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Early Aramaic Dialects and the Book of Daniel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

H. H. Rowley
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Extract

Nearly six years ago, G. E. Driver published a paper in the Journal of Biblical Literature, in which he examined some of the arguments dealing with the Aramaic of the Book of Daniel, which had been presented by Charles Boutflower in his work In and Around the Booh of Daniel. Three years later, in the course of an examination of the relation of Biblical Aramaic to other early Aramaic dialects, I took the opportunity of replying to a number of inaccurate or misleading statements and untenable hypotheses on the subject of the Aramaic of Daniel which appeared in the writings of certam defenders of the traditional date and place of origin of that book, including Boutflower. A rejoinder has now appeared from Boutflower's pen, dealing with a limited area of the field, in the form of a brief monograph, published under the title, Dadda-'idri, or The Aramaic of the Booh of Daniel. In this little book Boutflower replies to Driver and myself, and presents what he feels to be new light on the subject. A superficial reading might leave the impression that there was some ground for his theory, but a little examination reveals such omissions and assumptions and such misuse of evidence as to vitiate the argument. Indeed, the real issue is that of the validity of the evidence we possess, for fundamentally Boutflower seeks to set aside the evidence that has survived in favour of the evidence he assumes to have perished.

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Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 65 , Issue 4 , October 1933 , pp. 777 - 805
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1933

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References

page 777 note 1 The Aramaic of the Book of Daniel, J.B.L., 1926, pp. 110–19.

page 777 note 2 The Aramaic of the Old Testament: A Grammatical and Lexical Study of its Relations with other Early Aramaic Dialects.

page 778 note 1 Biblical and Theological Studies by the Members of the Faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary, 1912, p. 279.

page 778 note 2 This appears to be a misprint for An-idri. G. R. Driver tells me that it should really be read DINGIR-idri, for which Johns used the old reading, AN-idri. Boutflower's book, unfortunately, abounds in misprints, the worst instance being the Aramaic text on p. 47, where six mistakes occur in the five short lines copied from Torrey.

page 779 note 1 Most of these names, together with others from Mesopotamian texts, are noted by Baumgartner, in ZAW, N.F., iv (1927), 95Google Scholar.

page 779 note 2 In this improbable hypothesis Boutflower was anticipated by Jahn, who claimed, in defiance of the evidence, that is younger than (cf. Die Elephantiner Papyri und die Bücher Esra-Nehemja, 1913, pp. 18 f.).

page 781 note 1 Dadda-'idri, pp. 14 f.

page 781 note 2 Ibid., p. 15.

page 781 note 3 Boutflower somewhat inconsistently says (ibid.) that the Têmâ. inscription is “written in that dialect of the Aramaic which prevailed in Assyria and at Babylon”, though he has claimed above that the dialect of Assyria and Babylonia was really dental, but was miswritten by Akkadian-speaking scribes. Here, as elsewhere, he does not seem quite to have made up his mind what his position is.

page 781 note 4 Ibid., p. 21.

page 782 note 1 Ibid., p. 22.

page 782 note 2 Ibid., pp. 24–33.

page 784 note 1 Ibid., p. 14.

page 784 note 2 Lidzbarski conjectures that the initial consonant is of Hittite origin. Cf. Ephemeris für semitische Epigraphik, iii, 175, n.

page 784 note 3 The inscription of Zakir of Hamath. Lidzbarski (ibid., p. 6) and Dussaud, (Revue archéologique, xi (1908), p. 229)Google Scholar hold that it was originally erected at Ḥazrak, though before, the place of discovery was disclosed, the former had surmised the possibility that it might not have been found in the place where it originally stood (op. cit., iii, p. 175, n.). It was actually found at Afis, near Aleppo (cf. Syria, iii (1922), pp. 175 f.Google Scholar), which seems to be mentioned in the inscription (b, 11), and the writer in Syria (loc. cit.) holds that it was erected there, and not at Ḥazrak, conjecturing a second battle at Afis after the breaking of the siege of Ḥazrak, of which the inscription gives no indication. In any case there can be no doubt that it reveals the dialect of Ḥazrak.

page 785 note 1 2 Samuel viii, 3; 1 Kings xi, 23.

page 785 note 2 CIS. ii, 124.

page 785 note 3 I am indebted to G. R. Driver for drawing my attention to this point, which seems excellently to expose the invalidity of Boutflower's argument.

page 787 note 1 G. R. Driver points out, for instance, that in the Old Testament the name Uriah the Hittite has nothing to do with the divine name Yah, with which it seems to connect, and that it is quite distinct from the genuinely Hebrew name Uriah, which we find borne by Hebrew persons, but is the Mitanni name Uria, with the common hypocoristic ending -ia.

page 787 note 2 Assyrian Doomsday Book, p. 30. So insecure is the name that Johns omits it from his Glossary of Proper Names.

page 787 note 3 Ibid. The reference I owe to G. R. Driver, who adds that this is perfectly legitimate, as ki is often substituted for ḳi in every period, while actually in texts from Ḥarrân we have Adad-lu-ki-di (ibid., No. 4, obv., iii, 13) beside Si'-[lu]-ḳi-di (No. 6, obv., i, B 7).

page 787 note 4 Lexicon Syriacum, 2nd ed., p. 158. The reference is again G. R. Driver's, to whom I am indebted for much of the foregoing paragraph.

page 788 note 1 Experience shows that when once a foreign name has secured a place in a language the inaccuracy of its spelling or pronunciation, due to the medium through which it was first learned, is seldom corrected. Thus we speak of Peking, though the local pronunciation is more like Bay-jing.

page 788 note 2 There are also a number of other names in Assyrian inscriptions, e.g. Ursalimmu for Jerusalem, Asdudu for Ashdod, Isḳaluna for Ashkelon, and Lakisu for Lachish. In the earlier period, Babylonian often substituted s for š, and in the Amarna Letters we find some confusion. Thus, we there find Lakišu in letters from Lachish, but Lakisu in the letters of Abdi-ḥiba of Jerusalem. For Ashkelon, however, we find Ašḳaluna, both in Abdiḥiba's letters and elsewhere. Jerusalem is only mentioned in Abdi-ḥiba's letters, where Urusalim is found. But these names doubtless reached the Assyrian scribes by direct contact in the period of Assyrian expansion, when š would be the regular Assyrian usage—though surviving letters show that in the common speech s still stood sometimes by confusion for š.

page 789 note 1 Jg. xii, 6.

page 789 note 2 Hastings, , DB. i, 133bGoogle Scholar.

page 789 note 3 1 Kings x, 2.

page 789 note 4 Cambridge Ancient History, iii, 58.

page 789 note 5 Lidzbaraki, op. cit., ii, 27.

page 790 note 1 Cf. Meissner, , Babylonien und Assyrien, i, 18Google Scholar, “Die Wüste im Westen und Süden des Zweistromlandes war schon im 9. Jahrhundert von ‘Arabern’ bevölkert.”

page 790 note 2 Cf. Margoliouth, loc. oit., p. 133a; Streck, , Assurbanipal, iii, 772Google Scholar.

page 791 note 1 In view of the other names mentioned in a note above, the former would seem.to be the more probable hypothesis.

page 791 note 2 Op. cit., p. 19.

page 791 note 3 Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C., 1923, cited below as AP.

page 791 note 4 I have not included here the name , which I discuss in a footnote below.

page 792 note 1 Here I have not included AP. 34, 6, which Cowley doubtfully connects with = remember. I should have included a reference to this word in footnote 4, on p. 20 of my Aramaic of the Old Testament.

page 792 note 2 Leander, (Laut- und Formenlehre des Ägyptisch-Aramäischen, 1928, p. 9)Google Scholar includes also the names and as belonging to this class. The last is miswritten (see note in AP. on 37, 17) for Sachau, , however, holds (Aramäische Papyrus aus Elephantine, 1911, p. 8)Google Scholar that the form points to the root (cf. BH. = lord), and he is followed by Ungnad. Liddzbarski rightly, in my judgment, doubts this (op. cit., iii, 258), but holds, as Leander, that and are two forms of the same name, noting the former as the younger. It seems to me much more probable that connects with the root . In BH. we find the proper name in Neh. iii, 7, which is certainly not connected with , but which may with every probability be connected with . Cowley does not, I believe, discuss these names, but the fact that he transliterates Yedoniah in the one case and Jezaniah in the other would seem to indicate that he does not equate the two names.

page 794 note 1 As I have collected all the occurrences of d in Egyptian Aramaic, with references, in my Aramaic of the Old Testament, pp. 20 f., it is unnecessary to do so again here.

page 795 note 1 It should be noted, however, that if Lidzbarski and Leander are right in the derivation of , then the 32 occurrences of that name in its various spellings would have to be added, making the figures 57 as against 60.

page 797 note 1 Op. cit., p. 21.

page 797 note 2 Baumgartner (ZAW, loc. cit., p. 95) adds a second inscription from Asia Minor which employs d beside z, given in PSBA. xxxv, 1913, p. 192Google Scholar. But this is the Cilician inscription more recently edited by Torrey, in JAOS. xxxv, 1915–1917, pp. 370–4Google Scholar, which closer study has shown to employ only z.

page 799 note 1 Apart from the sporadic instances of proper names in d, which have been sufficiently discussed above.

page 799 note 2 Op. cit., pp. 33 ff.

page 800 note 1 JRAS., 1932, p. 81.

page 802 note 1 AP., p. 14.

page 803 note 1 A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel, 1929, p. ci.

page 803 note 2 I here append two further corrections: (1) Driver, G. R. notes that Boutflower's explanation, on p. 45Google Scholar, of the name Rîmani-Adad as “Rimmon is Adad” is mistaken. It means “Have mercy on me, Adad”, the first element connecting with the Hebrew root . (2) An error in my own work may be corrected. On p. 139, line 17, the word has somehow got with two words from Ezra, instead of standing in the following line with two from Daniel. This correction involves the transposition of the words “three” in line 16 and “two” in line 17, and the substitution of “three” for “four” in footnote 6.