{"id":7878,"date":"2004-02-23T08:40:48","date_gmt":"2004-02-23T08:40:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/aramaic_101.html"},"modified":"2004-02-23T08:40:48","modified_gmt":"2004-02-23T08:40:48","slug":"aramaic_101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/aramaic_101.html","title":{"rendered":"Aramaic 101"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gibson film builds interest in the ancient language<\/a><\/p>\n

If and when the Rev. Joseph A. Fitzmyer goes to see Mel Gibson’s controversial film, it won’t be to see how the movie turns out. As a Jesuit, Fitzmyer already knows the plot.<\/p>\n

Instead, he will be listening to what Gibson’s version of Aramaic sounds like on the big screen. The Passion, which depicts the last 12 hours in the life of Christ, will be entirely in Latin and Aramaic, with subtitles.<\/p>\n

“I have no idea if I will be able to understand it,” Fitzmyer said. “I imagine he probably got somebody to supply him with various words in Aramaic. I want to see if it sounds intelligible.”<\/p>\n

Fitzmyer is an Aramaic scholar. He wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on Aramaic syntax as it appeared in 5th century B.C. texts from Egypt. He has taught the language at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and has helped catalog Aramaic texts from the famous cache of 1st century A.D. texts found at Qumran near the shores of the Dead Sea in 1947, the world-famous Dead Sea Scrolls. Nearly 125 of the scrolls are in Aramaic, not Hebrew<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gibson film builds interest in the ancient language If and when the Rev. Joseph A. Fitzmyer goes to see Mel Gibson’s controversial film, it won’t be to see how the movie turns out. As a Jesuit, Fitzmyer already knows the plot. Instead, he will be listening to what Gibson’s version of Aramaic sounds like on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nAramaic 101 - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/aramaic_101.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Aramaic 101 - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Gibson film builds interest in the ancient language If and when the Rev. Joseph A. Fitzmyer goes to see Mel Gibson’s controversial film, it won’t be to see how the movie turns out. As a Jesuit, Fitzmyer already knows the plot. Instead, he will be listening to what Gibson’s version of Aramaic sounds like on…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/aramaic_101.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-02-23T08:40:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Aramaic 101 - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/aramaic_101.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Aramaic 101 - Via Media","og_description":"Gibson film builds interest in the ancient language If and when the Rev. Joseph A. Fitzmyer goes to see Mel Gibson’s controversial film, it won’t be to see how the movie turns out. As a Jesuit, Fitzmyer already knows the plot. Instead, he will be listening to what Gibson’s version of Aramaic sounds like on…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/aramaic_101.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2004-02-23T08:40:48+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/aramaic_101.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/aramaic_101.html","name":"Aramaic 101 - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2004-02-23T08:40:48+00:00","dateModified":"2004-02-23T08:40:48+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/aramaic_101.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/aramaic_101.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/aramaic_101.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Aramaic 101"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7878\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}