Biblical Aramaic - Biblical Aramaic and Imperial Aramaic

Biblical Aramaic and Imperial Aramaic

Biblical Aramaic's affinity to other types of Aramaic has been hotly debated largely due to its implications on dating the Book of Daniel. Scholars fall into three camps. In 1929, Rowley argued that Biblical Aramaic must come from later than the 6th century BCE and was more similar to the Targums than the imperial Aramaic documents available at his time. Conversely, others have argued that Biblical Aramaic most closely resembles the 5th Century Elephantine papyri and is therefore a good representative of typical Imperial Aramaic. KA Kitchen takes a middle position noting that Biblical Aramaic is most similar to Imperial Aramaic between 600–330BC but that in no way means it could not have been written as late as 170BC. Thus, Kitchen posits that the nature of Biblical Aramaic has no impact on dating.