PROBABLY NOT: Did Jews Invent the Question Mark?
The question is asked by Renee Ghert-Zand in The Forward blog The Shmooze. The question mark in, er, question is the punctuation mark found in fifth-century CE (not BCE) Syriac manuscripts as noted recently by Cambridge researcher Dr Chip Coakley. Syriac is the Christian Aramaic dialect spoken in the ancient Anatolian city of Edessa and it became the language of the Aramaic-speaking Eastern Church. If the mark was invented in the fifth century, it is very likely that it was invented by Eastern Christians. Still, we (or at least I) don't know exactly how early the mark was developed, and it is possible that Jews were involved in the translation of Hebrew Bible books into Syriac a few centuries earlier, so the possibility cannot be entirely discounted.
Cross-file under "Aramaic Watch."
