What is the Syriac language?
By: Rafi Barazi
Tags: Language, Christianity, Jesus Christ, Middle East, Syriac

What is the spoken language of Jesus Christ? What is the historical language of Levant and Mesopotamia? And many questions about Christianity and about the Semitic Languages.

But when you said Syriac language you will have all of answers about your questions, so what is Syriac? Syriac is by far the best documented Aramaic dialect. Based on the designation urhāyā ‘(the language) of Edessa’, it is likely that Syriac originated in or around Edessa. As the primary language of Syriac Christianity, it spread over much of Mesopotamia and Syria reaching as far as Ethiopia, India, and Central Asia. Syriac is first found in non-Christian tomb inscriptions that date from the 1st to the 3rd cent. These inscriptions display several archaic features some of which also occur in early. The majority of Syriac literature stems from the Christian communities that emerged in Mesopotamia and Northern Syria starting in the 2nd cent. AD. The ‘Golden Age’ of Syriac spanned from the 4th to the 7th cent. and produced a considerable corpus of original prose and poetry as well as translations from Greek. After the Islamic conquests in the 7th cent., Syriac was gradually replaced by Arabic though it lived on for several centuries and even witnessed a brief renaissance in the 12th and 13th cent.

Jesus and his disciples primarily spoke Aramaic (which one of Aramaic dialect Is Syriac), the common language of Judea in the first century AD, most likely a Galilean dialect distinguishable from that of Jerusalem. This is generally agreed upon by historians. The villages of Nazareth and Capernaum in Galilee, where Jesus spent most of his time, were Aramaic-speaking communities. It is also likely that Jesus knew enough Koine Greek to converse with those not native to Judea, and it is reasonable to assume that Jesus was well versed in Hebrew for religious purposes.

Syriac is the primary language of Syriac Christianity, Syriac Christianity is the form of Eastern Christianity whose formative theological writings and traditional liturgy are expressed in the Syriac language, which had a lot of precious religious texts , that recommended to learn Syriac to understand the Valuable content. Syriac has enjoyed a long tradition of academic study in Syriac-speaking communities, the first Painter in the Middle east was Syriac in Lebanon 1610 CE, and first Iron letters were Syriac, the holy men paint Religious books, and it painted Syriac books until 1834.

There are many attempts to revive this language and teach it to people, now many of Ancient and large universities teaching Syriac, many of international conferences now talking about Syriac language and many other attempts.

If you are interested to learn Syriac in an academic way, you need to take courses in institutes which are far, expensive, and not available all the time. I found this online Syriac School that teaches the Syriac language in an academic, interactive manner and at a reasonable price, using a set of distance education tools via the internet.

I recommended Online Syriac School if you want to study Syriac online and you can find more information in this link:

https://syriac.school

You can visit Syriac School’s YouTube channel to watch the demonstration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfljM4ir3Sw

References:

https://gedsh.bethmardutho.org/

https://syriac.school

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syriac_language

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Syriac_Language