DailyHebrew.com » The Genetic Relationship of Aramaic & Hebrew

Short and to the point. Be sure to click through to get a bit more and some nice bibliography on the subject (and verb).

Two recent articles from well-respected news agencies have included fallacious details about the relationship between Hebrew and Aramaic. The first described the Aramaic dialect spoken in the first century of the Common Era as “a language which developed from the classical Hebrew of the scriptures, a few hundred years earlier,” and the second claimed that Aramaic is “the linguistic root of modern day Hebrew and Arabic.”

So which one is it? Is Aramaic the root of Hebrew or did Aramaic develop from Hebrew? The answer, of course, is neither. Although they may be related by a shared lineage, there is not a direct genetic relationship between the two. That is to say, one did not derive from the other. Pete Bekins irascibly assimilates these two absurd statements with the tongue-in-check proposal that “Classical Hebrew developed into Aramaic which then morphed back into Modern Hebrew and Arabic.

via DailyHebrew.com » The Genetic Relationship of Aramaic & Hebrew.

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