An Aramaic inscription from a mosaic floor of a synagogue in Tiberias from the fourth century is read then translated by Professor Eric Meyers (0:36).

Aramaic, an ancient language thrust into the public ear this year by Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," was what one scholar called "the English of the ancient world." But researchers now worry that aspects of Judaism and Christianity are being overlooked by academics who are proficient only in other ancient languages.

The summer seminar is taught by Duke professor Eric Meyers, director of the Graduate Program in Religion; University of Wyoming professor Paul Flesher, president of the International Organization of Targumic Study; and Duke professor Lucas Van Rompay, director of Duke's Center for Late Ancient Studies. It is funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Without knowledge of Aramaic, Flesher said, "you can't really understand the period during which the people of the Old Testament were living; you can't understand the period following that; you can't really understand what's going on in Palestine in the first century during the time of Jesus."

Flesher said the language had widespread use in the Middle East and southwest Asia from approximately 700 B.C. to A.D. 700. It was the official language of the Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian empires before breaking into local dialects in Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia. (Today it is spoken by an estimated half million people in the Middle East and Semitic diaspora.)

"One of the major debates over the last 10 years has been the extent to which Jesus was familiar with Greek language, Greek culture and Greek philosophy," said Meyers, who sees Jesus as a typical Jew of his time, primarily speaking Aramaic and learning in Hebrew. "The language issue is at the very core of this."

Aramaic is also important in biblical archeology, said Meyers, who has worked on such digs for more than three decades. He estimates that more than a third of all inscribed artifacts discovered from the era of Roman rule of Palestine, in which Jesus lived, are in Aramaic.

As an example, Meyers cited the recent controversy over the ossuary purported to have held the bones of Jesus' brother James. Its authenticity is doubted, in part, he said, because the Aramaic inscribed on it is typical of a period much later than Jesus'.

Van Rompay said, "Judaism and Christianity had a common origin, and in Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia their adherents also spoke the same language. It's this interaction between Judaism and Christian that is one of the foci of our seminar."

The seminar allows the participating fellows to take advantage of the expertise of instructors and guest lecturers, as well as Duke's Divinity School Library, to examine the cultural and historical significance of Aramaic texts.

"It's as if there's a whole new corpus of literature opened up when you know Aramaic," said fellow Madeline Kochen, who recently received her doctorate from Harvard University.

During the seminar, she is examining Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Bible from the first centuries (called the Targums) to better understand how Torah laws, written much earlier, are later interpreted by rabbis in the sixth-century Babylonian Talmud.

Another fellow, David Rensberger, a professor of New Testament at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, is studying a second- or third-century Syriac letter, written from a father captured by Roman soldiers to his son in northern Syria. Rensberger said the letter helps elucidate how Greek philosophy spread through the Middle East.

Fellow Tony Perry said proficiency in Aramaic will help him prepare to teach Hebrew Bible courses because parts of it -- including sections of Daniel and Ezra and a passage in Jeremiah -- were originally written in Aramaic.

Other ancient texts important to the history of Christianity or Judaism were also originally written in dialects of Aramaic, including some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a portion of the Jewish Midrash commentaries and biblical translations and commentaries by the early church in Syria.

The seminar also touches on a more modern issue: the use of Aramaic in "The Passion of the Christ."

In a session on "What language did Jesus speak?" the three co-instructors agreed that archeological evidence, surviving manuscripts and Jesus' 18 Aramaic words recorded in the New Testament indicate that Jesus, indeed, spoke Aramaic. But they took issue with the particular dialect of Aramaic chosen for Gibson's movie, Syriac, because it likely emerged in Christian communities in Syria after the time of Christ.

The way the dialect was rendered in the movie also drew criticism. "It's not Syriac!" Van Rompay exclaimed about the accuracy of the language presented in the movie. For example, said Van Rompay, who specializes in the dialect, Gibson's Jesus character uses the Hebrew word for "covenant," not the Syriac one.

Flesher, who had previously interviewed the movie's language consultant, explained that Hebrew or Arabic words were occasionally used to approximate Syriac Aramaic ones.

Van Rompay was unimpressed. "None of these actors," he said earlier, "not even Jesus himself [in the movie], would have passed my Aramaic exam."