CHRISTIAN PALESTINIAN ARAMAIC AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE TO THE WESTERN ARAMAIC DIALECT GROUP.

• Author: MULLER-KESSLER, CHRISTA

THE DIALECT KNOWN AS Christian Palestinian Aramaic (CPA), Syropalestinian Aramaic, or Melkite Aramaic (the latter term suggested and used by A. Desreumaux) has a significant place in Western Aramaic (WA), which is considered to belong to the middle period of Aramaic.(1) In contrast to Jewish Palestinian Aramaic (JPA) and Samaritan Aramaic (SA), CPA stayed linguistically and lexicographically free of the influence of Hebrew. One has to exclude the Hebrew loanwords stemming from a period when Aramaic and Hebrew were contemporaneous and which can be traced to varying extent in all WA dialects. The only shortcoming of CPA is that it has many syntactical constructions based on Greek Vorlagen, since CPA has not produced its own literature and, apart from inscriptions, is transmitted in translations of Greek literature (Old Testament, New Testament, vitae, homilies, liturgies).(2) Manuscripts written in CPA survive from three periods, the early (fifth-seventh centuries A.D.), the middle (eighth-ninth centuries A.D.), and the late period (tenth-thirteenth centuries A.D.). These dates reflect the fact that of CPA only primary text material survives, in contrast to the other dialects, JPA and SA. Through CPA one catches a glimpse of a pure WA dialect, from a time when the dialects were still alive. This fact is frequently noted in several grammatical treatments of this dialect.(3) The proof that there existed a middle period too came to light just recently. The latest finds in the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai include new fragments.(4) Some fragments of Galatians that were previously published without any photographs can now be studied from photographs, and they demonstrate how far shapes of letters differ paleographically from the manuscripts of the earlier period.(5)

Due to the importance of CPA, the last three decades have witnessed a revival in the study of this dialect, resulting in at least three dissertations involving description of manuscripts and consideration of orthographic, phonetic, and grammatical problems.(6) Furthermore, new texts have been published, and other text material published nearly a century ago has been presented in up-to-date editions. Five of these text editions were published in a corpus of CPA; they were arranged according to context rather than according to manuscripts, as in the first editions. Apart from the early manuscripts, they also include fragments of the hitherto-undocumented middle period.(7) That texts from the early and middle period only were selected for editing is because they stand orthographically and linguistically in sharp contrast to the later texts. Late-period manuscripts have fallen under the strong influence of features from other languages, Syriac in lectionary A, Arabic in lectionaries B and C, and in other late manuscripts.(8) They were copied when CPA was predominantly a liturgical language, and this accounts for the amount of corrupted and doubtful forms found in these manuscripts.

As regards the early text remnants, which were transmitted mostly in palimpsests, their decipherment is difficult. CPA was still largely unknown when Th. Noldeke published the first grammatical study of its features. He had to rely on the then just-published manuscript lectionary A from the Vatican, the only manuscript known at that time.(9) A few years later J.EN. Land presented the first examples of fragments that were written in the early period,(10) Land, as well as all subsequent editors of early manuscripts, struggled to decipher palimpsests that were damaged by a millennium of unprotected storage. Further, the fact that CPA was written in a modified estrangela allowed many Syriac forms to be read into these editiones principes. Land's edition was influenced by Noldeke's dialect treatment of lectionary A that included Syriac forms stemming from Syriac pericopes in the manuscripts or from reading mistakes that crept into the first edition. The only existing dictionary of CPA is mainly based on late text material, and includes incorrect data from misread palimpsest fragments, since the major early manuscripts had not yet been published.(11) In turn, with the exception of works by H. Duensing and F. Schulthess,(12) these first text editions were not accurate, and grammatical forms and non-existent words were perpetuated in all kinds of dialect studies.

Modern text editions of CPA are badly needed. The first scholar to start on such a project was M. H. Goshen-Gottstein, who produced a critical edition of the first part of the Hebrew Scriptures (Pentateuch and Prophets) in their Masoretic sequence.(13) A planned second part has not yet appeared. Unfortunately, this edition too mixes early and late material without discriminating among the diverse periods, and several extant and unidentified Genizah palimpsests were not included in it. Moreover, some of the originals were not collated, either because their where-abouts were unknown at that time, or because Goshen-Gottstein and his staff did not have access to them.(13)

Because of this deficient text situation, a new study of the manuscripts was overdue that reread the available material and applied recently available technical facilities. For palimpsests, the use of ultraviolet light and photography give the most satisfactory results. Since each of the early codices consists of several individual manuscripts, a painstaking study of the internal peculiarities of the manuscripts became necessary. A first attempt to sort out individual manuscripts from the mass of Genizah fragments was made by M. Sokoloff and Y. Yahalom.(14) Their study deals with all palimpsest fragments of CPA and other languages that were overwritten with Hebrew characters.

Next to the Genizah fragments, Codex Climaci Rescriptus and Codex Sinaiticus Rescriptus (renamed "Codex sinaiticus Zosimi rescriptus" by A. Desreumaux(15)) are the most important CPA manuscripts, and they will be cited below for the...