The Origins of the Biblical Aramaic Reading Tradition

Abstract

The many qere notes in the Aramaic passages of the Hebrew Bible show that the Biblical Aramaic reading tradition goes back to a different variety of Aramaic than the consonantal texts. While this qere dialect differs in important respects from every well-attested dialect of Aramaic, it closely resembles a small number of documents from first- and second-century CE Palestine. This suggests that this was the time and place at which the reading tradition was fixed, not just of the Biblical Aramaic portions of the Hebrew Bible, but of the Hebrew Bible in its entirety.