24 Aramaeans

The Aramaeans interest historians because of the two sources of information about them: the archaeological and the biblical. Part of the challenge in understanding the Aramaeans is in the effort to link both sets of data.

According to the first citation, the people of ancient Israel and Judah consider themselves ethnic Aramaeans who became a distinct religious group as a result of their experience in Egypt. According to the second citation, the Aramaeans were a people who experienced the brunt of Assyrian aggression in the 12th century b.c.e.

The 1993 discovery of the Tel Dan Stela, an Aramaic-language stone inscription that mentions Israel and David and apparently was written by Hazael, the king of Aram and the greatest Aramaean warrior, brings these two strands together in a historical and religious debate.




http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0002_0_01227.html

ARAM, ARAMEANS. The Arameans are a group of western Semitic, Aramaic-speaking tribes who spread over the Fertile Crescent during the last quarter of the second millennium B.C.E. Eleventh and tenth century royal inscriptions from Assyria and Babylonia indicate Aramean movements through the north of the Middle Euphrates and northern Mesopotamia. In other words, the Arameans might be viewed as the successors of the *Amorites of the late third millennium (Dion in Bibliography). These nomads or semi-nomads spread from the Persian Gulf in the south to the Amanus Mountains in the north, and the anti-Lebanon and northern Transjordan in the west.

History

Of the various biblical traditions concerning their place of origin, an obscure reference in Amos 9:7 places it in Kir, whose location is uncertain, but may refer to a locale apparently not far from Emar (modern Tel Meskene), although some locate Kir on the border of *Elam in Iran. The fact that the Table of Nations (Gen. 10:22–23) has the eponymous ancestor Aram (together with Elam and Asshur) only one generation removed from Shem reflects the importance of the Arameans in the Near East during the first third of the first millennium B.C.E. To this Aram the Table assigns four sons, Uz, Hul, Gether, and Mash (I Chron. 1:17; LXX Meshech; Samaritan Pent. Massa), but the identity and location of the ethnic groups they stand for are uncertain. The Qumran War Scroll (1QM 2:10) places them "Beyond the Euphrates." The modest standing of the Arameans prior to their rise is reflected in the genealogical table of the Nahorites, where Aram is a mere grandson of Nahor and a nephew, instead of the father, of Uz (Gen. 22:21). The patriarchal narratives make the Hebrew Patriarchs close kinsmen of the Arameans. Not only is Abraham a brother of the aforementioned Nahor, but Isaac marries a granddaughter of Nahor who is "daughter of Bethuel the Aramean and sister of Laban the Aramean" (Gen. 25:20), and Jacob marries daughters of the same "Laban the Aramean" (cf. Gen. 31:47, where Laban coins an Aramaic equivalent for Gilead (Galed)). On one occasion Jacob himself is described as "a wandering-destitute-Aramean" (Deut. 26:5). This tradition conforms to the later Hebrew names for the ancestral home of the Patriarchs in the Haran district: "Paddan-Aram" (Gen. 25:20; 28:2); the "country of Aram" (Hos. 12:13); and "Aram-Naharaim" (i.e., the Jezirah, the region of the Habor and Euphrates rivers; Gen. 24:10).

The existence of the Arameans in the "patriarchal period," however, is not attested by extra-biblical sources – in any case, not as an element important enough to warrant naming the entire Jezirah area after it. Indeed, in the Egyptian and Akkadian sources of the 15^th–12^th centuries B.C.E. the area is referred to simply as Naharaim (in many different spellings), but never as Aram-Naharaim. Thus, the latter name and the alleged Aramean affiliations of the "Patriarchs" are anachronisms that came into being at the end of the second millennium as a result of the thorough entrenchment of the Aramean tribes in the Jezirah region at that time. The arguments, particularly the linguistic ones, that the "Patriarchs" were "Proto-Arameans" are without substance. The mention of Aram or Aram-Naharaim as the country of origin of Balaam (Num. 23:7; Deut. 23:5) is, perhaps, also an anachronism.

The isolated references to Aram as a place name or personal name between the end of the third and late second millennium B.C.E. are insufficient to establish such an early appearance of the Arameans, especially since, later, the name Aram occurred frequently as an onomastic and toponymic element in entirely non-"Aramean" contexts.

The first, definite extra-biblical mention of the Arameans is found in the annals of Tiglath-Pileser I, king of Assyria (1116–1076 B.C.E.), in the compound name "Aḫlamē Aramāi̯a." However, the identification of the Aḫlamē of the Assyrian sources of the 14^th century with the Arameans is untenable; the first appearance of the Arameans should not be traced back to the early documentation of the name Aḫlamē used, like the name Sūtu, for nomad tribes. Moreover, tenth-ninth century royal Assyrian inscriptions mention Aḫlamē Aramāi̯a alongside the Arameans. The close association of the two led to occasional late cuneiform references to the Aramaic language as "Aḫlamē." Tiglath-PileserI mentions that in his fourth year (1113 B.C.E.) he routed the Aḫlamē Aramāi̯a in the Euphrates region, from the land of Suḫu in the south to Carchemish in the north. At that time the Arameans had already settled in the Mount Bishri district, southeast of the Euphrates bend, where Tiglath-Pileser devastated six of their villages. They are further mentioned as far west as the Tadmor (Palmyra) oasis and even in the foothills of Mount Lebanon. Tiglath-Pileser's son, Ashur-bel-kala (1073–1056 B.C.E.), refers specifically to the land of Aram (māt Arime) without connecting it with Ahlamē. By the time of Tiglath-Pileser I, the Arameans had once penetrated into Assyria proper, and during his son's reign an Aramean usurper, Adad-apal-iddina, managed to seize the throne of Babylonia.