# aleluya



## No_C_Nada

_Dear forum members:

        ¿Cuál es el origen de la palabra "__aleluya__"?  Or maybe "__hallelujah__"?  Does it have any Aramaic roots?


Thank you, in advance, for your help.

_


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## rbrunner

You can read about it here or here. Looks like it's Hebrew, not Aramaic.


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## berndf

No_C_Nada said:


> _Does it have any Aramaic roots?
> _


Just out of curiosity: Why do you think it should be of Aramaic (rather than Hebrew) origin?


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## No_C_Nada

_Because in Palestine where Jesus lived, the Jews spoke Aramaic.  I am interested in knowing if the Jews of Jesus time spoke this word. _


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## arielipi

Jews spoke hebrew, only the scholars spoke aramaic.
This word appears in the bible, it means praise god.


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## berndf

arielipi said:


> Jews spoke hebrew, only the scholars spoke aramaic.
> This word appears in the bible, it means praise god.


Depends on when. In Hasmonean and 2nd Temple times it was more likely the opposite.


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## arielipi

berndf said:


> Depends on when. In Hasmonean and 2nd Temple times it was more likely the opposite.


I answered to the era he asked about, 2nd temple  was not the opposite, but hasmonean probably was, and then after the 2nd defilement.


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## berndf

arielipi said:


> I answered to the era he asked about, 2nd temple  was not the opposite, but hasmonean probably was, and then after the 2nd defilement.


He didn't ask about a specific period, nor did you specify which period you spoke about. The later books of the Tanakh were written in a period when Aramaic was already the regional lingua franca already widely spoken by Jews, at least as second language.

What hasn't been said yet is where t word appears, namely as the first word of Psalm 106. And that is one of the older parts of the Tanakh before Imperial Aramaic became a significant language in the the area.


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## arielipi

_"I am interested in knowing if the Jews of Jesus time spoke this word."

_Allow me to explain - the order of the books is simply a method of keeping things within logic but the events in the books dont take place chronologically (though mostly it does, it doesnt have to)
the tehilim were written by king david - that is before the first temple.


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## No_C_Nada

_
Does this mean that King David spoke Hebrew as a first language and since he was a scholar, he spoke Aramaic as a second language?



_


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## Kevin Beach

As I understand it, Hebrew was the language of the Jews until the Babylonian captivity (605 BC to 538 BC), when they adapted to the Aramaic spoken by their captors. When they returned to Judah, they took Aramaic with them, so that it largely supplanted Hebrew as the vernacular. Hebrew then remained as the liturgical language only for about 1,000 to 1,200 years, until it began to be resurrected among dispersed Jews. Its modern form became the language of modern Israel as a matter of policy; many of the first to speak it had Yiddish as their mother tongue.

By the time of Jesus, Aramaic was well-established as the native language and as the language of some of the later scriptures, but Hebrew remained the language of the Torah and other earlier scriptures.


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## No_C_Nada

_
Thank you, Kevin Beach.  Then, Jesus and the other Jews of his time spoke Aramaic as a first language and Hebrew as a second language.  So, "hallelujah" was first spoken in Hebrew, then, in Aramaic?
_


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## arielipi

Kevin, youre pretty inaccurate, hebrew was the language of all jews till babel's desettlemt of the jews, then scholars learned the aramaic - because they were the leaders of jews and needed to speak with the babylonians.
then, when jews came back to israel/judah the scholars continued aramaic because they were still captivated by other empires.
hebrew only became surpassed when the roman empire came with force, but all jews knew hebrew on some level - you simply have to, because you read the bible in hebrew, you pray in hebrew etc etc.
the resurrection of the language was not a matter of policy - it is the language of the jews and this is the language we speak in our country, it did serve as a melting pot but it was not because of that that we chose hebrew.
anyway, the resurrection is called that because many many words were invented and renewed.


jesys certainly spoke hebrew and aramaic, and the common people spoke hebrew. and in any case, hallelujah is from hebrew. i can further tell you exactly what it means if you want


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## No_C_Nada

_
Yes, please do.


_


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## berndf

arielipi said:


> _"I am interested in knowing if the Jews of Jesus time spoke this word."_


My mistake. I overlooked that post.


arielipi said:


> the tehilim were written by king david - that is before the first temple.


No part of the bible was actually *written *before the mid 7th century BC. All stories of previous authorship, although possible, belongs to the realm of legend.


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## origumi

berndf said:


> No part of the bible was actually *written *before the mid 7th century BC. All stories of previous authorship, although possible, belongs to the realm of legend.


I wonder how one can make such claim and why would the 7th century be taken as a watershed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dating_the_Bible


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## arielipi

Hallelujah is a union of two words - hallelu jah, הללו יה
hallelu is of the root ה-ל-ל h-l-l which is used for 'praise'


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## berndf

arielipi said:


> Kevin, youre pretty inaccurate, hebrew was the language of all jews till babel's desettlemt of the jews, then scholars learned the aramaic - because they were the leaders of jews and needed to speak with the babylonians.
> then, when jews came back to israel/judah the scholars continued aramaic because they were still captivated by other empires.
> hebrew only became surpassed when the roman empire came with force...


First of all, the Romans had nothing to do with Aramic. I know, you didn't say it had. But just to prevent further misunderstandings in this thread I want to make this clear. The main administrative language of the region was Greek since the days of Alexander and the Romans didn't change that.

Now back to Aramaic. The situation you described (Hebrew speaking common people and Aramaic speaking elite) corresponds to the time after end of the Babylonian Exile. This happened after the Babylonian empire was conquered by the Persians. But the Persians kept Imperial Aramaic (and with it the Imperial Aramic alphabet which with only minor calligraphic changes still is used today to write the Hebrew language) as the language of administration and commerce in the western part of the empire. It was in this periods, during the Babylonian reign over the entire Levant region from 588BC to 538BC and the subsequent Persian reign from 538BC to 331BC, when Israel had ceased to be a political and administrative entity and Aramaic was the language of communication with the authorities and of commerce, that Aramaic became progressively used by the people in their daily communication as well.

It had previously thought that in this period Aramaic had completely replaced Hebrew as the language of profane communication and had been completely relegated to the status of a liturgical language by the Hasmonean and Second Temple periods. At least since the discovery of the famous Bar Kokhbar letters in the Cave of the Letters, which contained profane texts in Hebrew, Aramaic, Nabatean-Aramaic and Greek, it has been clear that the linguistic situation was much more complex and that Hebrew and Aramaic were most likely used concurrently in everyday communication in the Second Temple period (i.e. the time of Jesus).


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## berndf

origumi said:


> I wonder how one can make such claim and why would the 7th century be taken as a watershed.


Most scholars today take the codification of the legal and religious traditions under King Josiah as the beginning of the canonization process of the Hebrew Bible. This of course doesn't prelude other previous written traditions. But the first canonic Biblical texts are thought to date from this period, notably the first codification of the Torah.


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## Wolverine9

Kevin Beach said:


> As I understand it, Hebrew was the language of the Jews until the Babylonian captivity (605 BC to 538 BC), when they adapted to the Aramaic spoken by their captors. When they returned to Judah, they took Aramaic with them, so that it largely supplanted Hebrew as the vernacular. Hebrew then remained as the liturgical language only for about 1,000 to 1,200 years, until it began to be resurrected among dispersed Jews. Its modern form became the language of modern Israel as a matter of policy; many of the first to speak it had Yiddish as their mother tongue.
> 
> By the time of Jesus, Aramaic was well-established as the native language and as the language of some of the later scriptures, but Hebrew remained the language of the Torah and other earlier scriptures.



I agree, Kevin.  Although berndf's point about Hebrew and Aramaic being spoken concurrently could very well be true, I think it is well established that Aramaic was the lingua franca at the time of Jesus and the primary language of Jesus and his companions, with Greek serving as a second language among the educated.


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## berndf

Wolverine9 said:


> I agree, Kevin. Although berndf's point about Hebrew and Aramaic being spoken concurrently could very well be true, I think it is well established that Aramaic was the lingua franca at the time of Jesus and the primary language of Jesus and his companions, with Greek serving as a second language among the educated.


I am afraid, we don't have enough information give any clear answer as to the relative weights of Hebrew and Aramic in everyday communication. Actual attestations that could possibly decide that are much too scarce.

It should be added that there was already a Jewish Diaspora during the time of Jesus throughout the Hellenistic world and those communities where also linguistically Hellenized at this period. Paul is the most well know representative of a Hellenized Jew.

PS: As to the language of Jesus himself: The problem is that there is only one sentence in the New Testament which is actually supposed to represent Jesus words in his own tongue: The exclamation at the cross _My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? _This sentence is found in two slightly different versions in Mark 15.34 in the Greek transliteration ελωι ελωι λιμα σαβαχθανει and Matthew 27.46 in the Greek transliteration ηλι ηλι λιμα σαβαχθανει. The reconstruction of the original would be אלהי אלהי למא שבקתני (Mark's version) and אלי אלי למא שבקתני (Matthew's version) which is Aramic. In Hebrew he would most likely have said אלי אלי למה עזבתני. Since Jesus certainly spoke both languages well and the authors of the gospels weren't contemporaries of Jesus and a lot can have gone wrong in oral transmission until the gospels were written, this one sentence cannot be considered unequivocal proof that Jesus spoke Aramaic in daily life.


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## arielipi

berndf said:


> First of all, the Romans had nothing to do with Aramic. I know, you didn't say it had. But just to prevent further misunderstandings in this thread I want to make this clear. The main administrative language of the region was Greek since the days of Alexander and the Romans didn't change that.



The greek empire, you are correct of course, a mistake on my end! still though i stand with what i said - hebrew was known by all jews.


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## berndf

arielipi said:


> hebrew was known by all jews.


Most likely and certainly by all literate Jews*.  

_____________
_*I have no idea how wide spread literacy was among (male) Jews of that period._


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## fdb

During the time of Bar Kokba there was a conscious effort to revive Hebrew as the official written language of the Messianic state. It is however very unlikely that anyone actually spoke Hebrew in the Second Temple period. This is still the predominant view of specialists in the field.


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## No_C_Nada

Wolverine9 said:


> I agree, Kevin.  Although berndf's point about Hebrew and Aramaic being spoken concurrently could very well be true, I think it is well established that Aramaic was the lingua franca at the time of Jesus and the primary language of Jesus and his companions, with Greek serving as a second language among the educated.


_With Hebrew being used in the synagogue and in the temple?  So Jews who observed the Jewish religion and were educated had Aramaic as their first language, Hebrew as their second one and Greek as their third one?

_


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## apmoy70

No_C_Nada said:


> _With Hebrew being used in the synagogue and in the temple?  So Jews who observed the Jewish religion and were educated had Aramaic as their first language, Hebrew as their second one and Greek as their third one?
> 
> _


 Then why did the 72 scholars translate the Hebrew scripture into Greek (Septuagint) if not for liturgical purpose?
Are we 100% certain that a chunk (large or small) of the Jews living in the eastern part of the Empire did not have Greek as maternal language? Paul wrote his epistles to the Jewish communities of Corinth and Thessalonika in Greek as we all know.
Apologies for the OT.


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## berndf

See the second paragraph of #21.


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