Daniel

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NASB	Daniel 2:4 ¶ Then the Chaldeans spoke to the king in Aramaic: "O king, live forever! Tell the dream to your servants, and we will declare the interpretation."
AMPLIFIED 2015	Daniel 2:4 ¶ Then the Chaldeans said to the king in Aramaic, "O king, live forever! Tell the dream to your servants, and we will declare the interpretation."

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Bible Question: What is the difference between the Aramaic language and the Greek?

Bible Answer: I assume the basis for your question is that Aramaic was the spoken language of Jesus, whereas the New Testament was actually written in Greek.

Basically, Aramaic is more like Hebrew, but Aramaic was the spoken language of the Jews in Jesus' time. Some portions of the Old Testament were written in Aramaic rather than Hebrew. (See Ezra 4:8 - 6:18; 7:12-26; and Daniel 2:4 - 7:28). By the time of the return from exile, readings from the Scriptures had to be translated verbally into Aramaic for the people to understand. Yet, the two languages are very close, and have the same alphabet. Sometimes this is obscured by the fact that today Aramaic words might be written in the ancient form of the alphabet, whereas Hebrew words are written in the more recent block style. But if you use a Strong's Concordance, you'll notice that Strong will give one numerical reference for a Hebrew word and then another for its Aramaic counterpart (where applicable), and the two words look practically the same. Both languages are read from right to left.

Greek is another matter. The Greek alphabet looks almost the same as the Latin, which in turn looks like English. If you were to study Greek, you'd find that learning the alphabet would take no time at all, where as Hebrew (or Aramaic) would require greater effort just to learn the alphabet. You could just as easily learn the Chinese alphabet. Greek is read from left to right, just like English.

As Greek was the international language of the first century, it was used by the New Testament writers instead of Aramaic. But don't forget, much of the terminology used in the NT is taken from the Greek translation of the OT from the second century BC known as the Septugagint, and it was already well established that certain Greek words had their Hebrew equivalents. The Hebrew words, in turn, had their Aramaic equivalents. So there is a consistency and continuity between the Biblical languages.

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Questions and/or Subjects for Dan 2:4

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Difference between Aramaic and Greek (?)

Genepcs

I assume the basis for your question is ...

Arnold

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