Syriac

Syriac (more accurately rendered Aramaic in modern translations) refers to the Semitic language spoken across the ancient Near East that appears in several passages of the Old Testament and New Testament. In the Old Testament, Aramaic sections appear in Ezra 4:8–6:18 and 7:12–26, and in Daniel 2:4b–7:28, where the shift from Hebrew to Aramaic mid-narrative has long been noted by scholars. In 2 Kings 18:26, the Assyrian officers and the envoys of Hezekiah negotiate in Aramaic — the lingua franca of diplomacy — rather than in Hebrew, the language of the common people. The phrase "Aramaic" or "Syriac" in Daniel 2:4 marks the point where the language of the text shifts. In the New Testament, Aramaic words preserved in Greek transliteration include Abba (Father), Maranatha (Come, O Lord), Talitha cumi (little girl, arise), and the cry from the cross, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34). Aramaic was the everyday spoken language of Jewish Palestine in the first century and almost certainly the primary language in which Jesus taught.