Eastern groups. However, from a historical standpoint the following four groups have been recognized: Old Aramaic, Official Aramaic, Levantine Aramaic and Eastern Aramaic. It has been suggested that likely various dialects of Aramaic were spoken around and within the Fertile Crescent and Mesopotamia during the second millennium B.C.E. A difference between early forms of Aramaic and Hebrew may be noted at Genesis 31:47. After Jacob and Laban effected a reconciliation, a heap of stones was set up as a witness between them. Laban called it Jeʹgar-sa·ha·duʹtha in Aramaic (Syrian), while Jacob called it Galʹe·ed in Hebrew, both expressions meaning “witness heap.”

Old Aramaic is a name applied to certain inscriptions discovered in northern Syria and said to date from the tenth to the eighth centuries B.C.E. Gradually, however, a new dialect of Aramaic became the lingua franca or the international auxiliary language during the time of the Assyrian Empire, supplanting Akkadian as the language used for official governmental correspondence with outlying areas of the empire. In view of its use, this standard form of Aramaic is referred to as “Official Aramaic.” It continued to be employed during the time Babylon was the world power (625-539 B.C.E.) and thereafter, during the time of the Persian Empire (538-331 B.C.E.). Especially did it then enjoy wide usage, being the official language of government and business over a wide area, as archaeological discoveries attest, for it appears in dockets on cuneiform tablets, on ostraca, papyri, seals, coins, in inscriptions on stone, and so forth. These artifacts have been found in such lands as Mesopotamia, Persia, Egypt, Anatolia, northern Arabia and regions as far N as the Ural Mountains and to the E as distant as Afghanistan and Kurdistan. The use of Official Aramaic continued during the Hellenistic period (330-30 B.C.E.).

It seems that it is this Official Aramaic that is found in the writings of Ezra, Jeremiah and Daniel. The Scriptures also give evidence of the fact that Aramaic was a lingua franca of those ancient times. Thus, in the eighth century B.C.E. an appointed spokesman for King Hezekiah of Judah, appealed to Assyrian King Sennacherib’s representative Rabshakeh, saying: “Speak, please, to your servants in the Syrian [Aramaean, and hence Aramaic] language, for we are listening; and do not speak to us in the Jews’ language in the ears of the people that are on the wall.” (Isa. 36:11; 2 Ki. 18:26) The officials of Judah understood Aramaic, or Syrian, but evidently it was not understood by the common people among the Hebrews at that time in Jerusalem.

A number of years after the Jews returned from Babylonian exile Ezra the priest read the book of the law to Jews assembled in Jerusalem, and various Levites explained it to the people, Nehemiah 8:8 stating: “They continued reading aloud from the book, from the law of the true God, it being expounded, and there being a putting of meaning into it; and they continued giving understanding in the reading.” This expounding or interpreting may have involved paraphrasing the Hebrew text into Aramaic, Aramaic possibly having been adopted by the Hebrews when in Babylon. However, the expounding could have involved exposition so that the Jews, even if understanding the Hebrew, would comprehend the deep significance of what was being read.

WHAT LANGUAGE DID JESUS SPEAK WHEN ON EARTH?

On this question there is considerable difference of opinion among scholars. However, concerning languages used in Palestine when Jesus Christ was on earth, Professor G. Ernest Wright states: “Various languages were undoubtedly to be heard on the streets of the major cities. Greek and Aramaic were evidently the common tongues, and most of the urban peoples could probably understand both even in such ‘modern’ or ‘western’ cities as Caesarea and Samaria where Greek was the more common. Roman soldiers and officials might be heard conversing in Latin, while orthodox Jews may well have spoken a late variety of Hebrew with one another, a language that we know to have been neither classical Hebrew nor Aramaic, despite its similarities to both.” Commenting further, on the language spoken by Jesus Christ, Professor Wright says: “The language spoken by Jesus has been much debated. We have no certain way of knowing whether he could speak Greek or Latin, but in his teaching ministry he regularly used either Aramaic or the highly Aramaized popular Hebrew. When Paul addressed the mob in the Temple, it is said that he spoke Hebrew (Acts 21:40). Scholars generally have taken this to mean Aramaic, but it is quite possible that a popular Hebrew was then the common tongue among the Jews.”—Biblical Archaeology, p. 240.

It is possible that Jesus and his early disciples, such as the apostle Peter, at least at times spoke Galilean Aramaic, Peter being told on the night Christ was taken into custody: “Certainly you also are one of them, for, in fact, your dialect gives you away.” (Matt. 26:73) This may have been said because the apostle was using Galilean Aramaic at the time, though that is not certain and he may have been speaking a Galilean Hebrew that differed dialectically from that employed in Jerusalem or elsewhere in Judea. Earlier, when Jesus came to Nazareth in Galilee and entered the synagogue there, he read from the prophecy of Isaiah, evidently as written in Hebrew, and then said: “Today this scripture that you just heard is fulfilled.” Nothing is said about Jesus’ translating this passage into Aramaic. So it is likely that persons present on that occasion could readily understand Biblical Hebrew. (Luke 4:16-21) It may also be noted that Acts 6:1, referring to a time shortly after Pentecost 33 C.E., mentions Greek-speaking Jews and Hebrew-speaking Jews in Jerusalem.

Professor Harris Birkeland (in The Language of Jesus, 1954, pp. 10, 11) points out that Aramaic’s being the written language of Palestine when Jesus was on earth does not necessarily mean that it was spoken by the masses, and the fact that the Elephantine papyri belonging to a Jewish colony in Egypt were written in Aramaic does not prove that it was their chief or common tongue in their homeland, for Aramaic was then an international literary language. Of course, the Christian Greek Scriptures contain a number of Aramaisms, Jesus using some Aramaic words, for instance. However, as Birkeland argues, perhaps Jesus ordinarily spoke the popular Hebrew, while occasionally using Aramaic expressions.

While it may not be provable, as Birkeland contends, that the common people were illiterate as far as Aramaic was concerned, it does seem that when Luke, an educated physician, records that Paul spoke to the Jews ‘in Hebrew’ and when the apostle said the voice from heaven spoke to him ‘in Hebrew,’ a form of Hebrew was actually meant (though perhaps not the ancient Hebrew) and not Aramaic.—Acts 22:2; 26:14.

Lending further support to the use of a form of Hebrew in Palestine when Jesus Christ was on earth are early indications that the apostle Matthew first wrote his Gospel account in Hebrew. For instance, Eusebius (of the third and fourth centuries C.E.) said: “The evangelist Matthew delivered his Gospel in the Hebrew tongue.” And Jerome (of the fourth and fifth centuries C.E.) stated: “Matthew, who is also Levi, and who from a publican came to be an Apostle, first of all the Evangelists, composed a Gospel of Christ in Judaea in the Hebrew language and characters, for the benefit of those of the circumcision who had believed. . . . Furthermore, the Hebrew itself is preserved to this day in the library at Caesarea which the Martyr Pamphilus so diligently collected.” (Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers) Hence, Jesus Christ as a man on earth could well have used a form of Hebrew and a dialect of Aramaic.—See HEBREW.

ARAM-MAACAH

See ARAM No. 5.

ARAM-NAHARAIM

See ARAM No. 5.

ARAM-ZOBAH

See ARAM No. 5.

ARAN

(Aʹran) [mountain goat].

A son of Sheik Dishan and descendant of Seir the Horite.—Gen. 36:20, 28; 1 Chron. 1:42.

ARARAT

(Arʹa·rat) [holy ground, highlands].

The name applied to a region and also to a mountain range in what is now eastern Turkey, lying close to the borders of Iran and the U.S.S.R.

Following the flood, Noah’s ark settled on the “mountains of Ararat.” (Gen. 8:4) In the reign of King Hezekiah, it was to the “land of Ararat” that Sennacherib’s sons, Adrammelech and Sharezer, fled after murdering their father. (2 Ki. 19:37; Isa. 37:38) Jeremiah foretold that Ararat would be among the “kingdoms” to come up against Babylon at the time of her destruction in the sixth century B.C.E. (Jer. 51:27) These latter Scriptural references indicate a land N of Assyria. Eusebius and Jerome and the majority of other early Christian writers considered Ararat as equivalent to Armenia, and the Septuagint and Vulgate translations so represent it. Numerous Assyrian inscriptions from the reigns of Ashurnasirpal II, Shalmaneser, Tiglath-pileser III, and Sargon in the ninth and eighth centuries B.C.E. make reference to Ararat as “Urartu.” An inscription of Esar-haddon, another son of Sennacherib and successor to the Assyrian throne, says that he defeated his parricidal brothers’ armies at Hanigalbat, in the area of Armenia. On the basis of these inscriptions and the association by Jeremiah of Ararat with the kingdoms of Minni and Ashkenaz, it appears that the land of Ararat was centered on the mountainous region of Lake Van in ancient Armenia, with the headwaters of the Tigris River to the S and the Caucasus Mountains to the N.

The name Ararat is specifically applied to the culminating mountain of this region and it is the traditional resting-place of Noah’s ark. There are two conical peaks about seven miles (11.3 kilometers) apart and separated by a deep depression. The higher of the peaks rises some 16,946 feet (5,165 meters) above sea level and is covered with perpetual snow for the last 3,000 feet (914 meters) up to its summit. The lower peak, to the SE, is 12,840 feet (3,913 meters) above sea level. The loftier peak is of particularly difficult ascent and was first ascended by Parrot in 1829. Many place-names in the region recall the Biblical account. Mount Ararat itself is called by the Turks Aghri Dagh (Mount of the Ark) and by the Persians Kuhi—Nuh (Noah’s Mountain).—See ARK No. 1.

ARAUNAH

(A·rauʹnah) [meaning uncertain].

The Jebusite owner of the threshing floor purchased by King David for building an altar to Jehovah. This action resulted as the divinely indicated means of ending a scourge provoked by David’s numbering the people.—2 Sam. 24:16-25; 1 Chron. 21:15-28.

Araunah apparently offered the place, along with cattle and wood implements for the sacrifice, without charge, but David insisted on paying a price. The record at 2 Samuel 24:24 shows that David purchased the threshing floor and the cattle for fifty silver shekels (about $23.75). However, the account at 1 Chronicles 21:25 speaks of David’s paying 600 gold shekels (about $7,732.20) for the site. The writer of Second Samuel deals only with the purchase as it relates to the altar location and the materials for the sacrifice then made, and it thus appears that the purchase price referred to by him was restricted to these things. On the other hand, the writer of First Chronicles discusses matters as relating to the temple later built on the site and associates the purchase with that construction. (1 Chron. 22:1-6; 2 Chron. 3:1) Since the entire temple area was very large, it appears that the sum of 600 gold shekels applies to the purchase of this large area rather than to the small portion needed for the altar first built by David.

A natural stone scarp still exists today under the Muslim “Dome of the Rock” occupying part of the original temple site and this stone may represent the early threshing floor of Araunah.

In the Chronicles record Araunah is called Ornan.—1 Chron. 21:18-28; 2 Chron. 3:1.

ARBA

(Arʹba) [four or fourfold].

He is called the “father” or “great man” of the Anakim and appears to have been the founder of Kiriath-arba (city of Arba or fourfold city), later called Hebron. (Josh. 14:15; 15:13; 21:11) Some consider “Anak” as a name applying to the giant race descended from Arba rather than as the personal name of Arba’s son and thus view Arba as the actual progenitor of the Anakim.—See ANAK; ANAKIM.

ARBATHITE

(Arʹbath·ite).

One belonging to the wilderness city of Beth-arabah (Josh. 15:61), a city situated near Jericho in the District of the Jordan Valley. (Josh. 18:21, 22) One of David’s mighty men of war, Abi-albon or Abiel, was an Arbathite.—2 Sam. 23:8, 31; 1 Chron. 11:10, 32.

ARBEL

(Arʹbel).

A “house” (“Beth-arbel,” AT, JB, RS) despoiled at some unspecified time by Shalman. (Hos. 10:14) It is usually linked with modern Irbid, located about eighteen miles (29 kilometers) E-SE of the Sea of Galilee, hence in Gilead. Some scholars, however, attempt to connect Biblical Arbel with “Arbela” in Galilee, referred to in the apocryphal book of 1 Maccabees (9:2, JB).

ARBITE

(Arʹbite).

A native of the city of Arab, located near Hebron in the mountainous region of Judah. Paarai, one of David’s mighty men, was an Arbite.—2 Sam. 23:8, 35.

ARCHAELOGY

(Gr., ar·khai·o·lo·giʹa, speaking of ancient things).

Biblical archaeology is the study of the peoples and events of the Bible through the intriguing record buried in the earth. The archaeologist digs up and analyzes rock, ruined walls and buildings, and shattered cities, uncovers pottery, clay tablets, written inscriptions, tombs and other ancient remains or “artifacts” from which he gleans information. Such studies often improve understanding of the circumstances under which the Bible was written and under which ancient men of faith lived, as well as the languages they, and the peoples around them, employed. They have expanded our knowledge of all the regions touched by the Bible: Palestine, Egypt, Persia, Assyria, Babylon, Asia Minor, Greece and Rome.

Considerable background information has been gained that aids in the understanding of Biblical references to many facets of life: the family, children, clothing, homes, climate, vegetation, animals, crops, trade relations, national groups and religious customs. Of considerable benefit has been the identification of the geographical locations of cities, towns and places mentioned in the Bible history. Archaeology reveals much about the depraved religion of the Canaanite peoples. It vividly illustrates the pagans’ belief in immortality of the human soul. It confirms the Bible’s picture of ancient Palestine as being ruled by numerous local kings, constantly at war with one another. It has uncovered Assyrian reliefs that show how Semites dressed, and it contributes toward our visualizing life in Jacob’s day, Elisha’s time, and during Christ’s ministry.

Archaeological discoveries have refuted many allegations