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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
March 26, 2005 Saturday Home Edition
Language of Jesus' era nearly gone;
Scholars work for the survival of Aramaic
by CRAIG NELSON
Malula, Syria --- The words of the Lord's Prayer coming from George
Rezkallah's mouth are somehow more melodic and less throaty than the
Arabic that is spoken in the Holy Land and most of the Middle East.
Rezkallah is speaking Aramaic, the language of Jesus, and here in
this windy village of canyons and churches in the Syrian desert ---
one of only a handful of enclaves in the world where Aramaic is still
spoken --- the 67-year-old teacher and other residents are struggling
to keep the language from dying.
"I still go to the fields and vineyards around here and ask shepherds
and farmers to tell me words and to use them in songs, proverbs and
stories," said Rezkallah, who commutes to Damascus weekly to teach
Aramaic at a church in the capital's Christian quarter.
"It's important the language remain alive, and I and others do our
best to keep it alive. But its future isn't good," he said with a
sigh.
The language's name is derived from "Aram," Noah's grandson. A
Semitic language closely related to Hebrew and Arabic, Aramaic is at
least 3,000 years old, and for more than a millennium, it was the
Middle East's lingua franca.
In Syria, Aramaic's decline began in the seventh century, when the
Christian, Aramaic-speaking territory fell to an Arab invasion, which
brought a new language as well as a new religion, Islam.
In the Middle East, Aramaic has been surpassed by Hebrew in what is
modern-day Israel and by Arabic and Farsi elsewhere. Experts guess
there are about 800,000 Aramaic speakers, with the number shrinking
by the year.
The surviving speakers are confined to tiny pockets in Iran and
southern Armenia, as well as here in Malula and two nearby villages,
Rezkallah said. Some scholars add hamlets in Turkey and Iraq to that
list.
Even in an Aramaic stronghold such as Malula, the language is
undermined in the most conspicuous ways, said the Rev. Toufic Eid,
the superior at Malula's Convent of St. Serge and St. Bacchus.
Eid said construction of an Aramaic-language institute in Malula has
foundered, and not even the masses in Malula's Greek Catholic and
Greek Orthodox churches are said in Aramaic.
However, the accomplices in Aramaic's slow death are the same
culprits poised to vanquish more than half of the world's estimated
6,000 languages in the next 50 years --- mobility and economic
progress.
Until 1960, there were no roads to Malula, and until 1970, there were
no schools. Now, children here are taught Arabic, French and English
in state-run classrooms.
Mass food production means that to survive, Malula's residents do not
have to work in the fields, where the vocabulary was passed on and
learned in previous generations.
The dying out of farming and shepherding of animals has been a hard
blow to Aramaic, for it is those occupations that gave the language
most of its vocabulary and imagery.
"When these jobs vanish, so do the words connected with them," said
Rezkallah, citing the biblical story of Jesus reviving the widow's
son from the dead.
"The words that Jesus used to tell the boy to rise are the same words
that shepherds still use to urge baby sheep to get up," he says.
The other key sign of Aramaic's weakening hold on Malula's 3,000
residents sprouts from atop almost every one of the town's homes ---
a TV satellite dish, receiving channels from across the region.
The impending disappearance of Aramaic strikes an especially deep and
saddening chord to the people of Malula. Something besides words,
they say, will be irrevocably lost if Aramaic disappears.
"A language connotes a way of logic and a way of thinking, so it's
important to know the language Jesus spoke. It helps us understand
the circumstances of his life," Eid said.
He and others argue that there is intrinsic merit in keeping alive
the language through which the spiritual insights of Christianity
were first expressed. There is also value, they say, in maintaining
the tongue that during formative centuries molded the religious ideas
of the three great monotheistic religions --- Judaism, Christianity
and Islam.
For still others, it is a deeply spiritual matter, connecting them to
their parents and grandparents, as well as their faith.
"It is the language of Jesus and has been created in me. I can't
forsake myself, so how could I forsake the language?" said Rita
Wahbeh, 23, who guides visitors through the convent, built in the
fourth century and named after two Roman soldiers who converted to
Christianity and were executed in 297 after refusing to worship Roman
gods.
March 26, 2005 Saturday Home Edition
Language of Jesus' era nearly gone;
Scholars work for the survival of Aramaic
by CRAIG NELSON
Malula, Syria --- The words of the Lord's Prayer coming from George
Rezkallah's mouth are somehow more melodic and less throaty than the
Arabic that is spoken in the Holy Land and most of the Middle East.
Rezkallah is speaking Aramaic, the language of Jesus, and here in
this windy village of canyons and churches in the Syrian desert ---
one of only a handful of enclaves in the world where Aramaic is still
spoken --- the 67-year-old teacher and other residents are struggling
to keep the language from dying.
"I still go to the fields and vineyards around here and ask shepherds
and farmers to tell me words and to use them in songs, proverbs and
stories," said Rezkallah, who commutes to Damascus weekly to teach
Aramaic at a church in the capital's Christian quarter.
"It's important the language remain alive, and I and others do our
best to keep it alive. But its future isn't good," he said with a
sigh.
The language's name is derived from "Aram," Noah's grandson. A
Semitic language closely related to Hebrew and Arabic, Aramaic is at
least 3,000 years old, and for more than a millennium, it was the
Middle East's lingua franca.
In Syria, Aramaic's decline began in the seventh century, when the
Christian, Aramaic-speaking territory fell to an Arab invasion, which
brought a new language as well as a new religion, Islam.
In the Middle East, Aramaic has been surpassed by Hebrew in what is
modern-day Israel and by Arabic and Farsi elsewhere. Experts guess
there are about 800,000 Aramaic speakers, with the number shrinking
by the year.
The surviving speakers are confined to tiny pockets in Iran and
southern Armenia, as well as here in Malula and two nearby villages,
Rezkallah said. Some scholars add hamlets in Turkey and Iraq to that
list.
Even in an Aramaic stronghold such as Malula, the language is
undermined in the most conspicuous ways, said the Rev. Toufic Eid,
the superior at Malula's Convent of St. Serge and St. Bacchus.
Eid said construction of an Aramaic-language institute in Malula has
foundered, and not even the masses in Malula's Greek Catholic and
Greek Orthodox churches are said in Aramaic.
However, the accomplices in Aramaic's slow death are the same
culprits poised to vanquish more than half of the world's estimated
6,000 languages in the next 50 years --- mobility and economic
progress.
Until 1960, there were no roads to Malula, and until 1970, there were
no schools. Now, children here are taught Arabic, French and English
in state-run classrooms.
Mass food production means that to survive, Malula's residents do not
have to work in the fields, where the vocabulary was passed on and
learned in previous generations.
The dying out of farming and shepherding of animals has been a hard
blow to Aramaic, for it is those occupations that gave the language
most of its vocabulary and imagery.
"When these jobs vanish, so do the words connected with them," said
Rezkallah, citing the biblical story of Jesus reviving the widow's
son from the dead.
"The words that Jesus used to tell the boy to rise are the same words
that shepherds still use to urge baby sheep to get up," he says.
The other key sign of Aramaic's weakening hold on Malula's 3,000
residents sprouts from atop almost every one of the town's homes ---
a TV satellite dish, receiving channels from across the region.
The impending disappearance of Aramaic strikes an especially deep and
saddening chord to the people of Malula. Something besides words,
they say, will be irrevocably lost if Aramaic disappears.
"A language connotes a way of logic and a way of thinking, so it's
important to know the language Jesus spoke. It helps us understand
the circumstances of his life," Eid said.
He and others argue that there is intrinsic merit in keeping alive
the language through which the spiritual insights of Christianity
were first expressed. There is also value, they say, in maintaining
the tongue that during formative centuries molded the religious ideas
of the three great monotheistic religions --- Judaism, Christianity
and Islam.
For still others, it is a deeply spiritual matter, connecting them to
their parents and grandparents, as well as their faith.
"It is the language of Jesus and has been created in me. I can't
forsake myself, so how could I forsake the language?" said Rita
Wahbeh, 23, who guides visitors through the convent, built in the
fourth century and named after two Roman soldiers who converted to
Christianity and were executed in 297 after refusing to worship Roman
gods.