Terracotta Goblet with Aramaic Inscription

Aramaic is an ancient Semitic language that belongs to the Northwest line of Semitic languages. Known as early as the 9th Century B.C., Aramaic began as the language of the Aramaeans. Later, the language was adopted by many non-Aramaean peoples, including the Jew after the Babylonian exile. Eventually, Aramiac was used extensively throughout the Ancient Near East as the common tongue of merchants and governments. Although Aramaic and Hebrew are similar in vocabulary and pronunciation, there are enough differences to make the two languages distinct. Many important books of the Old and New Testament were composed in Aramaic, and the language is popularly believed to be the native tongue of Jesus. From the late 5th Century A.D. onwards, Aramaic supplanted Hebrew as the daily language of the Jews. For instance, the Gemara, the second division of the Talmud, was written entirely in Aramaic