The Choice of Aramaic and Hebrew: Ideological Considerations
“Indeed, the Pentateuch had been written in an attempt to downplay the mythology of the distant past, as part of the heroic effort of biblical authors to establish a refined sort of Hebrew epic. Several centuries later, in the early Hellenistic period, as mythological content was creeping back to the Jewish mind, it was only logical that this content first appeared in Aramaic, the apocalyptic language par excellence.”
The Aramaic Language of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Why it Matters and What Lies Ahead
“With all of the Qumran evidence now available, the distinction between ‘Qumran Aramaic’ on the one hand and ‘Biblical Aramaic’ on the other should, in my opinion, be reassessed.”
Aramaic Tobit at Qumran
“The Tobit copies found among the Dead Sea Scrolls and the numerous links Tobit displays to the Aramaic texts discovered there, suggest that the origin and setting of the book is in the land of Israel.”
The Inception and Idiom of the Apocalypse in the Qumran Aramaic Texts
“The Aramaic texts that have been the subject of this forum provide a new space to explore how ancient Jewish writers at once contributed to the development of the apocalypse and deployed it to advance ideas on a host of topics ranging from history and empire, to temple and priesthood, to identity and otherness.”
Between Mesopotamia and Qumran: Cuneiform Literature and Jewish Aramaic Texts of the Second Temple Period
“The Jewish appropriation of some parts of Babylonian scholarship evidenced in Visions of Levi did not take place in a religious and cultural vacuum … It is reasonable to assume that the author of the Enochic myth disguised the priestly tradents of the Babylonian sciences as fallen Watchers in order to denigrate their role in the transmission of scribal knowledge.”
The Compositions Relating to the Levitical Line in the Qumran Aramaic Scrolls
“The Qumran Aramaic scrolls thus rework and expand the biblical stories concerning the tribe of Levi in order to highlight its centrality and the importance of the high priesthood. They stress Levi’s and his sons’ distinctive status as priests serving in the sacred place, their integrity and righteousness, and the divine wisdom imparted to them. Although such general brush strokes are clear, numerous questions remain unanswered regarding this tradition and these texts.”