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Reading Bible in Aramaic Language

Reading of Bible, John, in Aramaic Language (Syriac), the language spoken by Jesus, after short introduction in Turkish in Mor Gabriel Monastery in Midyat, Mardin, Turkey.


Founded in 397, The Monastery of St. Gabriel , (Dayro d-Mor Gabriel, Deyrulumur) is the oldest surviving Syriac Orthodox monastery in the world. It is located on the Tur Abdin plateau near Midyat in the Mardin Province in Southeastern Turkey, the motherland of the Syriac people.

Aramaic is a Semitic language belonging to the Afroasiatic language family. The name of the language is based on the name of Aram, an ancient region in central Syria. Within this family, Aramaic belongs to the Semitic subfamily, and more specifically, is a part of the Northwest Semitic group of languages, which also includes Canaanite languages such as Hebrew and Phoenician. Aramaic script was widely adopted for other languages and is ancestral to both the Arabic and modern Hebrew alphabets.

During its 3,000-year written history, Aramaic has served variously as a language of administration of empires and as a language of divine worship. It was the day-to-day language of Israel in the Second Temple period (539 BCE – 70 CE), was the original language of large sections of the biblical books of Daniel and Ezra, was the language spoken by Jesus, and is the main language of the Talmud.

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