The Dead Sea Scrolls are the most important source for the history of the Aramaic language between the fall of the Persian Empire and the rise of the golden age of Aramaic religious literature in Late Antiquity. This has not been overlooked by researchers in the field, and since their initial discovery the Aramaic scrolls have attracted the attention of some of the greatest scholars in the field. The fragmentary nature of much of the material has naturally led to more attention being paid to the better preserved scrolls, though the broken scrolls too can provide valuable information.
In this volume, Muraoka provides the most comprehensive account yet of the Aramaic of the Qumran scrolls and beyond, while graciously acknowledging, supplementing and correcting the work of his predecessors. His analysis throughout reflects his wide knowledge of Aramaic and, in particular, his expertise in the Aramaic language of the Persian period and Classical Syriac, as evident from the large number of comparative notes that accompany the relevant discussions. Within the limited scope of this review it is impossible to do justice to this rich work, and the comments here will relate to selected issues only.
Since much of the Qumran corpus is fragmentary, there is a natural desire to expand the scope of the corpus to include related material. Muraoka has included two significant corpora that are cited frequently within the work. The first is the Aramaic Levi Document (ALD) from the Cairo Geniza. As has already been demonstrated by Greenfield and Stone, this medieval copy shows secondary influences of other Aramaic dialects – Biblical Aramaic, Targum Onkelos/Jonathan (TOJ) and Palestinian Aramaic (PA) – we must treat it with care as a linguistic source for the Aramaic of the Second Temple Period. For example, מהנעל ALD–G 13:3 is cited on p. 10 as an example of determination by means of /n/, but the parallel text found at Qumran, 4Q213 1i8, reads מעל. On p. 30, שארי “he began” (ALD–G 5:8) is hesitatingly cited as “an unusual case of compensatory lengthening”, but it might simply be the influence of the common JBA שארי “it is permissible” on this late document.
Aramaic documents from other sites in the Judaean desert are also included in the book. It should be borne in mind that these do not date from the same period of Aramaic as the Qumran documents, and differ in orthography, morphology and syntax. This difference in corpus is sometimes explicitly noted in the grammar, e.g. in the discussion of pronouns, where it is clearly marked that את “you (m.s.)” is from NḤ57.3, a document from 132–35 ce. Often, however, data from these various sources are cited together without sufficient attention to the linguistic level under discussion.
For example, Muraoka writes (p. 26) “An etymologically short i is also occasionally spelled plene”. The examples cited in this section are predominantly from the late texts, including the Geniza copy of the Aramaic Levi document. Examples from the Qumran corpus are extremely rare, and are worth noting in themselves. Similarly, the 1 c.s. morpheme is never written with plene orthography (-ית) in the Qumran documents, but only in the later Naḥal Ḥever documents and in the Geniza manuscript. On p. 141, it is unclear whether Muraoka regards the 1 c.s. object pronoun -י found in the form אלבשי (ALD–G 5:4) as evidence of an early use of this Byzantine-era form, as in other PA harbingers we find in the Qumran corpus, or as evidence of later scribal confusion. The same is true of the “PA” form התחמיון “look like” ALD G 1:3, cited on p. 102 n. 47.
Listed below are some specific observations:
p. 9. It is unclear how the form שמטתה represents /ṭt/ > /ṭṭ/.
p. 45. In TOJ, the distribution of the allomorphs of the 3 f.s. affixed pronoun -ah and -hā is conditioned: -ah is affixed to bases ending in a consonant, -hā to those ending in a vowel. The form בֵּיתַהָא that Muraoka cites is thus not attested in TOJ. The unusual post-consonantal -הא morpheme found in the Genesis Apocryphon must thus be explained in its own terms.
p. 57. גלגלא “wheel” is not plural, and does not fall under the category of “Base expanded in plural form”.
p. 61. Since the singular form of נגאואתא is not attested, it is not possible to establish that it belongs to the qṭāl pattern.
p. 62. זעיר “small” is alternatively (and better) interpreted on p. 72 as quṭayl.
p. 63. גירא is better translated “convert” than “apostate”.
p. 88. The use of תמונא for תמנא is shared with Nabataean, and is probably better interpreted as an areal feature than “a blatant half-Hebraism”.
The book is clear and easy to use throughout, though a number of typographical errors remain. There are many examples of interchange of ג and נ. The following have been spotted: p. 12 n. 76, סִנַּר > סִגַּר; p. 46. l. 10, נַּבַּהּ > גַּבַּהּ; p. 48 n. 95, זג/א > זנ/א; p. 51 n. 121, יִנַּשׁוּ > יִגַּשׁוּ; p. 76 n. 364, מַנְּלָא > מַגְּלָא; p. 77 n. 380, נִּבָּרָא > גִּבָּרָא; p. 109 n. 107, נּוּמְרָא > גּוּמְרָא; p. 132 n. 294, נָּלָה > גָּלָה. In several places, the square brackets marking reconstructions have been reversed, and it is hoped that these will be corrected in a future edition.
Muraoka's work is certain to become the starting point for all future discussions of the Aramaic of Qumran, and it is a rich source of information which, when used judiciously, teaches us much about the Aramaic of the period.
