Save

Qumran Aramaic, Corpus Linguistics, and Aramaic Retroversion

In: Dead Sea Discoveries
Author:
Edward M. Cook Department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures, Catholic University of America cooke@cua.edu

Search for other papers by Edward M. Cook in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Close
Download Citation Get Permissions

Access options

Get access to the full article by using one of the access options below.

Institutional Login

Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials

Login via Institution

Purchase

Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):

$40.00

The Aramaic of Qumran is sometimes claimed to be the best or only Aramaic dialect to use for understanding the Aramaic background of the New Testament. In fact, although it has its uses, the corpus of Qumran Aramaic is very small, and it is not a sufficient source on its own for the purposes of back-translating portions of the New Testament into “authentic” first-century c.e. Palestinian Aramaic. A consideration of the difficulties of retroversion when the translation technique of the Greek writer is unknown, combined with inadequate control of Aramaic among retroverters, suggests that largescale Aramaic retroversion of New Testament passages has no chance of reconstructing the original Aramaic of the Gospels.

Content Metrics

All Time Past 365 days Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 461 97 9
Full Text Views 237 3 0
PDF Views & Downloads 78 10 0