다니엘서의 아람어

Jongtae Choi, A BOOK REVIEW, JETS 38/3 (September 1995) 443–478 

For the broken Aramaic transcription, refer to the PDF file we attached at the end of this writing

The Aramaic of Daniel in the Light of Old Aramaic. By Zdravko Stefanovic. JSOTSup 129. Sheffield: JSOT, 1992, 128 pp., $47.50. 

The authenticity of the book of Daniel has been challenged on various grounds. one of the strongest reasons for dating it in the second century BC has been the so

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called late features of the Aramaic of the book (DA). Stefanovic strives to reverse this trend, making an attempt to show how close DA is in relation to Old Aramaic (OA). The work is in the spirit of such scholars as R. D. Wilson and K. A. Kitchen, who stood against such scholars as S. R. Driver and H. H. Rowley, the latter’s study having been made only in bolder relief by the solid study of Kitchen with many forceful arguments for the authenticity of the book of Daniel. 

The general impression to be gathered from this work is that the author’s own caution against “hasty or oversimplified conclusions” (p. 82) should perhaps be directed more frequently to his own work. 

First of all, to compare DA with a limited number of OA documents may lead to false conclusions. It is necessary to set DA in somewhat broader surroundings than that which is attempted in this work. This point may be illustrated by citing the author’s frequent appeal to the syntactic parallel of slm with a verb hqym in DA to nsbå zy qm (KAI 215:1, 20; KAI 202 A:1; KAI 201:1), nsbå zy qm (KAI 214:1, 14) or dmwtå zy sm (Fekheriyeh 1). But how strong is this deduction if we in fact find the same ｅxpression in Middle Aramaic (MA) inscriptions even more closely analogous than those cited from OA documents? In Petra 1:1 we find the same ｅxpression as in DA (slm hqym). Or again in KAI 204:1, 14, nsbå with qm occurs. Likewise in many Palmyrene texts we find slm with åqym (aphel form). These data have a very significant impact upon the conclusions drawn by this author (cf. pp. 49–50, 101–102, and “Appendix 1”). 

In the same connection the author has on p. 55 unwittingly attempted to align DA with OA, while differentiating them from 1QapGen, in the usage of çd çlm and lçlmn. But the fact is that the latter form occurs not only in OA and DA but also in MA as in Mur 20:4; 26:6, Hever Contract B:6, 11, 12, 13, and Nabatean texts. Furthermore çd çlmå occurs in DA 2:20. As to kzy or kdy (p. 57), the author’s argument appears inconclusive in the same way as mentioned above, inasmuch as kdy occurs also nine times in 1QapGen and once in TgJob. 

Likewise his attempt to align OA with DA in reference to the aleph-he interchange of the demonstrative pronoun znh (dnh) is most unconvincing (p. 70) in the light of the total documentation. 

Secondly, there are a number of highly questionable arguments. For instance on p. 49 “ ‘hyper-archaisms’ (like gdbryå in Dan 3:2)” appears to be a mistake, since gdbryå is not really an archaic form but rather a modernized one. H. H. Schaeder’s argument was that the form gdbryå in Dan 3:2 suggests “a systematic revision” (Iranische Beiträge 245). on p. 50 Stefanovic seems mistaken when he alleges that åmrt pmh (ll. 10, 14) is an ｅxpression “explained as a ‘Hebraism’ in DA.” In point of fact this occurs only in Biblical Hebrew, not in DA. on p. 52 the author states that “because of its [nota accusativi ] occurrence in OA dialects and in early EgA . . . , this argument cannot be valid any longer.” Here again the deduction seems questionable. The argument for DA’s lateness is based upon infectional “forms,” not upon the fact that the nota accusativi is absent from OA or Reichsaramäisch. The forms are distinctive in diachronic settings. 

On the positive side, however, Stefanovic rightly points out the “inadequacy of hasty or oversimplified conclusions” in reference to the diachronic paradigms of the pê-nûn verb by P. W. Coxon (p. 82). My own study (The Aramaic of Daniel, 1994) has indicated that the first and third statements made by Coxon regarding nasalization (“Nasalization,” RevQ 9/34 [1977] 257) need modification. Typographical errors in the book are minimal: wlmçrk ymh//wçrkh byyn should be changed into wlmårk ywh//wårkh byyn (p. 50; cf. “Appendix 1” where it is correctly typeset); nsbå to nsbå zy qm (p. 50); hd to hd (p. 56). 

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By way of summary, this author has brought out many parallels between OA and DA. But when he attempts to bring DA into a larger setting, his judgment becomes less trustworthy. His apologetic aim to defend the authenticity of Daniel is commendable and even achievable on linguistic grounds. But the scope and the contents of the present work do not measure up to the purpose. Nevertheless, once an author has taken upon himself a noble yet difficult task, demanding both patience and time (the best way to do it seems to employ a computer with a database program), then many similar studies may be undertaken with, it is to be hoped, a wider base of evidence and more precision in detail. 

Jongtae Choi Korean Covenant Presbyterian Church, Chicago, IL

JongChoi-BookReviewJETS38-3pp443-478.pdf

JongChoi-BookReviewJETS38-3pp443-478.pdf

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