A New Dictionary of Samaritan Aramaic

Abstract

Abstract Samaritan Aramaic was the spoken and literary language of the Samaritan community in Eretz Israel in the first millennium C.E. until it was replaced by Arabic. The major literary remains of the dialect are a Targum to the Pentateuch, liturgical poetry, and a collection of midrashim. Tal's dictionary is the first attempt to organize the vocabulary of these texts, and his work should be commended. Unfortunately, in spite of the long period during which it was written, the dictionary suffers from a variety of defects which make its use difficult for the reader: Order of entries by roots; only partial use of English as target language along side Hebrew; inconsistencies in translation of quotations in parallel entries; inordinate number of errors in orthography; insufficient use of existing dictionaries of other Aramaic dialects.