Book Reviews -- By: Anonymous

Journal: Southeastern Theological Review
Volume: STR 08:2 (Fall 2017)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous


Book Reviews

Holger Gzella. A Cultural History of Aramaic: From the Beginnings to the Advent of Islam. Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 1 The Near and Middle East 111. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2015. xvi + 451 pp. Hardback. ISBN 978–9004285095. $214.00.

Aramaic is a gem, hidden in plain sight. Its written accounts span more than three thousand years—the longest duration of any world language still spoken today. These texts are significant for the world’s monotheistic religions—including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—consisting of sacred histories, biblical commentaries, pious stories, biblical translations, theological apologies, and even holy writ (major portions of Daniel and Ezra as well as ipsissima verba of Jesus and early Apostolic teaching). And yet, in many ways, the depths of its riches have not been revealed. Texts representing considerable segments of time, place, and dialect still remain unexplored and untranslated. Innumerable works are unknown to modern Western scholars, often languishing as hidden treasure in libraries and monastery collections around the world. What’s more, a general cultural history of this antiquarian language had not been written until the publication of the present work. For this reason, Gzella is due appreciation for his desire to facilitate “the informed use of Aramaic” for “interested non-specialists” (p. xi).

The volume begins with a brief survey of Aramaic research, an assessment of Aramaic within Northwest Semitic, and an abbreviated outline of the author’s general linguistic method. The descriptions of various Aramaic dialects follow chronologically from the earliest Syrian language to the multiple Eastern and Western varieties evidenced from northern Africa to Iran and end with Classical Syriac.

Readers would do well to note the helpful discussion of the outmoded terminology of “Chaldaean” and “Syriac” (p. 4). The former designation used to refer to Targumic and Biblical Aramaic texts written in the so-called Aramaic square script; the latter described the Aramaic dialect of the Christian polity located in Syria, originally centered in Edessa, represented by distinctive cursive scripts (estrangela, serṭo). Whereas script and region can play a role in designating language variance (see S. Sanders, The Invention of Hebrew, Champaign, IL: UI Press, 2009), Gzella provides a more thorough nuancing of Aramaic varieties using established methods of dialectology, comparative linguistics, and geo-political situatedness, but he also deviates from the widely-repeated model of Fitzmyer.

Gzella outlines three features of Northwest Semitic vis-à-vis Aramaic (for a general criticism of the ...

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