WILLEM SMELIK: The Languages of Roman Palestine

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chapter 7
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T H E LA N G UAG E S
OF RO MAN
PA LE ST I NE
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willem smelik
1. L I N G U I S T I C VA R I E T Y
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Sandwiched between two international languages, Aramaic in the East and Greek in
the West, Roman Palestine was a linguistic border area. Long exposed to multiple
languages as a result of annexation by successive empires, migration, and pilgrimage, its linguistic history was further enhanced by its status as a transit area for trade
through the Fertile Crescent, attracting merchants who spoke foreign languages to
an area already populated by various ethnic groups. A poem of Meleager (early first
century bce), who came from the Hellenistic city of Gadara in Transjordan, reflects
this regional state of affairs (Hengel 1969: 156): If you are Syrian, I say: Salam! If you
are Phoenician: Adonis! But if you are Greek, then: Chaire!
The intersection of administrative and cultural languages with local vernaculars
would remain characteristic for Palestine. While the Romans did not impose their
own language upon any of their subjects, they published their imperial decrees in
the new lingua franca of Greek in the eastern part of the empire, although they used
Latin for internal official communication. Hardly any province in the Roman
Empire was thus monolingual (Eck 2007: 16263), with Greek being pushed as an
official language. In Roman and early Byzantine times the inhabitants of Palestine
used Aramaic, Greek, and Hebrew, as well as Latin, Nabataean, Phoenician,
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proto-Arabic Thamudic, and Safaic as minority languages, and later also Armenian
and Georgian.
Dramatic confirmation of the linguistic variety in the region is offered by the
Babatha archive, a collection of thirty-six legal documents on papyrus belonging to
a Jewish woman called Babatha (Yadin et al. 2002; Hezser 2001: 30918). These were
found tied together in a leather purse in the so-called Cave of Letters in the
Judaean Desert, where Jewish survivors of the Bar Kokhba revolt sought refuge and
probably found their untimely death at the hand of the Roman oppressors.
Babatha was a wealthy Jewish business woman who lived among the Nabataeans
in Maoza, where she arranged family matters and property issues. Of these private
documents, seventeen are written in Greek, a further nine in Greek with Aramaic/
Nabataean subscriptions and signatures, seven in Nabataean, and three in Aramaic.
Aramaic would appear to have been the native tongue of the parties involved, with
Greek the chosen language for business and administration, and for those documents drawn up for the Roman legal court in Petra.
In the last century, scholarship on the languages of Roman Palestine revolved
around the vernacular status of Hebrew, the discoveries in the Judaean Desert, and
sociolinguistics, in particular the issue of diglossia. Archaeological excavations
supplied epigraphical data that would play an important part in the evaluation
of the three main languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. The new texts and
methods have raised several questions: was Hebrew replaced entirely by Aramaic
and Greek as everyday life languages in the first centuries ce? Modern assessments
of the language map of Roman Palestine vary considerably in their answer to this
question. Furthermore, did Greek replace Aramaic in certain areas of Jewish life?
There is also considerable confusion amongst scholars concerning the respective
status of Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew as high or low languages.
2. T H E S TAT U S
OF
V E R NAC U L A R H E B R EW
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Linguistic arguments have always featured in the debate about the languages used
in Roman Palestine. In the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century the
majority of scholars considered Mishnaic Hebrew Hebraized Aramaic (SaenzBadillos 1993: 16263). The linguistic peculiarities of Mishnaic Hebrew seemed to
be explained adequately by the assumption that this language was either a heavily
Aramaized version of Hebrew, or even a Hebraized version of Aramaic. Since
Mishnaic Hebrew was deemed an artificial language, Hebrew was thought to
have lost its vernacular status to Aramaic at the beginning of the Roman period
or even earlier.
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the oxford handbook of jewish daily life
The status of Aramaic as the administrative language and lingua franca during
the rule of the Assyrian and Achaemenid empires resulted in its widespread
adoption throughout the Middle East. Therefore it is not surprising that it also
gained a firm foothold in Palestine during that period. Scholars have found
evidence for the use of Aramaic in the Aramaic portions of the Hebrew Bible, in
certain Aramaic terms in the New Testament, and in the Aramaic parts of rabbinic
literature. In addition, some legal documents from the Judaean Desert, such as
marriage contracts and bills of divorce, were written in Aramaic, and Aramaic
appears in personal names and place names. Josephus claims to have originally
written The Jewish War in his native tongue, which some identify as Aramaic (Barr
1989: 113; Rajak 1984: 17484). The ritual use of Jewish Aramaic Bible translations in
the synagogue has further been cited as evidence for the vernacular use of the
language (Segal 1927: 16), but this argument is no longer as conclusive as it once
seemed to be (Smelik 1995: 2441).
Segal became the most noteworthy proponent of those scholars who argued that
Hebrew was still spoken in the first two centuries ce. He claimed that Mishnaic
Hebrew had developed naturally from Biblical Hebrew, with distinct colloquial
features (Segal 1927; Saenz-Badillos 1993: 16264). While he did not entirely deny an
Aramaic influence on Mishnaic Hebrew, he highlighted its morphological dissimilarities with Aramaic. By implication, there is no reason to consider Mishnaic
Hebrew an artificial language. Yet his analysis did not immediately sway the debate
in his favour. The consensus was only set to change upon the discoveries of
numerous Hebrew documents from the late Second Temple period in the Judaean
Desert. These documents falsified the assumption of a gradual but inevitable
decline of Hebrew in the post-exilic period. Moreover, the Hebrew Bar Kokhba
letters, the Copper Scroll, and 4QMMT show a clear affinity with Mishnaic
Hebrew, suggesting that its usage extended beyond rabbinic circles and preceded
the second century ce. Segals thesis that Mishnaic Hebrew reflects a colloquial
dialect of Hebrew has now been widely accepted (Young/Rezetko 2008: 231, 241),
but his downplaying of language interference (i.e. Aramaic influence) in rabbinic
Hebrew has triggered alternative views of rabbinic Hebrew as a mixed language or
langue melangee (Saenz-Badillos 1993: 164; Perez Fernandez 1997: 5).
The debate continued, based on the new data from Qumran which scholars
began to use. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, Hebrew seems to have been used mostly in a
(late) form of Biblical Hebrew, but the Copper Scroll and 4QMMT have been
written in a dialect close to Mishnaic Hebrew. That two dialects were in fact used
seems confirmed by the observation that colloquial features could be detected in
some of the literary scrolls (Rabin 1958: 149, 152; Goshen-Gottstein 1958: 135; Barr
1970: 2021). The presence of two types of Hebrew has also shed new light on the
relationship between biblical and rabbinic Hebrew. Segals claim that Mishnaic
Hebrew developed out of biblical Hebrew has been reexamined in light of the
inner-biblical linguistic variety. While the popular linguistic basis of Mishnaic
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Hebrew is no longer in doubt, this dialect probably did not descend from biblical
Hebrew directly, but rather represents a contemporary dialect which may have its
roots in the First Temple period (Rendsburg 1990; Young/Rezetko 2008; Perez
Fernandez 1997: 115). Consequently, the colloquial character of Mishnaic Hebrew
may reflect an earlier vernacular stage of the language. Indeed, most scholars now
tend to view Mishnaic Hebrew as the vernacular of the Second Temple period,
when biblical Hebrew is deemed to have become restricted to literary usage. Only
in the second half of the second century ce, in the aftermath of the two Jewish
revolts against Rome, did Mishnaic Hebrew virtually disappear as a vernacular. In
the following centuries, Hebrew seems to have been used as a liturgical and
academic language only.
The details of the distinct Hebrew dialects remain elusive, though. There is still a
debate about the geographical range of Mishnaic Hebrew, which some scholars
relate to a northern dialect (see Young/Rezetko 2008: 242). While most scholars
maintain that Mishnaic Hebrew was spoken in the first century ce, others challenge
this view, although rarely on philological grounds. The question remains whether
the colloquial features of Mishnaic Hebrew prove that it was actually spoken during
the first two centuries ce. Because all available evidence in the form of written
sources and literary language may reflect the spoken dialect of earlier periods,
inferences about the actual use of Mishnaic Hebrew in daily life during the second
century ce are not conclusive. Even if we accept that Hebrew remained a living
language amongst certain segments of society, we must address the questions as to
how many people still understood Hebrew in the first two centuries ce and, more
precisely, to what extent they did so.
According to rabbinic sources, certain provisions were made for those who did
not speak Hebrew. Since many people seem to have refrained from the ritual of the
first fruits because they did not master Hebrew, the rabbis introduced the practice
of prompting so that people could still say the declaration in Hebrew by repeating
what they heard the priest say (Sifrei Deut. 301). The rabbinic formulation suggests
that this was a long-standing practice until the destruction of the Temple. Another
ritual concerning the sotah, the wife accused of adultery, required the priest to
explain details to her in her own mother tongue (T. Sotah 2:1). A Torah scroll could
be written in Greek (M. Meg. 1:8), a ruling which is at odds with other stipulations,
most notably the requirement of using the Hebrew square script for the writing of
Torah scrolls (M. Yad. 4:5).
These rulings do not identify the vernacular, suggesting that Palestinian rabbis
were well aware of the co-existence of different native tongues in Roman Palestine.
The increasing rabbinic interest in the exclusivity of Hebrew as evidenced by their
emphasis on Hebrew as the holy tongue during the second half of the second
century may well indicate the loss of Hebrew as a vernacular (Smelik 2008). This
phenomenon would coincide with the still vernacular basis of Mishnaic Hebrew.
Had Hebrew not been spoken at all during the first two centuries ce, Mishnaic
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Hebrew would have betrayed its merely academic status. Hebrew seems to have
undergone some sort of literary revival in the centuries following the redaction of
the Mishnah (de Lange 1996), but as a vernacular its use would have been restricted
to academic discourse as a secondarily acquired language.
Throughout the period under consideration here, Hebrew retained its place as a
religious language, even increasingly so. Whereas works were written in Greek, or
at least translated into Greek (e.g. Ben Sira) to gain a wider readership and
audience at the end of the Second Temple period, new literary texts were composed
in either Hebrew or a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic in the second to fifth
centuries ce. New Bible translations were still produced in Greek well into the third
century ce and in the Diaspora even later, but they were now competing with
Aramaic translations that initially met rabbinic opposition in Palestine (Smelik
2001: 21221).
3. A R A M A I Z AT I O N
AND
H E L L E N I Z AT I O N
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Aramaic is widely held to have been the vernacular most commonly used by Jews
throughout the Roman period. That Aramaic was widespread in Hellenistic and
Roman Palestine seemed obvious to scholars even before the Qumran discoveries
because of the Aramaic texts, quotations, loanwords, and names referred to above.
In the Temple, Aramaic would have been used by the officials who oversaw the
sacrifices and other offerings brought by the people. The Mishnah, admitting that
certain administrative seals were written in Aramaic, quotes them in Hebrew
(M. Sheq. 5:3). A list of words which were allegedly written on shofar chests begins
in Aramaic but continues in Hebrew (cf. ibid. 6:5). The obvious translation of these
words into Hebrew suggests that other portions in the Mishnah may also not have
been formulated in Hebrew originally.
Aramaic is attested in several distinct dialects, some of which are closely related
to Jewish literary Aramaic: the dialects of Qumran Aramaic, Targum Onqelos, and
Jonathan, and perhaps, if still belonging to the Byzantine period which must be
deemed uncertain, the late Jewish literary Aramaic of some Targums to the
Writings of the Hebrew Bible. Other texts are written in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic,
such as the dialects of the Palestinian Targums and the Palestinian Talmud, the
amoraic Midrashim and epigraphic evidence from late Roman Palestine. NonJewish dialects are Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Samaritan Aramaic, and Nabataean Aramaic. The variety of Aramaic dialects in Palestine developed after the
gradual breakdown of a more or less uniform standard, Achaemenid Aramaic. The
literary variety of Jewish Aramaic can be considered its conservative descendant
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and can be dated to the time from the second century bce to the second century ce,
whereas the dialect of the Palestinian Talmud, Midrashim, and Palestinian Targums
(and non-Jewish Palestinian dialects such as Samaritan and Christian Palestinian
Aramaic) belong to the third to seventh century ce.
The emergence of several contemporaneous Aramaic dialects in this later period
suggests that spoken Aramaic in the first two centuries ce may have differed from
the actual literary variants. This possibility attracted the attention of many scholars
interested in the vernacular of Jesus and early Christianity and generated a heated
discussion (Kahle 1958; Kutscher 1960; cf. Smelik 1995: 1014). The dialect of the
Palestinian Targums might be considered the spoken Western Aramaic dialect
which rose to literary expression in the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt
(Kutscher 1958: 10, n. 44; Dez Macho 1972: 3173). Yet it is doubtful whether
literary compositions, written by trained traditional scribes, would ever reflect
spoken language intended for a liturgical context (Kaufman 1985: 122; Ribera Florit
1987: 116117). The variety of Palestinian Aramaic dialects mainly demonstrates
the currency of Aramaic from the third to seventh centuries ce. In this period the
Jewish population of Roman Palestine decreased and became a substantial minority.
The Roman Empire became Christian, which inevitably increased the presence of
Greek in the East. Nevertheless, Aramaic remained the common vernacular
amongst Palestinian Jews, with Greek being used as the language of prestige.
How the process of Aramaization unfolded remains unclear (cf. Schwartz 1995).
Since Jewish scribes adopted the Aramaic script upon the Jews return from the
Babylonian Exile (cf. Naveh 1971: 29, 122), scribal training will have played some
part in this linguistic shift, but even scribal habit and training cannot fully explain
the details and mechanisms of this development. There was no established Jewish
educational system open to all members of society which might have helped the
adoption of a new vernacular. Nor is there geographical or chronological precision
in the general observation that Aramaic had become the default mother tongue of
all Palestinian and Eastern Jews by the end of the Second Temple period.
It is safe to say, though, that Jewish inhabitants of the northern regions, that is,
the Galilee, Peraea, and the Golan Heights, would have been inclined to adopt
Aramaic at an early stage as a function of both their proximity to the Aramaicspeaking heartland and their late Judaization after Aristobulus conquest in 104103
bce (cf. Josephus, Ant. 13.11.3, 31819; Bell. 1.3.3, 76; Goodman 1999: 599). But the
claim that Aramaic replaced all local vernaculars remains speculative. Aramaic
may have become the default regional language, but this observation does not
necessarily carry implications for the question of local vernaculars.
Nabataean provides an instructive example. While the Nabataeans did not leave
a literary corpus behind, their inscriptions inform us about the use of Nabataean
Aramaic for formal purposes. Yet the Nabataeans presumably spoke a form of
Arabic, which rarely appeared in written form before the emergence of Islam
(Healey 1989: 43; Hoyland 2004: 18386). A handful of inscriptions containing
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Arabic and Arabic loanwords in Nabataean Aramaic are a clue to the true vernacular. As Hoyland remarks, this realm was a polyglot entity with different peoples in
different regions speaking different languages and dialects, but with Aramaic used
by all as the official language irrespective of whether they were Aramaic speakers or
not (Hoyland 2004: 186).
The argument from silence that a local vernacular such as Hebrew had died out
is a priori unlikely on the basis of non-Arabic vernaculars still maintained in the
Middle East today. On the basis of our current knowledge of modern Aramaic
dialects, largely retained in oral traditions with little literary record until the
modern Diaspora situation of their native speakers, it is hazardous to assume
that all local vernaculars had been abandoned in the Aechemenid and Ptolemaic/
Seleucid periods. In ages less mobile than ours, traditional communities which
maintained their vernacular but communicated with the wider world in a nonlocal language, i.e. Aramaic, will have been more widespread than a rigid model of
Aramaization allows for.
Even before Aramaic was widely used in Jewish writing, Greek made great
headway into the Middle East following Alexander the Greats conquests and the
establishment of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid Empires. In the process of Hellenization, Greek replaced Aramaic as the administrative language of choice, and this
phenomenon continued during the Roman period. Yet Greek never achieved the
same degree of dissemination as Aramaic in the Persian, and Arabic in the Islamic
period. The evidence of the Jewish use of Greek is nevertheless impressive in terms
of literary production and epigraphy (Hengel 1969: 108120, 191195). The use of
Greek was not simply confined to the coastal areas of Palestine with its Hellenistic
cities, but extended to Lower Galilee, the Jezreel Valley, and Jerusalem as well. Even
three of the Bar Kokhba letters are written in Greek, despite their authors presumed preference for Hebrew or Aramaic. The significance of these letters is
highlighted by P. Yadin 52, where the scribe Soumaios (note the Greek name)
apologizes for his language choice by indicating that he was unable to communicate in either Aramaic or Hebrew. This seems to imply that Greek had not just
become a lingua franca but the scribes native tongue, in which he could write most
easily (van der Horst 2001: 16061).
This leads to the question whether Greek made such headway in Roman Palestine as to replace Aramaic as the common language in certain geographical or
social spheres. The preponderance of Greek inscriptions is a case in point. Only in
Judaea, the Golan, and small Galilean villages do Hebrew and Aramaic inscriptions
equal the number of Greek ones (Lifshitz 1977: 457459; Barr 1989: 102; van der
Horst 1991: 23). Even if the incomplete publication of inscriptions is taken into
account, many scholars infer from the available data that Greek was used by native
Palestinian Jews (Gundry 1964: 406; van der Horst 1991: 28), and not merely by
Diaspora Jews who migrated to Palestine (Sevenster 1968: 14748; Lifshitz 1977: 458;
Mussies 1976: 1057). Lively interest in the Old Greek Bible in the first centuries ce,
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as evidenced by the revisions of the Septuagint, confirms the importance of Greek

in this period (Brock 1972: 2627; Tov 1992: 14348; Barthelemy 1963). The famous
dictum of Bar Qappara, Let the words of the Torah be spoken in the language of
Japheth [i.e., Greek] in the tents of Shem (Gen. R. 36:8) suggests that Greek was
spoken in at least some Palestinian synagogues (cf. the discussion of Greek synagogue inscriptions below). The rabbinic discussions about the recitation of the
Shema and the Scroll of Esther in Greek (y. Sot. 7:1, 21b; b. Meg. 18a) imply that
some Jews understood Greek better than Hebrew.
For the majority of Palestinian Jews Greek was probably not the native language
but an acquired vernacular, yet it is difficult to determine the extent of the
knowledge and use of Greek among the Jewish population, apart from those who
were directly involved with the Roman administration and therefore required to
speak Greek. Apart from Greek Bible translations including extra-canonical works
such as 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch, the works of Josephus and the no longer extant works
of Justus of Tiberias, few extant literary compositions in Greek can be attributed to
Palestinian Jews with any degree of certainty.
Provenance is only one of our problems. The Jewish identity of some of the
Greek texts is uncertain and they can be either pagan or Jewish. Furthermore, some
of these works have been adopted by Christians in the first centuries ce, and their
Jewish origins are doubtful. Among the former we can count the work of the
historian Thallus (Samaritan, pagan, or Jewish? Schurer 1986, vol. 3: 54345), as well
as magical texts written in Greek: some of them are undoubtedly Jewish, whereas
others are pagan borrowings of Jewish magical idiom (Bohak 2008: 194214).
The distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish magic texts is not straightforward. As Alexander observed, it is not yet possible to draw a hard and fast line
between Jewish and pagan magic in late antiquity; in fact, given the fundamental
syncretism of magic, it may be misguided in principle to do so (in: Schurer 1986,
vol. 3: 346). More recently, Bohaks discussion of ancient Jewish magic has provided
a firmer basis. Although borrowings are widely attested in both directions, Bohak
argues that Jewish magicians were very selective with regard to the pagan elements
they chose to embed in their own tradition. Jewish magic remained distinctively
Jewish, and far less syncretistic than has often been taken for granted (Bohak 2008:
350). Unfortunately, the Greek elements in Jewish magic tell us more about their
perceived magical usefulness than about the use of Greek among the practitioners.
The bilingual amulet published by Kotansky (1991 and 1994) was written by a scribe
who had secondarily acquired knowledge of Greek, while Greek phrases in Hebrew
transliteration in texts such as the Sword of Moses and Sefer HaRazim testify to
familiarity with the Greek language and its magical traditions in the Byzantine
period in Roman Palestine (Bohak 2008: 23147).
Scholars have pointed to the presence of Greek manuscripts at Qumran as an
indication of the wide dissemination of Greek by the start of the first century ce
(Vanderkam 2001). Yet the language selection of the non-biblical scrolls suggests a
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remarkable preference for Hebrew over against Aramaic and Greek, with 438
Hebrew scrolls, 104 in Aramaic, and a mere eighteen in Greek, with two written
in Nabataean (Puech 1996: 176).
How are we to explain the predominance of Hebrew here? Since the majority of
these Hebrew documents are written in a literary dialect that can be derived from
late biblical Hebrew, the written evidence does not necessarily mean that Hebrew
served as a vernacular. Amongst the biblical scrolls there are also Greek translations
and (just) one Aramaic translation, which suggests a primary Greek (or Hebrew)
language competence for the audience targeted by the translations.
In a recent essay, Steve Weitzman argues that the indisputable preference for
Hebrew is motivated by the sectarians desire to transcend the wayward ways of the
multilingual society around them (Weitzman 1999: 45). If the documents found at
Qumran represent a sectarian library, their language selection may indeed reflect a
sectarian outlook on life rather than that of Jewish society at large. But even on that
premise, this interpretation depends on circular reasoning: Weitzmans thesis is
based on evidence culled from non-sectarian sources that together create a tenuous
amalgam of references to the esoteric and sacred connotations of Hebrew among
the Essenes (cf. Smelik 2008). The documents which formed the library may well
have been brought to Qumran from elsewhere. The nature of the library depends
on the identity of those who acquired and deposited the manuscripts there. Despite
nationalistic and supernatural overtones in some of the texts, the use of Hebrew
can be explained in terms of prestige, literary tradition, and a strong connection to
the centre of curatorial power: the Temple.
A priori, translations imply that the target language is also the receptors
language. Accordingly, the extent of vernacular Greek amongst ancient Jews becomes prominent in the translations of works into Greek on the assumption that
they were not exclusively produced for a Diaspora Jewish audience. That assumption, however, is the catch: how many Palestinian Jews would have understood a
Greek Bible translation? The very raison detre of Greek translations like those by
Aquila and Symmachus, which were produced in Palestine during the second
century ce, either under the auspices of rabbinic authorities (Aquila, following
rabbinic traditions) or in close proximity to their circles (Symmachus, cf. Salvesen
1991) suggests that Greek would have been widely understood. Traditionally, the
Septuagint had been treated with the same respect accorded to the Hebrew
Scriptures, claiming Divine inspiration for its very wording, and the high standing
of Greek translations among the rabbis (M. Meg. 1.8) signals its traditional
importance.
A similarly high status was not extended to the Palestinian Jewish Aramaic Bible
translations, at least not by rabbis (Smelik: 2001: 21221). Rabbis did promote oral
Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Bible in synagogues, though. Whatever the
origins of the written Targums (academy, liturgy, or private study), their liturgical
use is attested by both internal and external evidence. The unique character of these
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translations has often been understood as a pointer to their Sitz im Leben in

bilingual communities. In a study of the Septuagint, Rabin perceived the origins
of the Targums in monolingual hermeneutics (Rabin 1968: 17; cf. Samely 1992: 158
n. 3): A translation of the type of the Targum to the Prophets makes little sense
unless the listener also understood the source text without its help, as otherwise all
the ingenious allusions would be so much wasted effort. Perceptive as his comment
may be, the argument assumes that all the interpretive intricacies were meant to be
understood orally by the illiterate, which is highly questionable. The ingenious
allusions Rabin identified were not the purpose of the translation, but the result of
the mechanisms of the translation enterprise. We do not know exactly when
Aramaic Bible translations became really widespread in Roman Palestine. There
is reason to assume that, initially, they did not enjoy the backing of the rabbinic
movement which later appropriated them.
4. S O C I O L I N G U I S T I C S
................................................................................................................
In 1959 Charles Ferguson advanced the linguistic model of diglossia, characterizing
a very specific multilingual situation in which two dialects of the same language
fulfil distinctive functions within a single society, one termed the high member (H)
and the other the low member (L) of the pair (Ferguson 1959, 1964, 1991). The
alternation of the languages is governed by their highly specialized functions: H is
the prestigious language with a strong literary heritage, thus destined for public
and official language situations, while L is the language people acquired first, hence
privileged for informal interaction.
Ferguson did not include bilingual patterns in his observations, although he
considered the use of distinct languages as analogous to the use of distinct dialects
(Ferguson 1959: 325 n.2). Scholars have subsequently suggested modifications to his
model. Most notably, Fishman proposed that diglossia could involve bilingualism,
and that bilingualism could involve diglossia (Fishman 1967). The debate has led to
confusion in the definition of diglossia (Watt 2000; Porter 2000).
Even without the problem of definitions, Fergusons model is ill-suited to describe
the situation of language distribution in Roman Palestine, although a number of
scholars have tried to apply it to this area. According to Rabin, Middle Hebrew (L) was
the rule in Judaea, with Aramaic as the second (H) language, while in Galilee the
reverse was true: Hebrew was H and Aramaic or Greek were L (Rabin 1976: 1036).
Lapide argued that Aramaic was L and Hebrew H all over Jewish Palestine (Lapide
1975: 483501). Cook suggested a diglossia of biblical (H) and mishnaic (L) Hebrew,
with Aramaic overlapping with both of these dialects (Cook 1992: 2021).
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All of these models accord too little significance to Greek, however. Spolsky has
pointed to the importance of Greek in a model of triglossia, and also advocated a
differential approach with a different language map according to region and social
class (Spolsky 1985: 41). He has suggested that the inhabitants of Judaean villages
were monolingual Hebrew speakers, whereas elsewhere Jews were trilingual.
Attractive as his model is, he does not offer any justification for the assumed
regional use and importance of the languages, nor does he differentiate diachronically, so that his model actually leads to more questions, rather than illuminating
the language map of Roman Palestine. Nor are the languages functionally differentiated in his theory. Among the other proposals, Watts attempt to rescue
diglossia should be mentioned here. His refined version of the model allows for
varieties of H and L languages, that is, Hebrew and Aramaic (H1, H2, L1 L2), with
a tertiary role for Greek (Watt 2000). He excludes Greek from diglossia on the
grounds that its inclusion would result in bilingualism, rather than indicate a
functionally differentiated use of language.
The pairing of language points to an intrinsic problem in the application of the
diglossia model to Roman Palestine. The functional differentiation of languages
and dialects cannot be explained on the basis of this limited model. It can also not
account for the significance of Greek within the Palestinian language system. To
create a (regional and chronological) model that can accommodate colloquial and
literary Hebrew, colloquial and literary Aramaic, and various Greek dialects is very
difficult. Before attempting to map the various dialects and languages, it is necessary to determine the socio-linguistic functions of the languages and dialects
involved. The question is not merely: what languages were spoken? Equally important is the question: who spoke what in which context (Fishman 1965)?
Recent studies in bilingualism suggest that language proficiency varied according to various criteria, as Barr has somewhat skeptically pointed out (Barr 1970:
26): ones language competence would have depended on ones social class, occupation, locality, gender, position within the family, socialization and personal
history, education, and mobility. In other words, it differed with regard to each
individual, and wide generalizations cannot be made.
Nevertheless, attempts to identify those factors which would have stimulated
language acquisition may inform our assessment of individual and communal
bilingualism and multilingualism. First, the socio-political status of a language
would have affected the individual desire to learn that language (Hezser 2001:
23738). In the Roman Near East, people would have benefited most from speaking
Greek, the language of the political and economical elite of the Hellenistic cities,
and the language in which the Roman state and the Byzantine church conducted
their affairs. Neither the Roman public officials nor the Byzantine church leaders
would necessarily have been inclined to learn Aramaic, as visibly demonstrated by
the examples of Procopius and Egeria cited above. Conversely, some native Aramaic speakers might feel inclined to acquire at least a rudimentary knowledge of
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Greek, whether or not they fostered any objections to the language and the culture
it represented (Hezser 2001: 240). Nevertheless, their command of Greek would
have depended on several factors and varied by degrees from one person to the
next, from a minimal knowledge of the spoken language, to some rudimentary
conversational skills and literary ability amongst a few (Wasserstein 1995: 123).
Individuals would also have been aware of the cultural and religious aspects of the
language, depending on their local context and level of acculturation. Greek-speaking
Jews who immigrated to the Land of Israel from the Diasporaa small minority
may have wished to acquire the language of their native fellow-Jews. The evidence
suggests, however, that since language was not part of Jewish identity (Stern 1994:79),
the desire and opportunity to learn (Hebrew and) Aramaic will have depended on
individual circumstances. Since rabbis emphasized the importance of Hebrew for
religious purposes, some Diaspora Jewish immigrants may have acquired some
rudimentary knowledge of Hebrew, but their proficiency may have been limited to
the ability to recite certain short liturgical texts, such as the Shema (or not even that, as
rabbinic discussions of the recitation of the Shema in Greek suggest for Caesarea).
5. D I F F E R E N T I AT I O N S
................................................................................................................
Language choice varies according to social context and geographical environment
(Hezser 2001: 24347). Rural settings are usually less varied in linguistic terms than
cities are. The form of an expression (e.g. an inscription), its purpose (e.g. an
epitaph, dedication, or announcement), and its location determine the language
selection to a considerable extent. Individuals social sphere and cultural affiliation
also influence their attitude towards language use. It is conceivable that rabbis
discussed legal and exegetical matters in Aramaic but used Hebrew for (written
and/or oral) transmission of traditions (Hezser 2001: 246).
Throughout Roman period Palestine, Hebrew seems to have served as the
principal language for the written transmission of religiously relevant information.
Beginning with the literary manuscripts found in the Judaean desert, where Hebrew
overshadows Greek and Aramaic (Barr 1989: 113), tannaitic literature (Mishnah,
Tosefta, tannaitic Midrashim) displays a marked preference for composition in
Hebrew, with a partial shift to Aramaic in late antiquity (Talmud Yerushalmi,
amoraic Midrashim). Admittedly, the evidence is not as straightforward as it may
seem, because we have to allow for selective transmission and editing. Works written
in Greek may have been ignored by rabbis of the first centuries ce and/or the editors
of the documents. Greek works that came down to us have often been preserved by
Christians rather than Jews.
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Aramaic may have been chosen as the language of literary composition for
specific reasons. The language evidence of the Dead Sea Scrolls suggests that
Hebrew was used for legal and liturgical purposes (Levine 1988: 15). Exegetical
writings, on the other hand, could be written in Aramaic (Genesis Apocryphon,
Qumran Targum of Job). Aramaic was particularly used for narrative portions and
for the discourse framing legal discussions in rabbinic literature, as well as for Bible
translations. In Midrash Lamentations, the midrashic structure is in Hebrew, while
many of its folkloristic elements are written in Aramaic.
Amongst the legal documents from Murabbaat, those written in Aramaic
outnumber those written in Hebrew (Milik 1961: 70). Marriage contracts and
bills of divorce seem to have been written in Aramaic as known from the Babatha
documents and rabbinic literature, although rabbis permitted other languages as
well: even a Greek bill with witnesses signatures in Hebrew is deemed acceptable
(M. Gittin: 9.8). Aramaic was a language that was widely understood and therefore
convenient. The use of languages in legal documents such as bills and legal records
shows an interesting pattern. Just as Demotic disappears from the record in Egypt
in the second half of the second century ce, presumably because the Roman
administration did not conduct official proceedings and correspondences in Demotic, so Aramaic disappears from the legal documents during the same period
(Lewis 1993, 2001).
It is common knowledge that some sages approved of multilingualism in daily
life and, to a great extent, in religious matters (cf. y. Sotah 7:2, 21c; y. Meg. 1:11, 71b)
and in particular referred to Greek in a positive sense (Veltri 1994). Some rabbis
permitted the recitation of the Shema, the Amidah, and Grace after Meals in any
language (M. Sotah 7:1). Many sages seem to have had some knowledge of Greek
(Lieberman 1965: 1526; Sevenster 1968: 3861), which is also evidenced by their
lively interest in Greek versions of the Bible as noted above, despite the fact that
they do not seem to have composed works in Greek. At the same time Palestinian
rabbis emphasized the significance of Hebrew, though (Sifre Deut. 333; y. Shab. 1:3,
3c; y. Sheq. 3:3, 47c; Midrash Tannaim Deut. 32:43). In contrast to Greek, whose
liturgical use some rabbis seem to have permitted, some rabbis discouraged the
liturgical and religious use of Aramaic in the early amoraic period (Smelik 2001;
b. B.Q. 83a; b. Sotah 49b; ibid. 33a).
The overwhelming use of Greek in Jewish epigraphy of late antiquity, which will
be discussed in more detail below, renders the occurrence of Hebrew and Aramaic
all the more interesting. Ossuary inscriptions from Jerusalem and its vicinity offer a
case in point. The ossuary inscriptions mainly register the name and family of the
deceased, with only a few providing additional data such as age, place of origin,
profession or title. The vast majority of ossuaries are not inscribed at all (Rahmani
1994: 11, 13). The inscriptions are informal, clumsily written graffiti with spacing
and spelling mistakes, which suggests that they were private recordings rather than
public announcements. In Rahmanis collection, two-thirds of the inscriptions are
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written in the Aramaic square script (also termed Jewish script, following Naveh
1982: 112), and about a third in Greek script, with about six per cent in both Greek
and Aramaic script (Rahmani 1994:1213). Some of the inscriptions are written in
the Greek language but transliterated in Aramaic script. Of the Semitic inscriptions, the majority are in Aramaic. The language distribution is more clearly
divided when tomb groups are taken into account: some tombs yield only, or
predominantly, Jewish script, while others have inscriptions in Greek only.
6. E P I G R A P H Y
................................................................................................................
Late antique epigraphy is among the most important and frequently cited source of
evidence for language use in Roman Palestine. The results are uneven. It is most
unfortunate that a comprehensive survey of the available evidence does not exist
yet. The available evidence is scattered over many publications, if published at all,
and therefore difficult to access by researchers. An eagerly awaited project to
publish a comprehensive corpus of Jewish epigraphy in the Hellenistic and
Roman period is in preparation (Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae,
CIIP). The historical and linguistic evaluation of epigraphy is also rendered
difficult by the fact that most inscriptions do not bear a date and cannot be
dated securely. For methodological reasons one cannot make direct inferences
from epigraphy about the use of languages amongst Jews in Roman Palestine.
Of all Jewish inscriptions from Roman Palestine published to date an estimated
6070 per cent are written in Greek (Eck 2007: 170; van der Horst 2001). A certain
percentage of these are bilingual, written in both Greek and Aramaic/Hebrew (with
the latter frequently consisting of the word Shalom only). Of the synagogue inscriptions only approximately one third are written in Greek. This evidence raises a number
of questions: Does the language distribution of the inscriptions reflect the use of
languages amongst Palestinian Jewswith Greek being more significant than most
scholars would assume? Are they representative of a cross-section of Jewish society, or
merely the middle and upper classes who could afford the cost of epitaphs and tombs?
The epigraphic evidence has often been considered a representation of common
language use. Before the discovery of the Qumran scrolls, the relative scarcity of
Aramaic texts during the Seleucid period has led scholars to assume that the use of
Aramaic was eclipsed by Greek (cf. Fitzmyer 1970). For the Roman period direct
conclusions were drawn from the predominance of Greek in inscriptions to the
spread of spoken Greek (Lifshitz 1965: 52038). Even the use of Hebrew in synagogue inscriptions was believed to reflect the continued use of Hebrew well beyond
the first centuries ce (Fraade 1992: 27782).
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Such readings of the evidence are problematic. There is no question that Greek
enjoyed prestige amongst all strata of Jewish society, but the argument from
epigraphy requires serious modification. By default, epigraphic language selection
does not reflect the vernacular of those who commissioned or executed the
inscription (Harris 1983; cf. Reynolds 2001; Cooley 2002; Millar 1983). The Arabic
vernacular of the Nabataeans, whose inscriptions are in Aramaic, is a case in point.
Amongst Christians, Aramaic speakers were numerous during the Byzantine period, despite the fact that Christian inscriptions are usually written in Greek,
especially in the urban areas, with some Aramaic inscriptions in the countryside
(Hoyland 2004: 18788). Yet even in a Hellenistic town such as Scythopolis at the
end of the third century ce, Procopius read the Scriptures in Greek and translated
them into Aramaic according to the Syriac version of Eusebius De Martyribus
Palaestinae (Mussies 1976: 1059). About a century later, the Gallic pilgrim Egeria
(Sivan 1988: 534) reports that the local bishop of Jerusalem may know Aramaic, but
he never uses it. He always speaks in Greek and has a presbyter beside him who
translates his words into Aramaic so that everyone can understand what he means
(Wilkinson 1981: 146), a practice reminiscent of the Jewish bilingual reading of the
Tora in Hebrew and Aramaic from the second century ce onwards.
The disparity between the languages used in inscriptions and the common
vernacular of the populace also occurs elsewhere in the Roman Empire, for
example concerning Greek and Latin at Delos (Adams 2002: 193; 2004: 64286).
The emergence of Hebrew epitaphs in southern Italy from the seventh c. ce
onwards does not point to a revival of a Hebrew vernacular, but to the status of
Hebrew as an ethnic identity marker, the holy tongue, and the learned language
spoken by a small scholarly elite (Leiwo 2002). Whilst the use of Hebrew pre
dominated in southern Italy by the ninth century ce in both epigraphy and
literature, the vernacular remained Latin or Greek.
Accordingly, the predominance of Greek in the epigraphy of Roman Palestine
may merely express the status of Greek as the most prestigious language, which
became the language of Church and State in Byzantine times (Millar 2006: 97).
Even the Christian population may have had a significant portion of native
Aramaic speakers. Significantly, the proportion of Greek inscriptions rises wherever Roman power is established (Eck 2007: 172). Inscriptions should not be mistaken
as an indicator of the vernacular. Epigraphic language selection is rather governed
by political factors, social status, and cultural identity. The language with the
highest prestige would have been the natural choice for public expression, whereas
the selection of other languages must be considered more exceptional and therefore
more remarkable (Hoyland 2004: 192 n. 34).
On the basis of faulty Greek in many of the less expensive inscriptions, which might
suggest that knowledge of Greek extended to the lower, less educated classes, some
scholars have argued for a parity between the vernacular and epigraphic language
(Lifshitz 1965: 52038; Lieberman 1965: 30; van der Horst 2001: 15962; Cotton/Yardeni
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1997: 13637, 206208). However, grammatical deficiency does not necessarily point to
the lower classes or less educated individuals, since such flaws can be explained as the
result of code-switching in bilingual societies (Adams 2004: 3058). These flaws reflect
imperfect language acquisition. Whether they indicate a socio-linguistically low form
of language use (see Porter 2000: 60) cannot be determined on the basis of individual
documents or texts, but must be established structurally.
Language variation may also reflect socio-cultural distinctions. The Greek synagogue inscriptions seem to fall into one of the following categories: those in
Aramaic, Hebrew, or Greek with many Semitic features that often utilize similar
literary formulae (Fine 1996: 114); and those composed in Koine Greek without
Semitic features (ibid.). The first group occurs mainly in those regions where the
majority of the inhabitants seem to have been Jewish. The phenomenon may
suggest that, at least in this instance, there was a link between epigraphic language
choice and the cultural affiliations of those who commissioned the inscriptions.
It remains unclear, though, whether and to what extent the epigraphic languages
reflect the liturgical use of languages in the local synagogues.
More research into the languages and provenance of the Palestinian Jewish
inscriptions is needed. A diachronic and regional differentiation will become more
evident when all data is finally available. Regional variation has been suggested in a
number of studies. Most of the ossuary inscriptions from the first and early second
century found in the Jerusalem area are in Hebrew or Aramaic (Rahmani 1994; Eck
2007: 172). In the later centuries, Greek prevailed in the urban areas, while Aramaic
continued to be used in inscriptions found in the countryside (Hezser 2001: 356;
Hoyland 2004). It is to be expected that the publication of the CIIP will stimulate
further research in this field.
It would be helpful to know whether the respective public or private nature of the
inscriptions had any bearing on language selection. Even in private, the use of
the most prestigious language would not be surprising, but variation in this regard
may reveal the vernacular or cultural distinctions. If the provincial adoption of the
epigraphic habit can be interpreted as a sign of Romanization (MacMullen 1982: 238;
Millar 1983: 80, 84), the increased use of Semitic languages in synagogue inscriptions
of late Roman and Byzantine times may reflect a conscious expression of Jewish
identity vis-a`-vis the all too visible presence of Christianity (cf. Schwartz 2001).
SUGGESTED READING
................................................................................................................
A useful overview of the languages used in Roman Palestine is provided by Rabin
1976. A more recent survey which focuses on, but is not confined to, Latin is Eck
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2007. For an overview of Jewish literacy and an introduction to socio-linguistics see

Hezser 2001. On the status of Mishnaic Hebrew see Young/Rezetko 2008. A helpful
survey of Aramaic in the region is presented by Hoyland 2004.
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Date:17/5/10

WILLEM SMELIK: The Languages of Roman Palestine

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OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF REVISES, 17/5/2010, SPi

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OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF REVISES, 17/5/2010, SPi

life in a roman province

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OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF REVISES, 17/5/2010, SPi

the oxford handbook of jewish daily life

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OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF REVISES, 17/5/2010, SPi

life in a roman province

Comp. by: Pg2689

OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF REVISES, 17/5/2010, SPi

the oxford handbook of jewish daily life

Comp. by: Pg2689

OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF REVISES, 17/5/2010, SPi

life in a roman province

Comp. by: Pg2689

OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF REVISES, 17/5/2010, SPi

the oxford handbook of jewish daily life

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OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF REVISES, 17/5/2010, SPi

life in a roman province

as evidenced by the revisions of the Septuagint, confirms the importance of Greek

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OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF REVISES, 17/5/2010, SPi

the oxford handbook of jewish daily life

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OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF REVISES, 17/5/2010, SPi

life in a roman province

translations has often been understood as a pointer to their Sitz im Leben in

Comp. by: Pg2689

OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF REVISES, 17/5/2010, SPi

the oxford handbook of jewish daily life

Comp. by: Pg2689

OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF REVISES, 17/5/2010, SPi

life in a roman province

Comp. by: Pg2689

OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF REVISES, 17/5/2010, SPi

the oxford handbook of jewish daily life

Comp. by: Pg2689

OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF REVISES, 17/5/2010, SPi

life in a roman province

Comp. by: Pg2689

OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF REVISES, 17/5/2010, SPi

the oxford handbook of jewish daily life

Comp. by: Pg2689

OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF REVISES, 17/5/2010, SPi

life in a roman province

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OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF REVISES, 17/5/2010, SPi

the oxford handbook of jewish daily life

2007. For an overview of Jewish literacy and an introduction to socio-linguistics see

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OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF REVISES, 17/5/2010, SPi

life in a roman province

Comp. by: Pg2689

OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF REVISES, 17/5/2010, SPi

the oxford handbook of jewish daily life