Abstract
After the study of Biblical Hebrew, the next logical step for many is to move to Biblical Aramaic. There are a number of grammars that will introduce the student to this language, but the corpus of Biblical Aramaic is very small. This book instead introduces 'three for the price of one'. Successful completion of the volume will have introduced the student to Biblical, Imperial and Qumran Aramaic, variants that share many elements. Cook notes that the book does not contain any reference to Jewish Literary Aramaic, since there are too many variants from earlier Aramaic forms. We might well agree that three dialects are enough for one book.
The book is divided into two parts. It begins with a ‘Descriptive Grammar’ and concludes with nine annotated readings in Aramaic. Dr Cook’s approach is not only descriptive but also comprehensive. It begins with an introduction to the language and its development, focusing on Aramaic of the second half of the first millennium BC. Whilst the relationship between Aramaic and Late Biblical Hebrew is considered, this volume considers Aramaic as a language in its own right. There are relatively few direct comparisons between Hebrew and Aramaic, except when considering aspect and modality in verbs (e.g. to ensure that students do not seek a waw-consecutive form) and in presenting the base verbal forms that come from Hebrew but have full Aramaic forms.
The bulk of the book presents the language according to different grammatical categories, beginning with orthography and phonology and proceeding carefully through nouns and adjectives, pronouns, verbs etc. Biblical Aramaic is written with Tiberian vocalisation, whilst Imperial and Qumran Aramaic are unvocalised but transliterated. Since these latter dialects of Aramaic have some different forms, this transliteration is necessary. Whilst it is always useful to become accustomed to unvocalised texts, it might also have been useful to introduce the student to the Babylonian system of vocalisation in the Imperial and Qumran Aramaic texts, which would have enabled the author to dispense with transliteration; it would, of course, have added to the challenge of typesetting. It is worth noting that the Aramaic in the tables is very small. The student should be sufficiently familiar with Hebrew that this is not so problematic for the consonants, but the vowels differ and it would be helpful to reproduce the Aramaic in a larger font to facilitate the reading of the vowels, some of which disappear into the bottom of a consonant. The typesetting of the book is excellent, although in chapter 6, nearly all the vowels are printed slightly too far to the left. The qibbutz is printed at a slightly different angle than is usual throughout (a stylistic decision), and this is particularly noticeable in the name Zerubbabel, owing to its position in relation to the ר.
Most modern grammar books contain a number of exercises to enable the student to become more familiar with the language. Only chapter 10, on verbs, contains any exercises at all. Rather than translating short (or longer) specially composed/adapted sentences into or from Aramaic, the focus in this book is to be able to read the original texts, starting with those found in the second part. It is in this chapter on verbs that we find a useful table giving the modern terms for verb forms in relation to the more traditional terms, which will be helpful for the student who also wishes to consult other volumes which speak of the aphel rather than the C-stem, for example.
The final chapter (18) is the Reading Guide, containing nine texts, of which four are from Daniel, one from Ezra and two in Imperial Aramaic (the petition to rebuild the Temple at Elephantine and 17 Proverbs of Ahiqar). The Imperial Aramaic texts are transliterated. The final two come from Qumran (extracts from the Genesis Apocryphon and the Targum of Job). The Genesis Apocryphon is unvocalised and reproduced verse by verse, as are all the preceding texts, but the vocalised version can be found in an appendix. The Targum of Job is reproduced unvocalised and untransliterated in longer text blocks. The texts all have questions with a few more formal exercises, and refer the student back to the grammar, where their understanding can be consolidated. Thus, the reading of these texts would be the focus of much direct teaching. It would, however, have been helpful to reproduce the non-biblical texts in full, in order that the student can read them more easily without the questions obstructing the flow.
The Appendices contain paradigms, vocalised glossaries for Biblical Aramaic and the non-biblical readings in chapter 18, bibliography, index of citations by dialect and subject index.
This Aramaic grammar is very thorough and comprehensive, and for many, it will be more useful as a reference grammar than a teaching volume. It is not for the fainthearted, and unless being used as part of a formal course, it would be more suitable for someone who is already familiar with Aramaic. Anyone who engages with Aramaic in any of the three dialects used would benefit from reference to this book.