L’aramaico del Libro di Ezra: storia degli studi e nuove prospettive

The Biblical Aramaic could be defined as the language of the parts of the Hebrew Bible written in Aramaic. In the Hebrew Bible the following are written in Aramaic: Ezra 4:8-6:18 and 7:12-26; Daniel 2:4-7:28; Jeremiah 10:11, and one word in Genesis 31:47. Within the Book of Ezra, in par- ticular, we would expect a specific linguistic style consistent with that of the study called Reichsara- ma ̈isch in which Aramaic is used as the bureaucratic language of the great Middle Eastern emperors. This language is fundamentally observed through papyri from Elephantine, documents from Her- moupolis, and the private letters edited by Driver, all of which are datable between the sixth to the fourth centuries B.C.E. The language of Ezra must be, in other words, that which was used by the chancellor Acha ̈menid. The aforementioned book contains some references to the great Persian sov- ereign, and the fact that he used Aramaic as the lingua franca could explain the presence in the Bible of these Aramaic pages. The scholars who believe in the historicity of Ezra necessarily admit the an- tiquity in all respects of the Aramaic portion of the Bible. Those who doubt the historicity of Ezra, however, note the artificial character of the language in which the book was written in relation to Re- ichsarama ̈isch / Imperial Aramaic.