Saving the Aramaic of Jesus and the Jews

Once spoken across most of the ancient Near East, Aramaic was most likely the mother tongue of Jesus. A considerable volume of Jewish literature is written in Aramaic, including parts of the Bible, Talmud, and Dead Sea Scrolls. Yona Sabar, a scholar and one of the last living native speakers of Aramaic, gives an account of the language and one of its peoples, the bygone Jews of Iraqi Kurdistan.