Aramaic (was: /zh/ replacing /dzh/?)

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 9/26/02 1:09:48 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
avgilbert at PRODIGY.NET writes:

>  > I've noticed the "Jews for Jesus" people call him something like
>  > Y'shua in their ads.  I suppose they're trying to make him look more
>  > authentically Jewish.  (And after all, how could a nice Jewish boy,
>  > or girl, reject a savior and messiah if he's just a nice Jewish boy
>  > named Y'shua?)
>
>  I've seen those Jews for Jesus ads too.  But aren't they forgetting
>  something?  Wasn't what people spoke in that region at that time Aramaic?
>  If that was the case, Jesus/Yeshua/Y'shua probably spoke it too.  And I
>  think I've seen transliterations(presumaly from Aramaic)into Yasua or
>  something similar.

Yes, the language spoken in the Holy Land from the end of the Babylonian
Exile through the New Testament era was Aramaic, the language of Babylonia at
the time of the Exile.  Aramaic is close to Hebrew---like say Spanish and
Portuguese---why is why the Israelites in Babylonia could switch languages so
easily.

Aramaic exists today as a liturgical language in no fewer than FOUR
dialects---Syraic (used by certain Christian churches), that of the
Babylonian Talmud, that of the Jerusalem Talmud, and that of the Zohar (the
main source book of the Kaballah).

So what is the Aramaic version of the name that became "Jesus" in Greek and
other European languages?

Perhaps it would be better to ignore Jesus of Nazareth for the moment and
look at the other Jesus, the man whom Christians usually call
"Ecclesiasticus".  He was the author of a book which appears in the
Apochrypha (and which is included in the Catholic, though not the Protestant,
Bible under the name of "Sirach").  The Greek version of the book title
translates/transliterates as  "The Wisdom of Jesus Son of Sirach".

The extant Aramaic and Hebrew tests of Sirach all give the man's name in the
Hebrew alphabet as   Yud-Shin-Vov-Ayin.  (Vowels are not written in Hebrew
and sometimes have to be guessed at.)

Yud is the consonant /y/.
Shin can be either /s/ or /sh/.
Vov can be consonantal /v/ or vowel /oh/ or vowel /oo/ (as in "food" not
"good").
Ayin is a silent letter but here serves to show that there was a syllable
following the vov.

Two plausible pronunciations are /ye shoo ah/ and /ye soo ah/, with the
vowels  coming from the traditional pronunciation of the name of the Joshua
who fit de battle of Jericho.  From the fact that Joshua's name traditionally
has had /sh/ rather than /s/, and because the Aramaic used in Jewish liturgy
(no, it's not all in Hebrew) uses the /sh/ sound freely, /ye shoo ah/ is the
pronunciation Mr. ben Sirach himself probably used.

Yes, Jesus of Nazareth spoke Aramaic as his first and usual language.  Being
a rabbi of the Pharisee order, he had a reading knowledge of Hebrew and
perhaps a speaking knowledge as well.  The only evidence Jesus spoke Greek is
the New Testament pun "Thou are Petra, and upon this Petros I shall build my
[church]" and as far as I know there is no evidence that Jesus did or did not
speak Latin.