrent sans répugnance. Ils se persuadèrent que, régénérés par un nouveau culte, ils devaient sous tous les rapports devenir un peuple nouveau et abjurer leur nom antique, qui semblait leur rappeler l'idolâtrie à laquelle le christianisme venait de les arracher. Cette conjecture est, si je ne me trompe, confirmée par un fait que je crois décisif. Dans la langue syriaque ecclésiastique, le mot armoïo, ܐܪܡܝܐ, qui ne diffère du nom ancien, ormoïo, ܐܪܡܝܐ, que par une seule voyelle, désigne un païen, un idolâtre. Ainsi s'intrôduisit le nom de Sourioïo, Syrien. Quant à la dénomination Orom, Aram, ou le pays des Araméens, elle fut appliquée de préférence à la contrée que les Grecs et les Latins appelaient Assyrie.
However, what truly distinguishes the CPA Gospels from the Syriac ones is the strong influence that Greek Biblical tradi- tions had upon it. This is evident, for example, in the syntax of the Gospel passages and even in the spelling of proper nouns, both of which duplicate the Greek Gospels. Therefore, unlike Syriac where "Jesus" is spelled īšū', in CPA it is spelled īsūs.
In his Bilder und Schriften der Vorzeit, Ulrich Friedrich Kopp (1819–21) established the basis of the paleographical development of the Northwest Semitic scripts...
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: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link)Hilliger first saw clearly the relation of the so-called Chaldee, Syriac, and Samaritan (1679)
In his Bilder und Schriften der Vorzeit, Ulrich Friedrich Kopp (1819–21) established the basis of the paleographical development of the Northwest Semitic scripts...
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link)The author of Daniel uses the word as a title for the members of the Babylonian guild of priests, as already Herodotus regards oi Xardalot as a designation of the priests of Baal, and the name was subsequently the customary one for the Magians, Astrologers, Soothsayers, etc., of the East. Jerome, however, and those who followed him, confused therewith the use of o'yu, as name of the people; and since, in Dan. II., 4, the "Chaldeans" speak Aramaic, so "Chaldaic" and "Aramaic" were held to be identical. And the matter has stood thus in the "Chaldee grammars" and the "Hebrew and Chaldee lexicons," in spite of all protests,3 up to this day. [Footnote 3: Cf. already Schloezer in Eichhorn's Repertorium, viii. (1781), p. 118 sq.; the correct distinction of East-Aramaic (Syriac) and West-Aramaic (Biblical Aramaic and the language of the Targums) was expressly drawn again by Geiger ZDMG, xviii., 654, and Noeldeke, ibid. xxi., 183 sq,, and particularly xxv., 113 sq. (die Namen der aram. Nation und Sprache.)]
Hilliger first saw clearly the relation of the so-called Chaldee, Syriac, and Samaritan (1679)
The author of Daniel uses the word as a title for the members of the Babylonian guild of priests, as already Herodotus regards oi Xardalot as a designation of the priests of Baal, and the name was subsequently the customary one for the Magians, Astrologers, Soothsayers, etc., of the East. Jerome, however, and those who followed him, confused therewith the use of o'yu, as name of the people; and since, in Dan. II., 4, the "Chaldeans" speak Aramaic, so "Chaldaic" and "Aramaic" were held to be identical. And the matter has stood thus in the "Chaldee grammars" and the "Hebrew and Chaldee lexicons," in spite of all protests,3 up to this day. [Footnote 3: Cf. already Schloezer in Eichhorn's Repertorium, viii. (1781), p. 118 sq.; the correct distinction of East-Aramaic (Syriac) and West-Aramaic (Biblical Aramaic and the language of the Targums) was expressly drawn again by Geiger ZDMG, xviii., 654, and Noeldeke, ibid. xxi., 183 sq,, and particularly xxv., 113 sq. (die Namen der aram. Nation und Sprache.)]