The Language of Jesus: Introducing Aramaic Paperback – November 23, 2010

Liked it. Used for research.

While having some background in Hebrew and Greek, this well written book provides more easily understood interpretations to verses of question and clarifies many of the texts that the Greek doesn't even address. The author is humble in his presentation and simplifies understanding with simple, reasonable and logical insights I never considered before.

Great condition received on time

Well written presentation of Aramaic as the LANGUAGE of our Lord and Savior and an extremely interesting history on the Eastern Church, in a nutshell. Only negative thing is in the E-book version at least, a large amount of copying errors, but still readable and enjoyable.

This is NOT introductory Aramaic, but rather a book telling us why Jesus spoke Aramaic, and why knowledge of the language is necessary for biblical scholarship. I found it good and interesting, written by a guy who has both studied about the issue and even lived and worked among modern Aramaic speakers. I have three pages of notes taken from this book typed out on my computer. It certainly beats Bivin and Blizzard's "Understanding the Difficult Words of Jesus: New Insights From a Hebrew Perspective" on why the authors think that Jesus spoke Hebrew and not Aramaic, a book that I have reviewed which seems based more on emotion and preference than on real scholarship.Now is it true that Jesus spoke Aramaic? An academic mind seemed present, but not a Jewish mind. Did the author ever consider Jewish languages like Yiddish or Ladino, and think that maybe what Jesus spoke was a spoken language no longer extent, a mélange of Hebrew and Aramaic? And did he consider that the fact that some phrases or clauses in the New Testament having been written in Aramaic and translated into Greek really shows us that it was the exception rather than the rule that Jesus spoke Aramaic? These are two considerations absent in this book.By the way, I read the Kindle edition, so I had to put up with the misspellings and other problems of Kindle, such as not being able to highlight specific sections in the presence of an ellipsis (...), as the ellipses blended into the words and made specific highlighting impossible in those areas. But this is a Kindle problem, not the author's fault.All in all, it's good reading, and reasonably good scholarship. But without examining the Jewish talent for mixing Hebrew with other languages resulting in new languages such as Yiddish and Ladino, the book's thesis is still not fully convincing.

This book is one more of my collection of my Aramaic studies, what a great book!!! I have to get more!! If you love the REAL dstudies na dtruly know the real language Jesus book you have to get this book!

If you don't have any previous knowledge about Aramaic, this may be an interesting reading for you. If you're familiar with Syriac, Jewish Aramaic, Biblical Aramaic, and so on, perhaps what is written in this book is a bit too basic, too obvious for you. The author is quite neutral, which I like. He explains, in plain English, why learning Syriac/Aramaic is important, without saying narrow-minded things like "Syriac is heretical."The author seems to be avoiding touchy/deep subjects. For example, one interesting thing about the native language of Jesus is, the Holy Spirit was feminine in Aramaic. When Jesus talked about the Holy Spirit, He must have said, "I will send *her*" because grammatically 'spirit' is a feminine noun in Aramaic. The author is avoiding this kind of in-depth discussion, perhaps because that might upset some people.The author is talking about Peshitta, yet Nöldeke's grammar is not in the reference section! For that matter, the CAL (Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon) is not included either. He also forgot to mention Old Syriac NT (Curetonianus / Sinaiticus). The author's point of view is pretty much East Syriac (Assyrian + Chaldean); West Syriac (Turoyo) is ignored. Also, like other reviewers pointed out, this book is not carefully proofread, having minor typos here and there (nothing serious, but slightly annoying).So, personally I'll have to say it was not as exciting as I had hoped, but I do like the author's basic attitude toward handling these topics. I think quite a few people may find this book interesting and thought-provoking, even eye-opening. But I guess there are a few people who somehow assume that "Asian Christianity" is "wrong", even though everyone knows that Jesus Himself was Asian who lived in West Asia, somewhere near Palestine.

A must read for anyone interested in Biblical studies. There is no way ine can grasp of the depths of the New Tesrament without studying "the language of Jesus".

this book is very good and I learn things especially with it. I am very good happy with a buy

No I sent it back, it has nothing to do with arameic, it's just a few passages of the American bible