Since Hebrew was the language of Israelite tradition, scripture, and culture, some may be surprised to hear that many of the Dead Sea Scrolls are in Aramaic, the common language of Jesus’s time. In his article “The Lost World of the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls” in the September/October 2018 issue of BAR, Andrew B. Perrin of Trinity Western University in Langley, Canada, takes a close look at these Qumran Aramaic texts.The BAR article is behind the subscription wall, but this BHD essay gives you a taste of it.
Some past PaleoJudaica posts on the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls are here, here, here, here, here, here (with many links to an AJR series), here (one more in that series), and here.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
