Talk:Aram (region)

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if the aram nahraim wasnt recorded in the assyrian and the babylonian tablets, than it didnt exist. because as far as i know at least the assyrians recorded everything, even the recepies for their food, and the maps of that time was reaching to greece in the west and to pesia and india to the east. and if the aram nahraim wasnt mentioned than i think it didnt exist. as far as i know many historicans goes back to assyrian records and the bible for information about that time.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 217.208.32.13 (talk • contribs) .

Nahrima is an Egyptian term for the Mitanni found used in Egyptian campaign literature from the time of Seti I and his campaigns against the King of Kadesh. The Assyrians begin to mention Aram about half a millenia latter.

Abdi Hiba of Jerusalem to the king, No. 4

EA#288 fc(66): mentions the East and the West; calls himself a shepherd; mentions paying tribute, his mother and father, servants; mentions 80 prisoners and the king's deputy Suta; mentions the lands of Seeri and Gintikirmil (Seir (Edom) and Gath-Carmel (Libnah?)), `Let the king care for hisland. The land of the king will be lost. All of it will be taken from me; there is hostility to me. As far as the lands of Seeri (and) even to Gintikirmi there is peace to all the regents, but to me there is hostility.'; writes, `Behold, Zimrida of Lakisi - servants, who have joined with the [H]a[b]i[r]u, have smitten him.'; uses metaphor of a `ship in the sea'; mentions Nahrima and Kapasi, the Habiru and the king's cities and regents; says that Turbazu has been killed in the gate of Zilu; mentions Zimrida of Lakisi and killer servants; mentions murder of Iaptih Adda in the city gate of Zilu; mentions archers, a deputy, scribe; Comments: See map `Nahrima is most likely Mitanni. Mercer had no information on the identity of Kapasi. Iaptih-Adda may be Iapti-Hada of EA#335,9. In EA 288, ER-Heba of Jerusalem declares, 'see! Zimrida—the town(smen) of Lachish have smitten him, servants who have become 'apiru. We may ask, `How can one become a Hebrew, since Hebrew is an ethnic group into which one would have to be born. What is even more fascinating is that one can become an 'Apiru for a period of time and then revert back to ones former social status.[288]

Tušrata to Amenophis III, No. 5 EA #21 gc(41): written by Tušratta, king of Mitanni; mentions gods Samaš and Ištar; mentions messenger Mane and interpreter Hane; mentions Nahramašši; mentions 100,000 years; mentions `And may my brother be well for ever';

Aram Nahara'im is a Hebrew term which refers to Mesopotamia. The word 'Nahara'im' 'is two rivers', Aramea, on the other hand is a term which refers to what known now days as Syria. These are two different terms, and merging them would be wrong.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.166.37.195 (talk • contribs) .

Nahrima[m] has a Hebrew ending slapped on the Egyptian word for noble. Its discussed above on the Amarna letters page and in Michael Roaf, the "Cambridge Atlas of Mesopotamia", Equinox. The Greek reference to Mesopotamia as two rivers that some people are confusing with Nahrimacomes from Josephus, the Zacharia Sitchen of his day.

[Aram Damascus]

Hebrew doesn't exist as a language in the period most of the Biblical references refer to. Most of the Bible is written in much earlier semitic lnguages such as Egyptian, Akkadian and Aramaic then translated into Greek, Latin and Hebrew. Note the difference between the dates when Hebrew is spoken and when it is written. Most references to Aram in Syria are earlier rather than later during the period when the Mitanni were a power on the Orontes, and there was constant fighting between them and Egypt and the Amurru and Hittites c 1500 - 1200 BC

[Hebrew language] As a language, Hebrew belongs to the Canaanite group of languages. Hebrew (Israel) and Moabite (Jordan) are Southern Canaanite while Phoenician (Lebanon) is Northern Canaanite. Canaanite is closely related to Aramaic and to a lesser extent South-Central Arabic. Whereas other Canaanite languages and dialects have become extinct, Hebrew survived. Hebrew flourished as a spoken language in Israel from the 10th century BC until just before the Byzantine Period in the 3rd or 4th century AD. (See below, Aramaic displacing Hebrew as a spoken language.) Afterward Hebrew continued as a literary language until the Modern Era when it was revived as a spoken language in the 19th century.[1]

Aram Damascus was an Aramean state centered around Damascus in Syria, from the late 12th century BCE to 734 BCE.

Sources for this state come from texts that can be divided into three categories: Assyrian annals, Aramean texts, and the Hebrew Bible.

The greatest portion of the textual sources come from Assyria. There are, however, often several copies of the same texts so the material of the texts is rather limited. Most of the texts are annals from the Assyrian kings Shalmaneser III, Adad-Nirari III, and Tiglath-Pileser III. The texts mention Aram-Damascus from an Assyrian perspective, but are in many ways informative of the strength of the state, and give us several names of its rulers.

Aramean royal inscriptions are rare, and only one royal stele from Aram-Damascus proper has been identified, the stele from Tel Dan. Among other sources in Aramaic that shed light on the history of Aram-Damascus are two “booty inscriptions” from Eritrea and Samos, and the Zakkur stele.

The Hebrew Bible gives more detailed accounts of Aram-Damascus' history, mainly in its interaction with Israel. The accounts, in their present form, are much more readable than the Aramaic and Assyrian ones. However, the texts in the Hebrew Bible are dated much later and even more ideologically colored then the other texts. Through penetrating the texts’ ideological purposes, it is, however, possible to glimpse at some relatively reliable historical information about Aram-Damascus.

The sources for the early history of Aram-Damascus are almost non-existent. In an annal dating to Tiglath-Pileser I we learn that Aramean people have begun settling in the southern half of Syria. The texts of the Hebrew Bible mentioning David's battles against Arameans are not very reliable, although we can assume that there were Arameans in southern Syria in the 10th century BCE.

The first reliable data can be found in the 9th century BCE when Aramean, Assyrian, and Hebrew texts all mention a state with its capital in Damascus. The state seems to have reached its peak in the late 9th century BCE under Hazael, who, according to Assyrian texts fought against the Assyrians, and according to Aramean texts had some influence over the north Syrian state Unqi, and according to Hebrew texts conquered all of Israel.

Archaeological evidence of Aram-Damascus is close to nothing. Excavations in Damascus are hard to perform due to the continuous settlement of the city. Other cities of Aram-Damascus have not been positively identified from textual sources, and excavations of Iron Age sites around Damascus are almost non-existent. The material culture at sites farther south (e.g. Tell-Ashtara, Tell er-Rumeith, et-Tell, Tel-Dan, Tell el-Oreme, to name but a few) do not show many features distinguishing from the material culture from northern Israel.

You are correct that Aram-Damascus is a better term and that most of the cities mentioned in association are on the border between Egypt/Israel and the Hittites/Mitanni with Lebanon on one side and Syria on the other; Hazor, Kadesh, Dan, Argob, Bashan, Maccah, Zeobah, Kenneth in the lands of Dan, Asher, Naphtali, Zebulon and Manasses.Rktect 18:52, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Aram is not near the Tigris and Euphrates. Locate the references below on the map above. Its the territory of Asher, Dan, Nephtali and Zebul on the headwaters of the Jordan a bit beyond to include Kadesh on the Orontes.

Naharain or nahrin is the land of the Mittani. Their cities are Alalah on the Orontes east of Ugarit, and Hama Quatna and Kadesh moving upstream to the headwaters east of the Amurru.

Their presence is referenced both in Biblical and Egyptian campaign accounts and their lands and kings as given in "The Cambridge Atlas of Mesopotamia" (CAM) indicate their cities are Alalah on the Orontes east of Ugarit, and Hama, Quatna, and Kadesh moving upstream to the headwaters east of the Amurru. They are bounded to the west by the Amurru and Mukish, to the North by Kizzuwatna with Tarsus and Charchemish, To the east by Nuhase which touches on the Euphrates but bordrs the Mitanni with the cities of Ebla and Allepo. To the south they extend down the Jordan as far as Meggido See the map of their territory mentioned in the Amarna letters and in the Biblical Conquest CAM p135Rktect 19:51, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

http://www.stempublishing.com/dictionary/054_080.html

Aram. [A'ram]

This is the name of a large district lying north of Arabia, north-east of Palestine, east of Phoenicia, south of the Taurus range, and west of the Tigris. It is generally supposed that the name points to the district as the 'Highlands,' though it may be from Aram the son of Shem, as above. The word occurs once untranslated in Num. 23: 7, as 'Aram' simply, from whence Balaam was brought, 'out of the mountains of the east;' but it is mostly translated Syria or Syrian. Thus we have -

1. ARAM-DAMMESEK, 2 Sam. 8: 5, translated 'Syrians of Damascus,' embracing the highlands of Damascus including the city. (Mount Hermon)

2. ARAM-MAACHAH, 1 Chr. 19: 6, translated 'Syria-maachah,' a district on the east of Argob and Bashan.

Maacah (Codex Alexandrinus: Maacha, KJV: Maachah) is a biblical name with many references:

Small Aramean kingdom east of the Sea of Galilee (I Chronicles 19:6). Its territory was in the region assigned to the half-tribe of Manasseh east of the Jordan. Maacah, its king, became a mercenary of the Ammonites in their war against David (II Samuel 10:6). It is probable that the city Abel of Beth-maachah in Naphtali (ib. xx. 15) derived its name from its relation to this kingdom and people.

Bashan (Hebrew הבשן ha-Bashan, meaning "the light soil") is a biblical place first mentioned in Genesis 14:5, where it is said that Chedorlaomer and his confederates "smote the Rephaim in Ashteroth," where Og the king of Bashan had his residence. At the time of Israel's entrance into the Promised Land, Og came out against them, but was utterly routed (Numbers 21:33-35; Deuteronomy 3:1-7). This country extended from Gilead in the south to Hermon in the north, and from the Jordan river on the west to Salcah on the east. Along with the half of Gilead it was given to the half-tribe of Manasseh (Joshua 13:29-31). Golan, one of its cities, became a city of refuge (Joshua 21:27).

Bashan just northeast of Chinnereth, the Golan heights.

Argob, in Bashan, was one of Solomon's commissariat districts (1 Kings 4:13). The cities of Bashan were taken by Hazael (2 Kings 10:33), but were soon after reconquered by Jehoash (2 Kings 13:25), who overcame the Syrians in three battles, according to the prediction of Elisha (19). From this time Bashan almost disappears from history, although we read of the wild cattle of its rich pastures (Ezekiel 39:18; Psalms 22:12), the oaks of its forests (Isaiah 2:13; Ezekiel 27:6; Zechariah 11:2), and the beauty of its extensive plains (Amos 4:1; Jeremiah 50:19). Soon after the conquest, the name "Gilead" was given to the whole country beyond Jordan. After the Exile, Bashan was divided into four districts

3. ARAM-BETH-REHOB, 2 Sam. 10: 6, translated 'Syrians of Beth-rehob: cf. Judges 18: 28, a district in the north, near Dan.

4. ARAM-ZOBAH, 2 Sam. 10: 6, 8, translated 'Syrians of Zoba,' a district between and Damascus, but not definitely recognised.

5. ARAM-NAHARAIM signifying 'Aram of two rivers,' Gen. 24: 10; Deut. 23: 4; Judges 3: 8; 1 Chr. 19: 6, translated 'Mesopotamia.' The two rivers are the Euphrates and the Tigris. The district would be the highlands from whence the rivers issue to the plain, and the district between the two rivers without extending to the far south.

4 out of 5 ARAM usages are south west of Damascus Genesis 24:10 refers to Nahor Deut. 23:4 refers to Pethor in Aram of the two rivers Judges 3:8 Cushhan-rishatham king of Edom 1 Chr. 19: 6 refers to Maccah and Zobah

Aram a region mentioned in the Bible containing Damascus. Aram-Naharaim (Aram of two Rivers) a region mentioned in the Bible containing the town of Haran Rktect 00:14, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Semitic meanning

Ar'ama (verb) derived into Aram, A'rm, Yareem, Maryama it refers to the highlands. Its appears in villages names in the Western mountain regions of Yemen, Asir and Syria. The Arameans lived in the mountain regions right?--Skatewalk 05:07, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Maryama and the maryanu or mitani are horsemen living in the mountains Rktect 15:28, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

The etymological link here is dubious, and the origin of the name of the Aramaeans is not certain. I've removed your addition from the article because it showed no proof nor clear argument. — Gareth Hughes 12:31, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

The etymological link to Aram is Akkadian, the Link to Mesopotamia Greek not Hebrew.

Re: the phrase two rivers. That phrase refers to Mesopotamia. Syria is south west of Mesopotamia. Aram is to the southwest of Damascus, Syria. For that reason I'm directing you to john heise akkadian

Mesopotamia. The word 'Mesopotamia' is in origin a Greek name (mesos 'middle' and potamos 'river', so 'land between the rivers'). The name is used for the area watered by the Euphrates and Tigris and its tributaries, roughly comprising modern Irak and part of Syria. South of modern Bagdad, the alluvial plains of the rivers were called the land of Sumer and Akkad in the third millennium. Sumer is the most southern part, while the land of Akkad is the area around modern Bagdad, where the Euphrates and Tigris are close to each other. In the second millennium both regions together are called Babylonia, a mostly flat country. The territory in the north (between the rivers Tigris and the Great Zab) is called Assyria, with the city A ur as center. It borders to the mountains.

Re: Aram compare Naräm-Sîn.

Naräm-Sîn as the last but one in the dynasty of Akkad was an important king. Naräm-Sîn (Akkadian, meaning 'the lover of Sîn, the moon god) and grandson of Sargon has collected many feats of arms and has a comparable status and power as his grandfather. He called himself ar kibrät arba'im 'king of the four quarters' meaning the entire known world at the time. His empire was even larger than Sargon's empire, as became clear after the surprising discovery in 1974 of the city of Ebla near Lebanon in Syria, an hitherto unexpected highly developed civilization in the far west. Rktect 15:28, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

It may look clever, but it isn't, and it doesn't answer the question. — Gareth Hughes 15:10, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

A few quick points. There is no question. Aram is not associated with Mesopotamia, it is mentioned and located in the Bible, the Amarna letters, maps, and various other sources including Egyptian and Assyrian campaign records south west of Damascus, its name is from the Akkadian, Hebrew doesn't exist as a language until the time of Judah c 900 BC, in not being able to counter the arguments I'm making with any data of your own you are reduced to making POV reverts.Rktect 15:28, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

The original question here was not about Aram and Mesopotamia. I don't actually believe that you know the manuscript evidence for your claims, but please try to present in an ordered fashion (not your usual spurious splurge). Languages do not appear out of thin air, so I don't see what your claim about Hebrew is supposed to mean. It's very easy to call me biased, but I actually work with this stuff. The article may be in awful state, but it is not helped by your confused and poorly referenced additions. I expect you to discuss your ideas rather than keep re-adding them. — Gareth Hughes 15:38, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

With all due respect Gareth, where is it you think semitic languages come from? Hebrew evolves from Cananite c 900 BC. Canaanite has anticedents including Akkadian and Egyptian that go back to c 1800 BC. Aram has a history that goes back to the bronze age rather than the iron age, but its never a part of Mesopotamia. Its always refered to as a part of south west Syria. I understand that you may have beliefs you consider sacred which I dismiss as a POV, but if you think you are an expert in this material then you should be aware of the dates for who did what where when. I have been working with this material since the mid seventies, I'm happy to trade cites with you if you want to go that route. I have yet to see your justification for claiming Haran is a part of Aram. For that to be the case we somehow have to make Damascus, Hamath and Carchemish, not to mention the Nahraim disappear.Rktect 01:45, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, I don't really think you have any respect for me, but then I don't have any respect for this pretence you are keeping up. This is nothing to do with my beliefs (I am an Anglican, and no fundamentalist), but the fact that I work with Semitic languages (Oriental Institute, Oxford). In the statement above, you made the factual error that, while Hebrew is a Canaanite language (we usually spell 'Canaan' with three 'a's, by the way), they are not derived directly from Akkadian and Egyptian. No scholar would support such a view, and the historical record clearly shows that this is not the case. Akkadian and Egyptian are related to the Canaanite language, but not 'antecedents' as you put it (although, knowing Latin helps me spell it correctly). Obviously, you are someone who has read a lot of books and websites of variable quality and has strung together your own theories based on that. Firstly, Wikipedia does not allow original research for the very reason that Wikipedia is in no position to peer review new research. You repeatedly accuse me of bias, among other things. You have a history of editing Wikipedia articles based on your own research. As far as I can tell, you are not in any position of expertise in these matters. The burden of proof rests firmly with you. It is not for me to disprove all this stuff you're digging up, it's for you to prove it. If you continue to add poorly referenced material articles, they will have to be considered vandalism. Do you want to tell me how you might be in some way qualified to make these additions, or are my suspicions well founded? — Gareth Hughes 15:11, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I respect some of what you do, but your language skills come across at the level of spelling flames. Egyptian and Akkadian are historically antecedent to Canaanite, and Hebrew, in the latter case by millenia.

Where you say "I don't actually believe that you know the manuscript evidence for your claims" most of what I read is indeed not found in manuscripts, but rather on clay tablets and inscriptions carved in stone. I do read some things that are written on papyrus and exist only as fragments, but I have very little familiarity or expertise with manuscripts dating from the middle bronze age in languages other than Egyptian.

[The http://www.ethnologue.com/family_index.asp Ethnologue language family index] establishes the relationship. As you refer to yourself as an Anglican I extract from that that you are a believer, and you accept the POV of your beliefs as something that can be taken on faith, rather than requiring any sort of proof. I don't respect that POV.

Citing sources, even with an occasional failure to spellcheck, is not original research. My expertise is in standards of measure for which my claim to expertise is my status as a registered architect who has studied various dimensions of ancient languages and archaeology while exploring sites on the Arabian penninsula.

Your failure to recognize my area of expertise just demonstrates the shallowness of abilities to research a topic and your own lack of respect. If nothing else my interest in my area provides a familiarity with its standard reference works.

My small library of books and magazines may not be as narrowly focused as your own and they are supplimented to some extent with original research within my area of expertise such as field notes and cad drawings of field measures from ancient sites, but that is allowed given my credentials.

As a registered architect my licensure requirements incude a requirement for contined education and as I remain interested in the development of architectural proportions I study ancient languages to see how they refer to their measures. I measure and photograph the masonry coursing of buildings and have looked at how people count in thousands of languages.words for 1-10 I will grant you I have only been doing that for 35 years, and I'm still illiterate in more languages than I speak, but I usually don't mistake IE or Afroasiatic languages for Semitic ones.

In the process of obtaining my expertise I have noted that some words are borrowed from language to language for millenia with easily tracable changes. One reason for that in the case of standards of measure is that they define property. The Greeks in particular, appropriated the concepts of earlier civilizations especially as regards, mathematics, science, history, natural philosophy, and the standards of their measure. That includes their land measure and the forms of their contracts and treaties as regards property and its metes and bounds. Bodies of water, rivers and watersheds tend to be the bounds of lands. River measure, days sail and days march tend to be systematically related as common ways of defining distances. Its elementary that our term for the area we refer to as the Red Sea comes from the Greek word Erythrean, not the Hebrew word Yam Suph. Nahraim refers to rivers (plural rather than dual) in both Afroasiatic Egyptian and Semitic languages.

Generally if I want to know more about a word I think might be written in an ancient Semitic language I go look it up in Bartleby's semitic roots If I want to find out something about a detail in a text ("For ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath, and a homer of seed shall yield but an ephah") I might go to a concordance. If something is proto semitic I might go to John Heise's Akkadian site. I have frequent reference to Gardiner, Faulkner and Loprieno, Luraghi and Thompsen, and various online grammars, dictionaries and discussions of other languages such as those of John Heise and John Halloran. I have in the past compiled comparative lists of words for building materials and practices from Akkadian, Elamite, Old Persion, Egyptian, Arabic, Sumerian, Hungarian, Greek, English, Latin and other languages. I read and translate ancient texts and compile references to them. My first Semitic language was oil field Arabic. To be honest I have probably read more about Egyptian grammar than Greek, Latin, or the romance languages. My knowledge of my native English is so informal and careless as to allow frequent typos and mispellings.

I am sure that as a professional linguist you have much more linguistic experience in all of the above than I do, but then I define experience as already having made all those mistakes before. Frankly I find a lot of what I read in standard reference works very unsatisfactory and in tremendous need of a better explanation.

I consider the automatic placement of every toponym mentioned in the Bible in the category Hebrew language unencyclopedic. I don't know whether its correctly labeled WP:OR or WP:NPOV to put such a contentious template on every page, but its certainly worth some discussion as to why you persist in doing that kind of vandalism and reverting references to speculations.

Some toponyms are Afroasiatic, some more specifically Egyptian, some clearly Akkadian and Caananite, some are IE Hittite or Greek and a few are unclassified Hurrian or Sumerian. I have yet to see you refer to any of those language categories, but if an article doesn't cite why a toponym should be considered Hebrew then that template should be removed. If an article cites Josephus or Diodorus or any of the other iron age equivalents to Graham Hancock or Zacharia Sitchen then it should be given equal weight and deleted.Rktect 13:24, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

I find it offensive that you cite my religious background as a reason for my being biased. That argument holds no water. It is also clear from your edits that you have no formal expertise in this area. Your claim about Akkadian and Egyptian being the source of the Canaanite languages is not supported by any evidence. And, no, Ethnologue does not support it either. Your resort to Bartleby clearly shows that your approach is amateurish. Comparative word lists are widely rejected by linguists as evidence for genetic relationships. However, they were used in Victorian-era philology. The method has been shown to be inaccurate in determining linguistic history. Ancient toponyms, whose primary reference is in Hebrew, should be refered to in terms of that language first. The application of connexions with Egyptian or other names is secondary, however well researched, because they draw on material that is not of first instance, but inferred from the primary reference in a Hebrew text. — Gareth Hughes 10:31, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

No offense to your religion is intended, just the observation that as a believer you don't require proof, but rather take things on faith. That applies to all believers. Everything you believe is a bias against an alternative. The bolded text for example, is one of the most ludicrous statements I have ever seen. Ancient toponyms have references in ancient languages, the task you have chosen to avoid is looking them up.

The Amarna letters reference those toponyms in Akkadian. The Egyptian campaign accounts reference them in Egyptian.

Speculations as to what they mean in Hebrew is simply irrelevant, especially when you are talking about something that has been translated into Greek before it was translated into Hebrew. Bael Zephon for example uses Semitic Baal (god) with Greek Zephyrus (mild west wind). Red Sea is English for Erythrian Sea (Red Sea in Greek), its as ridiculous to claim that the original was Yam Suph as it would be to claim the original was Egyptian wd wr, which means the great Green.

The lists of semitic roots can be extremely helpful, especially when they are compared against a list of IE roots as referenced by the concordances. If you think that is amateurish try reading Loprieno, Hiese, Thompsen, Luragi or Halloran.

If I'm wrong explain where. The ethnalouge shows the relation between Semitic languages. You will note that Hebrew is a relative latecomer so clearly not of first instance. I cited the basis of my expertise, you saw fit to ignore the fact that I have been studying this stuff longer than you have been on the planet. If you don't understand why Hebrew doesn't fly as an etmology for texts that were written millenia before it existed as a language, try reading Loprieno,(root, stem, word,section 4.2- pp 52-53; p 54 on reduplicated roots) Hiese, and Halloran or Thompsen ought to make it clear why there are studies of things like word order and sentence structure, Luragi, talking about old Hittite sentence structure is an essential in looking at the names of gods used to bind contracts and treaties. Given that morphology your claims about Hebrew, confusing IE language toponyms with semitic language toponyms are just laughable Rktect 17:06, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Modern Times

It is clearly WRONG to label modern Assyrians (aka Chaldo-Assyrians) as being Aramean, none of these people regard themselves as such, and so should not be labelled as such.

There is a pretty clear Geographic,Linguistic and to some degree Theological delineation between those regarding themselves as Aramean/Syrio-Aramean and those regarding themselves as Assyrian/Chaldean/Chaldo-Assyrian.

Geographically; those advocating an Assyrian identity are usually from Iraq, Iran, north east Syria (Hassakeh, Qamlishi etc) and south east Turkey (Harran, Hakkiri etc), and also diaspora communities who fled these places for Armenia, Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan or the West.

Linguistically; those people listed above actually speak, read and write dialects of Akkadian influenced Mesopotamian neo Aramaic, as distinct from the very different and almost extinct Western Aramaic

Theologically; the Assyrian identity is found among followers of the Chaldean Catholics, Assyrian Church of the East, Ancient Church of the East and some Syriac Orthodox (particularly in north east Syria).

Aramean identity is almost exclusive to central, western, southern and north west Syria and south central Turkey. Most of the people espousing this identity now speak Arabic, the Western Aramaic of these regions being almost extinct. Theologically, most are followers of the Syriac Orthodox, Syriac Catholic, Melkite and Maronite churches (though most Maronites are Lebanese, and reject this identity in favour of a Phoenician one). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.106.116.120 (talk) 19:00, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

The content in this section has been changed so many times, and vandalism has not been reverted. But really, this section has nothing to do here at all. Shmayo (talk) 11:13, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

"History" and "Modern times"-sections

Almost nothing written in these two sections has anything to do with the article. They should removed or rewritten. Especially the "Modern times"-section, which is only dealing with the Aramaic and Syriac languages, and some churches. Shmayo (talk) 11:03, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Did some clean up. Is it still to much offtopic? And how about the "Modern times"-section? To me, nothing in it fits here. Shmayo (talk) 13:35, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Sock edits & lead

I noticed that a lot of edits were made by blocked socks during the last two years in this articles. I will probably review some of these edits and other major changes to the first section in this articles, during the coming days. Shmayo (talk) 13:27, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

Reverted these edits by blocked sock. Shmayo (talk) 09:16, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

Readding image (removed by sock mentioned above). Only one (not a WP:RS) of the sources in the lead actually discussed Aram as a region. 2020 versions of this article did that better. I updated with a new lead and added a source. Shmayo (talk) 10:16, 28 October 2022 (UTC)