BBA Chapter 1 — The Aramaic Alphabet

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Basics of Biblical Aramaic, Van Pelt
Chapter 1: The Aramaic Alphabet

1. Introduction

Biblical Aramaic is closely related to Biblical Hebrew — they share the same script, cognate vocabulary, and Semitic grammatical structure. Aramaic appears in the Old Testament primarily in Ezra (4:8–6:18; 7:12–26), Daniel (2:4b–7:28), Jeremiah 10:11, and Genesis 31:47. Students who have learned Hebrew will find the Aramaic alphabet immediately recognizable.

Why Aramaic uses the Hebrew script:

• Both Hebrew and Aramaic descend from the same Northwest Semitic consonantal alphabet, which evolved from early Phoenician writing.
• The square script (כתב אשורי, Assyrian script) used in Biblical Hebrew manuscripts is, strictly speaking, the Aramaic script adopted by Jewish scribes during and after the Babylonian exile. Biblical Hebrew in Second Temple texts was written in this same script.
• The Old Hebrew script (paleo-Hebrew) was eventually displaced by the square Aramaic script as the standard for biblical texts.

This means your Hebrew letter recognition skills transfer directly to Biblical Aramaic. The 22 letters are identical in form.

2. The 22 Aramaic Letters

Aramaic uses the same 22-letter alphabet as Hebrew, in the same canonical order. The names, shapes, and transliterations are also the same. The key differences are phonological (certain sounds shifted in Aramaic vs. Hebrew) and morphological (the endings and affixes differ).

3. Gutturals

As in Hebrew, four letters are classified as gutturals because they are produced deep in the throat or at the glottis:

Guttural behaviors in Aramaic (as in Hebrew):
1. Cannot take a Dagesh Forte (doubling)
2. Prefer "a-class" vowels (patach, qamets, hateph patach)
3. Cause compensatory lengthening when they refuse to double

Note on Resh (ר): Like Hebrew, Aramaic Resh behaves like a guttural in that it resists Dagesh Forte. It is not technically a guttural, but shares this property.

4. Emphatic Consonants

Aramaic (like Hebrew and other Semitic languages) has a set of emphatic consonants — sounds articulated with additional muscular tension in the pharynx or glottis. These are pharyngealized or glottalized in their original phonetic realization:

These consonants play a role in root identification: when parsing, the presence of ט, צ, or ק is a diagnostic feature.

5. The Bgdkpt Letters

Six consonants (Beth, Gimel, Dalet, Kaph, Pe, Taw) have two pronunciations — a hard (plosive) sound and a soft (fricative) sound — controlled by the presence or absence of a Dagesh Lene:

In Aramaic, the Bgdkpt distinction functions similarly to Hebrew, though some traditions (e.g., Yemenite vs. Tiberian) differ in pronunciation. For academic study, follow the same conventions as your Hebrew class.

6. Comparison with Hebrew

Because Aramaic and Hebrew are sister Semitic languages, many roots are cognate. However, there are systematic phonological differences. The most important for reading is the sh/t shift (known as the Aramaic-Hebrew correspondence):

Additional common correspondences:

The shift from a prefixed definite article (Hebrew הַ) to a suffixed emphatic ending (Aramaic -א) is one of the most visible structural differences between the two languages and is addressed fully in Chapter 5.

7. Letters with Final Forms

The same five consonants that have final forms in Hebrew have them in Aramaic:

8. Aramaic in the Old Testament

The Aramaic sections of the OT are concentrated in two books:

Daniel 2:4b–7:28 — Nebuchadnezzar's dream (ch. 2), the fiery furnace (ch. 3), Belshazzar's feast (ch. 5), Daniel in the lions' den (ch. 6), and the four beasts vision (ch. 7).

Ezra 4:8–6:18; 7:12–26 — Official correspondence with Persian kings, decrees, and letters concerning the rebuilding of the temple.

Other occurrences:
- Genesis 31:47 — Laban's name for the heap of stones: יְגַר שָׂהֲדוּתָא (Jegar-Sahadutha, "heap of witness")
- Jeremiah 10:11 — A single Aramaic verse embedded in Hebrew: "The gods who did not make the heavens and the earth will perish from the earth and from under the heavens."

Summary