09. Intruding Foreign Words as Date-Setters

Intruding Foreign Words as Date-Setters In order that the force of the evidence that I am about to produce may be fully appreciated, let me here say that the time at which any document of length, and often even of small compass, was written can generally be determined by the character of its vocabulary, and especially by the foreign words which are embedded in it. Take, for example, the various Aramaic documents. The inscriptions from Northern Syria having been written in Assyrian times bear evident marks of Assyrian, Phoenician, and even Hebrew words. The Egyptian papyri from Persian times have numerous words of Egyptian, Babylonian, and Persian origin, as have also the Aramaic parts of Ezra and Daniel. The Nabatean Aramaic having been written probably by Arabs is strongly marked, especially in its proper names, by Arab words. The Palmyrene, Syriac, and Rabbinical Aramaic, from the time of the Graeco-Roman domination, have hundreds of terms introduced from Greek and Latin. Bar Hebræus and other writings after the Mohammedan conquest have numerous Arabic expressions, and the modern Syriac of Ouroumiah has many words of Persian, Kurdish, and Turkish origin.