'The last Mohicans' of Christ

Scotland on Sunday ^ | 27 April 2008 | Robert F Worth

[forkinsocket]

Conversion to Islam on road to Damascus spells the end for Aramaic, the native language of Jesus

ELIAS Khoury can still remember the days when old people in the mountain village of Malula spoke only Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Back then the village, linked to the capital Damascus, only by a long and bumpy bus ride, was almost entirely Christian, a vestige of an older, more diverse Middle East that existed before the arrival of Islam.

Now Khoury, 65, grey-haired and bedridden, admits ruefully that he has largely forgotten the language he spoke with his own mother.

"It's disappearing," he said in Arabic, sitting with his wife on a bed in the mud-and-straw house where he grew up. "A lot of the Aramaic vocabulary I don't use any more, and I've lost it."

Malula, along with two smaller neighbouring villages where Aramaic is also spoken, is still celebrated in Syria as a unique linguistic island. In the Convent of St Sergius and Bacchus, on a hill above town, young girls recite the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic to tourists, and booklets about the language are on sale at a shop in the town centre.

But the island has grown smaller over the years, and some locals say they fear it will not last. Once a large population stretching across Syria, Turkey and Iraq, Aramaic-speaking Christians have slowly disappeared, some fleeing westward, some converting to Islam. In recent decades, the process has accelerated, with large numbers of Iraqi Christians escaping the violence and chaos of their country.

Malula's linguistic heritage stirred some interest after the release of Mel Gibson's 2004 film The Passion Of The Christ, with its mix of Aramaic, Latin and Hebrew dialogue. Virtually everyone in town seems to have seen the film, but few said they understood it. Yona Sabar, a professor of Semitic languages at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that was not their fault as it included different dialects of Aramaic, and the actors' pronunciation made it hard to understand anything.

Aramaic has also changed over the centuries, taking on features of Syrian Arabic.

But most residents of Malula believe that their town's ancestral language is still the same one Jesus spoke, and will speak again when he returns.

"Our parents and grandparents always spoke to us in this language," said Suhail Milani, a 50-year-old bus driver. "I hope it will not disappear."

Sabar said that today, Malula and its neighbouring villages, Jabadeen and Bakhaa, represent "the last Mohicans" of Western Aramaic.

With its ancient houses clinging to a dramatic gorge in the mountains, Malula was once remote from Damascus, the Syrian capital, and local people spent all their lives there. But now there are few jobs, and young people tend to move to the city for work. Buses to Damascus used to leave once or twice a day; now they leave every 15 minutes, and with better roads the journey takes about an hour. Constant exchange with the big city, not to mention television and the internet, has eroded Malula's linguistic separateness.

Khoury's 17-year-old granddaughter Katya offered a few samples of the language: "Awafih" for "hello", "alloy a pelach a feethah" for "God be with you." She learned Aramaic mostly at a new language school in Malula, established two years ago in a bid to keep the language alive.

Khoury smiles at the words, but recalls how in his own childhood 60 years ago, schoolteachers slapped students who reverted to Aramaic in class, enforcing the government's "Arabisation" policy.

"Now it's reversed," he says. Families speak Arabic at home and are more likely to learn Aramaic at the language centre, where foreigners also study.

In the town's centre, a group of young people outside a market seemed to confirm Khoury's gloomy view. "I speak some Aramaic, but I struggle to understand it," said Fathi Mualem, 20.

Twenty-year-old John Francis (Western-sounding names are common among Christians in Syria and Lebanon) said: "My father wrote a book about it, but I barely speak any."

Malula – Aramaic for "entrance" – derives its name from a legend that evokes the town's separate religious heritage. St Takla, a beautiful young woman who had studied with Ste Paul, is said to have fled from her home in what is now Turkey after her pagan parents persecuted her for her newfound Christian faith. Arriving in Malula, she found her path blocked by a mountain. She prayed and the rocks divided in two, a stream flowing out from under her feet.

Today, tourists walk up and down the narrow canyon where the saint is said to have fled. Nearby, two dozen nuns live at the Convent of St Takla, presiding over an orphanage. "We teach the children the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic," said one nun, "but everything else is in Arabic."

But even the town's Christian identity is fading. Muslims have begun replacing the emigrating Christians, and now Malula – once entirely Christian – is almost half Muslim.

[forkinsocket]

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[Inyo-Mono]

Interesting! Thanks for the post.

[ikka]

Khoury smiles at the words, but recalls how in his own childhood 60 years ago, schoolteachers slapped students who reverted to Aramaic in class, enforcing the government's "Arabisation" policy.

There is no hog but Allah and Mohammed is his pimp.

[SoCalPol]

*spoke only Aramaic, the language of Jesus.*

Of the over 30,000 Iraqis here in San Diego, most speak
Aramaic in there Chaldean Churches here.

[supremedoctrine]

THere are 30,000 Iraqis living in San Diego????

[SoCalPol]

That is correct. Most well educated.
There is a small population of Kurds also.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***, schoolteachers slapped students who reverted to Aramaic in class, enforcing the government’s “Arabisation” policy.***

Alas! I remember stories of how teachers at American Indian schools did the same to teach English. But that is for a different thread.
I also remember a teacher who slapped the coon dog s#1t out of a hillbilly student for disrupting the class.

[SoCalPol]

BTW my dad and grandfather originally from Bergen Co. NJ

[zerosix]

Having recently returned from a wonderful trip to the Holy Land, I was thrilled to hear a Christian in Bethlehem, recite the Lord's Prayer to our group of visitors.

Afterward, the gentleman gave each a card with the prayer written in Aramaic.

I shall always cherish the moment I heard someone from the Middle East actually speak in the language of my Lord and Savior, the prayer He gave us.

[supremedoctrine]

LET ME GUESS THE TOWN: Hasbrouck Heights, Paramus or Ft Lee.?

[Verginius Rufus]

Most languages change slowly over time. I wonder how close modern Aramaic is to the Aramaic of 2000 years ago.

Portions of the book of Daniel are in Aramaic.

[Mrs. Don-o]

ping

[forkinsocket]

I’ve only heard the Assyrian & Mandaic dialects. The Assyrian was half-intelligible to me, but probably only because I speak Hebrew. The relatives of an Iraqi Assyrian friend of mine once had stones thrown at them by Palestinians in Jordan because they heard their language & thought it was Hebrew.

I could barely understand a word of Mandaic.

[ADSUM]

Thanks for the article.

Does anyone have a tape of the Lord's prayer in Aramaic?
Or even the words?

Salvation,

For the Catholic list

[Lucky Dog]

We know Jesus spoke Aramaic because of quotations in the New Testament. However, we also can surmise that he spoke Hebrew because, again, the New Testament tells us that He read from the Old Testament Books of the Prophets in the synagogue.

Additionally, he may also have spoken Greek which was the common language of commerce throughout the Middle East. Furthermore, the Septuagint was already in existence (a Greek version of the Old Testament translated before Christ's birth).

Moreover, it is unlikely, but not inconceivable that Christ also may have spoken Latin. He conversed with centurions and was interrogated by Pontius Pilate. It is possible that these individuals spoke in Aramaic or Greek or through an interpreter, but not completely improbable that they spoke directly to Christ in Latin.

Therefore, rather than referring to the "language of Christ," it would be more correct to refer to the "languages of Christ."

[Kolokotronis]

“Does anyone have a tape of the Lord’s prayer in Aramaic?
Or even the words?”

NYer prays it that way every Sunday.

[NYer]

Of the over 30,000 Iraqis here in San Diego, most speak Aramaic in there Chaldean Churches here.

Aramaic is also the liturgical language of the Maronite Catholic Church. Both the Chaldean and Maronite Catholic Churches say the words of Consecration in this ancient tongue - the language of Jesus Christ, His Mother and His Apostles. Here is a sample:

---

Aramaic Consecration

Byow mo how daq dom ha sho dee leh
ma' bed hy eh
nsa bel lah mo be dow qa dee sho to.
Ou ba rekh
ou qa desh
waq so
ou ya bel tal mee dow kad o mar:
Sab a khool meh neh kul khoon:
Ho no den ee tow faghro deel
day lo fy koun wah lof sagee hey
meh teq seh ou meh tee heb
lhoo so yo dhow beh was ha yeh dal 'o lam
'ol meen.

English Translation

On the day before his life-giving passion,
Jesus took bread in his holy hands.
He blessed,
sanctified,
broke,
and gave it to his disciples, saying:
Take and eat it, all of you:
This is my body
which is broken and delivered for you
and for many,
for the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.

[SoCalPol]

Yes, they have a couple of large Chaldean churches here

[The_Reader_David]

It is almost certain that the conversation between Christ and Pilate was in Greek: Christ grew up in Galilee, often called ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’ where Greek would have been the main language from the time of the Selucids on, and may well have learned Greek as a young child in Egypt (cf. Anne Rice’s recent novelization of Orthodox and Coptic traditions concerning Christ’s childhood).

All well-educated Romans spoke Greek—as evidence consider that the earliest Roman historians wrote in Greek, Greek slaves were often retained as tutors, and only slightly later, St. Paul wrote in Greek to the church in Rome—and Greek was the lingua franca of the eastern half of the Empire from the time of it inclusion in the Empire (by conquest, treaty, or subversion).

Any imporant official posted to the eastern part of the Empire would certainly have spoken Greek, and it is unlikely that any would have troubled to learn any of the Semitic languages, which would have been of much more limited use.

[Boagenes]

Islam destroys everything.

[Boagenes]

Islam destroys everything.

[JRios1968]

Aramaic, the original language of the Book of Armaments...

[Lucky Dog]

Your inference has merit. Of course, neither of us can be completely definitive as direct documentation of which language was used is non-existent.

Nonetheless, I find it interesting how often I hear or read others who neither speak nor read ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, nor Latin expound upon the definitive authority of certain translations. Even more interesting is the unwillingness of some of these people to even admit that possible valid differences of translations may exist.