Christian Palestinian Aramaic between Greek and Arabic

The study explores Christian Palestinian Aramaic as a linguistic tradition that developed in Byzantine Palestine alongside Greek and Arabic. It identifies its roots in a Western Aramaic vernacular spoken in the region and examines its historical context, linguistic features, and adaptations. The corpus consists mostly of translations from Greek, highlighting significant lexical borrowings and idiosyncratic syntax, such as periphrastic verb constructions. The article traces evidence of Arabic substrate influence in pre-Islamic times, including phonological shifts and loanwords, reflecting interactions between Arabic- and Aramaic-speaking Christians. The emergence of Christian Palestinian Aramaic as a written language is attributed to the need for localised religious texts for rural, Aramaic-speaking communities, distinct from Greek or Syriac traditions. The study situates the language within the socio-linguistic changes following the spread of Arabic as the dominant vernacular, emphasising its role in the region’s multilingual landscape.