Aramaic Language - History

History

The history of Aramaic is broken down into three broad periods:

• Old Aramaic (1100 BCE–200 CE), including:
  • The Biblical Aramaic of the Hebrew Bible.
  • The Aramaic of Jesus.
• Middle Aramaic (200–1200), including:
  • Literary Syriac.
  • The Aramaic of the Talmuds, Targumim, and Midrashim.
  • Mandaic.
• Modern Aramaic (1200–present), including:
  • Various modern vernaculars.

This classification is based on that used by Klaus Beyer*.