Lectures on the Science of Language

by F. Max Müller

Before, however, we enter on this, the principal subject of our present Lecture, we have still to examine, as briefly as possible, a second family of speech, which, like the Aryan, is established on the strictest principles of genealogical classification, namely, the Semitic.

The Semitic family is divided into three branches, the Aramaic, the Hebraic, and the Arabic.[280]

The Aramaic occupies the north, including Syria, Mesopotamia, and part of the ancient kingdoms of Babylonia and Assyria. It is known to us chiefly in two dialects, the Syriac and Chaldee. The former name is given to the language which has been preserved to us in a translation of the Bible (the Peshito[281]) ascribed to the second century, and in the rich Christian literature dating from the fourth. It is still spoken, though in a very corrupt form, by the Nestorians of Kurdistan, near the lakes of Van and Urmia, and by some Christian tribes in Mesopotamia; and an attempt has been made by the American missionaries,[282] stationed at Urmia, to restore this dialect to some grammatical correctness by publishing translations and a grammar of what they call the Neo-Syriac language.

The name of Chaldee has been given to the language adopted by the Jews during the Babylonian captivity. Though the Jews always retained a knowledge of their sacred language, they soon began to adopt the dialect of their conquerors, not for conversation only, but also for literary composition.[283] The book of Ezra contains fragments in Chaldee, contemporaneous with the cuneiform inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes, and several of the apocryphal books, though preserved to us in Greek only, were most likely composed originally in Chaldee, [pg 277] and not in Hebrew. The so-called Targums[284] again, or translations and paraphrases of the Old Testament, written during the centuries immediately preceding and following the Christian era,[285] give us another specimen of the Aramaic, or the language of Babylonia, as transplanted to Palestine. This Aramaic was the dialect spoken by Christ and his disciples. The few authentic words preserved in the New Testament as spoken by our Lord in His own language, such as Talitha kumi, Ephphatha, Abba, are not in Hebrew, but in the Chaldee, or Aramaic, as then spoken by the Jews.[286]

After the destruction of Jerusalem the literature of the Jews continued to be written in the same dialect. The Talmud[287] of Jerusalem of the fourth, and that of Babylon of the fifth, century exhibit the Aramean, as spoken by the educated Jews settled in these two localities, though greatly depraved and spoiled by an admixture of strange elements. This language remained the literary idiom of the Jews to the tenth century. The Masora,[288] and the traditional commentary of the Old Testament, was written in it about that time. Soon after the Jews adopted Arabic as their literary language, and retained it to the thirteenth century. They then returned to a kind of modernized Hebrew, which they still continue to employ for learned discussions.

It is curious that the Aramaic branch of the Semitic family, though originally the language of the great kingdoms of Babylon and Nineveh, should have been preserved to us only in the literature of the Jews, and of the Christians of Syria. There must have been a Babylonian literature, for the wisdom of the Chaldeans had acquired a reputation which could hardly have been sustained without a literature. Abraham must have spoken Aramaic before he emigrated to Canaan. Laban spoke the same dialect, and the name which he gave to the heap of stones that was to be a witness between him and Jacob, (Jegar-sahadutha) is Syriac, whereas Galeed, the name by which Jacob called it, is Hebrew.[289] If we are ever to recover a knowledge of that ancient Babylonian literature, it must be from the cuneiform inscriptions lately brought home from Babylon and Nineveh. They are clearly written in a Semitic language. About this there can be no longer any doubt. And though the progress in deciphering them has been slow, and slower than was at one time expected, yet there is no reason to despair. In a letter, dated April, 1853, Sir Henry Rawlinson wrote:—

“On the clay tablets which we have found at Nineveh, and which now are to be counted by thousands, there are explanatory treatises on almost every subject under the sun: the art of writing, grammars, and dictionaries, notation, weights and measures, divisions of time, chronology, astronomy, geography, history, mythology, geology, botany, &c. In fact we have now at our disposal a perfect cyclopædia of Assyrian science.” Considering what has been achieved in deciphering one [pg 279] class of cuneiform inscriptions, the Persian, there is no reason to doubt that the whole of that cyclopædia will some day be read with the same ease with which we read the mountain records of Darius.

There is, however, another miserable remnant of what was once the literature of the Chaldeans or Babylonians, namely, the “Book of Adam,” and similar works preserved by the Mendaïtes or Nasoreans, a curious sect settled near Bassora. Though the composition of these works is as late as the tenth century after Christ, it has been supposed that under a modern crust of wild and senseless hallucinations, they contain some grains of genuine ancient Babylonian thought. These Mendaïtes have in fact been identified with the Nabateans, who are mentioned as late as the tenth century[290] of our era, as a race purely pagan, and distinct from Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans. In Arabic the name Nabatean[291] is used for Babylonians,—nay, all the people of Aramaic origin, settled in the earliest times between the Euphrates and Tigris are referred to by that name.[292] It is supposed that the Nabateans, who are mentioned about the beginning of the Christian era as a race distinguished for their astronomical and general scientific knowledge, were the ancestors of the mediæval Nabateans, and the descendants of the ancient Babylonians and Chaldeans. You may have lately seen in some literary journals an account of a work called “The Nabatean Agriculture.” It exists only in an Arabic translation by Ibn-Wahshiyyah, the Chaldean,[293] who lived about 900 years [pg 280] after Christ, but the original, which was written by Kuthami in Aramean, has lately been referred to the beginning of the thirteenth century b. c. The evidence is not yet fully before us, but from what is known it seems more likely that this work was the compilation of a Nabatean, who lived about the fourth century after Christ;[294] and though it contains ancient traditions, which may go back to the days of the great Babylonian monarchs, these traditions can hardly be taken as a fair representation of the ancient civilization of the Aramean race.

The second branch of the Semitic family is the Hebraic, chiefly represented by the ancient language of Palestine, where Hebrew was spoken and written from the days of Moses to the times of Nehemiah and the Maccabees, though of course with considerable modifications, and with a strong admixture of Aramean forms, particularly since the Babylonian captivity, and the rise of a powerful civilization in the neighboring country of Syria. The ancient language of Phœnicia, to judge from inscriptions, was most closely allied to Hebrew, and the language of the Carthaginians too must be referred to the same branch.

Hebrew was first encroached upon by Aramaic dialects, through the political ascendency of Babylon, and [pg 281] still more of Syria; and was at last swept away by Arabic, which, since the conquest of Palestine and Syria in the year 636, has monopolized nearly the whole area formerly occupied by the two older branches of the Semitic stock, the Aramaic and Hebrew.