Continue of Core of Jewish People Part II

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

      Judah then included Benjamin and Simeon from north and south

I left off with the separation of the tribe of Judah's land from the other 10 northern tribes due to King Solomon's taxation that his son didn't want to follow which included an enforced labor program in order to build the Temple, which was his main goal left over from his father, David, who had to continue being a fighter and not a builder.  

                                                       Israel 

Jeroboam had led the separation and now was king from 933-912 BCE of Israel.  18 more kings followed him until King Hoshea who ruled from 730 or 732 -724 or 721 BCE when captured by Assyria.    

 Hoshea had conspired against King Pekah (735-730 BCE), had assassinated him and seized the throne.  Assyrian sources relate that Hoshea ascended the throne with Assyrian help, his kingdom being confined to the surroundings of Mt. Ephraim.  Eventually he rebelled against Assyria and was imprisoned by Shalmaneser who then besieged and captured Samaria (11 Kings 12:1-6)

In 721 BCE, Assyria's Sargon annexed the country and deported 27,290 Israelites to Assyria and Media and replaced them with Syrian and Babylonian prisoners.                                              

Judah was led by King Rehoboam, son of Solomon from 933-917 BCE.  11more kings followed until King Ahaz who ruled from 735-720 BCE., son of Jotham (740-735 BCE);  his kingdom was attacked by Israel and Syria, while the Edomites and Philistines harried his southern territory. 

 The prophet, Isaiah was in opposition to him seeking the aid of Tiglath-Pileser of Assyria who of course invaded Syria and Israel in 733 BCE.  Judah became an Assyrian vassal and was subjected by Ahaz to Assyrian idolatry.  

It was in 721 BCE that Assyria's King Sargon, son of Tiglath-Pileser, attacked the 10 northern tribes, now states and took away 27,290 Israelites to Assyria and Media and replaced them with Syrian and Babylonian prisoners.                

King Hezekiah ruled from 720-692 BCE.  He had supported the revolt of Ashdod in 715 , but on the accession of Sennacherib in 705, when Sargon died,  an uprising broke out throughout the Assyrian Empire, and Hezekiah reasserted his independence. Judah was soon ravaged, Hezekiah held out, bartered and was able to pay tribute and cede some territory.  He freed religious worship from Assyrian influence, purged the palace and Temple of images and pagan altars, and renewed the pure monotheistic religion.  Prophets supported him, especially Isaiah who wielded great influence in affairs of state.  

Manasseh was then king from 697-638 BCE.  He was exiled to Assyria in 652 as a result of complicity in a plot against Ashurbanipal (669-26).  After this time, Assyria declined rapidly and was succeeded by BABYLON.  

                         Nebuchadnezzar admonishing Zedekiah

King Amon ruled from 638-637 BCE, and after him were 5 other kings of Judah, ending with King Zedekiah  who ruled  from 597 to 586 BCE., son of Josiah, originally named Mattaniah but adopted Zedekiah when appointed king by Nebuchadnezzar to succeed the exiled Jehoiachin (598-597 BCE). 
Solomon's Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE

In 598 was the siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians.   He ascended the throne at the age of 21 and swore allegiance to Nebuchadnezzar;  refused early on to join an anti-Babylonian coalition of neighboring kingdoms but in 594 visited Babylon.  In his 9th year he conspired with Egypt, so Babylonians invaded and captured Jerusalem.  Zedekiah was overtaken when running away, brought to trial;  his sons were killed in front of him and his eyes were then put out and he was imprisoned in Babylon until he died (Kings 25; Jer. 52).  

Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylonia(604-561 BCE) attacked Judah in 597 and again in 586 BCE. when he destroyed Solomon's Temple. 

He exiled 7,000 Jews to Babylon (Mesopotamia). This group of Jews joined the Jews from the 10 tribes, making a large Jewish population of which many remained here even after Cyrus II King of Persia , who overran the Babylonians gaining Eretz Yisrael;  permitted a return to Jerusalem.   Several cities were now entirely Jewish.  

The story of Queen Esther, married to King Ahasureros, comes along here with Mordecai, a Benjamite  being an official, had his niece, Hadassah, enter a beauty contest for the king who wanted a new wife.  He had banished his first.  Hadassah won the contest and changed her name to Esther.  Esther overheard of a plot to kill all Jews coming from Haman and told the king, so had to confess that she was also Jewish.  The king really loved Esther, and was angry at Haman.  He had him hung along with all his sons to put an end to such a thing, which, by the way, had already started in his empire in another section.  This event turned into the holiday of Purim.  Queen Esther of the Jews was given the name Hadassah at birth, which is a Hebrew name meaning "myrtle". Her name was later changed to Esther, which is believed to be of Persian origin, possibly meaning "star" or related to the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, when she became queen. The change in name was likely to conceal her Jewish identity, as Mordecai advised her not to reveal she was Jewish when she was chosen as a candidate for queen

It wasn't till 538 BCE when Jews were allowed to return to Jerusalem from their capture with permission from Cyrus II and rebuild their Temple.  They regarded Cyrus as a Divine agent.  He was thought to also be the son or grandson of Esther.  

The rebuilding of the Second Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem spanned from 538 BCE to 516 BCE, according to Wikipedia. The project was initiated after Cyrus the Great, the Persian king, allowed the Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple. While the basic structure was completed in 516 BCE, according to Wikipedia, construction and expansion may have continued until around 500 BCE. 

After 538 BCE, Judah was no longer ruled by its own kings. Following Cyrus the Great's conquest of Babylon, the region of Judah (also known as Yehud Medinata) became a province within the Achaemenid (Persian) Empire. The Persian rulers appointed governors, often Jewish, to administer the territory. Prominent figures during this period include Sheshbazzar who laid the Temple foundation and took care of Temple vessels, and Zerubbabel, who led the return of some exiles from Babylon and oversaw the rebuilding of the Second Temple. 

Following the Achaemenid (Persian) Empire, the territory of Judah came under the control of the Seleucid Empire as part of the broader Hellenistic period after Alexander the Great's conquests. The Seleucid Empire existed from 312/311 BCE to 63 BCE. It was founded by Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander the Great's generals, following Alexander's death and the subsequent fragmentation of his vast empire. The empire's territories initially encompassed a large swathe of the former Persian Empire, including Mesopotamia, parts of Anatolia, and Central Asia. It eventually declined due to internal conflicts, external pressures from rivals like the Ptolemaic Kingdom and the Parthians, and ultimately ended when the Roman general Pompey conquered Syria in 63 BCE, turning it into a Roman province.  This period followed the Persian rule and preceded the Hasmonean dynasty, which gained independence through the Maccabean Revolt. 

The Hasmonean dynasty ruled Judea from 140 BCE to 37 BCE. This period follows the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire and includes a time of semi-autonomous rule within the Seleucid Empire, followed by expansion and increasing independence. 

Resource:

Edited: 8/11/25, 6:26am

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

Tanakh (Bible) Stone Edition

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_captivity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sargon_II

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_captivity#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20book%20of,from%20521%20to%20516%20BCE.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achaemenid_Empire#:~:text=Alexander's%20death%20marks%20the%20beginning,of%20Triparadisus%20in%20321%20BC.

https://www.moon.com/travel/arts-culture/jerusalem-history-first-second-temples/#:~:text=During%20the%20First%20Temple%20period,Babylon%2C%20when%20he%20conquered%20Jerusalem.

Our DNA Jewish Bottleneck

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                 

                                                         Assyrian Logo

Haplogroup J1-M267, commonly found in Jewish populations, has a complex history and is associated with both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewish lineages. While not exclusive to Jewish people, it is a significant haplogroup within the Jewish community, particularly among those with priestly (Cohen) ancestry. The haplogroup's origins are traced back to West Asia, with some branches migrating south to the Levant and Arabian Peninsula.  

       By the River of Babylon  the Biblical Psalm 137:1–4, a hymn expressing the lamentations of the Jewish people in exile following the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 586 BCE: Previously the Kingdom of Israel, after being united under Kings David and Solomon, had been split in two, with the Kingdom of Israel in the north, conquered by the Assyrians in 722 BC which caused the dispersion of 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel.

Ashkenazis and Sephardis came from the same source before 70 CE when Jerusalem was not only occupied earlier by the Romans but attacked by them as well, taking slaves and burning down the Temple.  Jews were not allowed re-admittance later upon pain of death.  It was for the Romans, and then all the conquering people who came after them.  The remaining Jews scattered to Spain and became the Sephardis; while the others were either taken or perhaps had already been in Germany on trading expeditions, becoming the Ashkenazis.  I wondered since a few "Rabbis" had been fore-warned and left Jerusalem earlier if they didn't lead their followers to Spain. Again, some may have been there before, on trading trips and knew it was a place to find refuge.  Then again, some found refuge in nearby communities of land in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, etc.   

Assyrians were pretty close to the kingdom of Judah, formed after King Solomon died with his son, Rehoboam (933-917 BCE) as the next king.  Zedekiah was the last king (597-586 BCE)

 The Assyrians attacked the state of Judah and took the 10 northern tribes away in 721 BCE. Sargon had annexed the country and deported 27,290 Israelites to Assyria and Media, replacing them with Syrian and Babylonian prisoners.  That's the ancient kind of deal heads of state made in those days.

What did these Syrian and Babylonians do to become prisoners, I wonder?  Were the trophies of war by Assyria, too?  Why weren't they kept by the Assyrians?  Why did the Assyrian Sargon want our Judeans?  All these thoughts run through my mind, as now, we have new people in the place of ours.  How did that ever work?  

Then, 124 years later,  Nebuchadnezzar of the Babylonians attacked in 597 BCE and again in 586 BCE.  He exiled 8,000 of the local aristocracy to Babylon in 597 BCE, captured Jerusalem,  and destroyed the Temple of Solomon.

These are the people we Jews came from;  those who remained in Judah including a few from Benjamin and Simeon and these prisoners brought in by Sargon and by Nebuchadnezzer.   Our state among a group of 12 others, all related to each other from the very origin had been a tribe of 12 brothers.  We Jews were from Judah, a few from Benjamin and a few from Simeon.  Mostly we were Judeans.  Jerusalem is in Judah.  We Jews are the indigenous Judeans remaining from quite a bottleneck of DNA. 

Some Jews were allowed back to Judah from Babylonia by the king, a possible grandson of Queen Esther.  Not all wanted to return, however.  They were the ones who were willing to repair the Temple and take their life back of what their grandparents had.  They would have been some of the spilled bottle of DNA returning.

 King Cyrus the Great of Persia was responsible for ending the Babylonian Captivity and allowing the Jewish exiles to return to their homeland in Judah. This occurred in 538 BCE, shortly after Cyrus conquered Babylon, after 48 years of captivity.   (Update 11:09am) and again at 4:16 pm.  

                                    

Many of us have already taken DNA testing proving our heritage.  Our Cohens are J1.  My father, a son of 2 Ashkenazi Jews, was not.  His Y line was Q1b1 that graduated to be QBZ67.  That line came originally from Siberia and Mongolia areas, then connected up with the Native Americans sometime back of North and South America, but our line veered into the Middle East and Judah at some point.  I'm not sure if we made it as becoming the "others" who remained with the family of Jacob in Egypt during their 400 years or not, but they became a Jewish line.  I am related to Rashi, as discovered on an ancient genealogy of a 3rd cousin as well as even matching up with Netanyahu's mother's Mtdna line and all my 1st cousins of 100% Jewish parentage.  

J1 and J2 are found in the Cohens who are a major large group of Jews today and come from Aaron, brother of Moses. It started in Western Asia. They are found towards the middle of this chart who showed up in our history with Aaron, who was a little older than Moses (1391-1271 BCE).  (see below), being a little more than 3,000 years ago.   It's been found that most Cohens, people with this title as a surname, or actual Cohens serving in this capacity in the synagogue which is divided into the Cohens, Levites and Israelites, are J1 or J2.  I just found out that a Hochfeld has been a Cohen in the synagogue all his life, and just recently had been tested.  Sure enough, he was a J1, also labeled as J-M267.  Fathers have been telling their sons that they are Cohens and what the duties are that are expected of them.  Evidently it's worked through this oral tradition, handed down from Aaron  well over 3,000 years ago.  J's actually started 48,000 years ago.  Aaron was a newbee on the J tree.  

The Torah has been proven true through the haplogroup, for Arabs also bear the J1 haplogroup as well, with a slightly different tag ending on this scientific label showing its unique history.  

An Arab friend of mine also smitten by DNA testing is J1c3d, I believe it was, same as many Jewish J1.   J1-M267 is the major haplogroup of the Arabs.  Beduins of Kuwait carry the highest amount. Then there are the  Arab Bedouins that carry a very high percent  of J.

J1 haplogroup is found to have arisen 10,000 to 15,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, and Abraham was born only about 4,000 years ago. He is mentioned in Genesis, living in about the 2nd millennium BCE. His father was Terah and was unhappy with his life in Ur in about 2,000 BCE. and left Ur, which was part of the Sumerian civilization. Besides Jews, Arabs, Armenians and Kurds are found in this haplogroup. Interestingly, Kurds are still living in Iraq, even though Saddam Hussein gassed many of them. Kurds have the closest dna to most Jewish men.  The highest frequencies are in Iran and Iraq. It was carried by traders into Europe, Central Asia, India, and Pakistan. Most likely traders could have been Jews, who became involved in such endeavors.

Update: 4/29/14:  There is a J1c3 which seems to be the oldest found.  It used to be called J1e,   In the website-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Victar/Haplogroup_J1c3_(

Y-DNA), they said that 30% of Yemenite Jews have the

 haplogroup of J1c3 or P58, as it is also called. As I see it, J1c3

 was the original or oldest, going back 9,000 to 10,000

 years J1c3d is a subgroup of it.  The J1 SNP of L859 tells if you are an Arab Hashemite.

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2018/11/our-male-haplogroups-and-when-they-were.html

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_J_(Y-DNA

 https://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-haplogroup-we-be.html   *****

A Plague Almost 3,000 Years Ago Turned Back Jerusalem's Enemy

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

Jerusalem was under siege in 701 BCE by the Assyrians, yet they suddenly turned back.  Why?  

 Yes, a plague likely struck the Assyrian army during the siege of Jerusalem in 701 BCE: In the Bible, the angel of the Lord killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in the night, forcing Sennacherib to break camp. The Babylonian historian Berossus wrote that a plague devastated the Assyrian army.                             

Sennacherib, until 689 BCE, was busy fighting with Elam and Babylon.  The kings of Phoenecia and Israel, led by Hezekiah (720-692 BCE) , rose in revolt, Sennacherib,  the Assyrian, invaded  Judah in 701 BCE.  he captured 46 cities but not Jerusalem.  He took many prisoners.  A plague broke out in his camp, causing him to retreat.   

In 720 BC, the Assyrian army captured Samaria, the capital of the northern Kingdom of Israel, and carried away many Israelites into captivity. The virtual destruction of Israel left the southern kingdom, Judah, to fend for itself among warring Near-Eastern kingdoms. After the fall of the northern kingdom, the kings of Judah tried to extend their influence and protection to those inhabitants who had not been exiled. As they were about to lose a battle with Sennacherib, the Assyrians were hit with a terrible plague that ended their war.  

Although Judah was a vassal of Assyria during this time and paid an annual tribute to the powerful empire, it was the most important state between Assyria and Egypt.  Hezekiah didn't pay  during the plague, though. 

It is more difficult to know the role of disease in biblical times. One area where it may have had an impact is the Assyrian war led by Sennacharib against ancient Judah in 701 B.C.E. Though the Assyrian armies were mighty, and conquered most of the kingdom, they departed after a siege of Jerusalem, without invading and destroying the city. In the biblical account (2 Kings 18), an angel killed many of the soldiers, and so they departed. 

Could it have been some form of flu-virus, like COVID?  It's mutating now, and people are still catching it.  Being angels were thought to be the cause, that means they had no way of seeing the cause, I would think.  Suddenly soldiers were getting ill and dying.  It sounds like WWI's plague.                                       

The 1918 influenza pandemic, also known as the Spanish flu, was a plague that affected the U.S. Army and other armies during World War I: The virus originated in Kansas and was likely carried to Camp Funston by young men leaving the area for military service. The virus spread through the Western Front in France, Germany, Austria, and the Slavic nations. Soldiers constantly moved between camps across the country, which helped the virus spread. The pandemic killed an estimated 50,000 U.S. soldiers, and may have killed up to 100,000 soldiers overall. It also rendered millions of soldiers ineffective.  The pandemic shortened World War I, and it's unclear if it had an impact on the course of the war. However, the cessation of fighting in the fall of 1918 may have prevented battle casualties from exceeding the deaths from influenza. The pandemic also had a significant impact on the U.S. population, infecting over a quarter of the population and killing about 675,000 people.

Herodotus wrote  the army was overrun by mice, a possible reference to mouse-borne diseases.   Some Biblical scholars take this to an allusion that the Assyrian army suffered the effects of a mouse- or rat-borne disease such as bubonic plague. More recently, historian William H. McNeill speculated that cholera, due to lack of access to fresh water, weakened the soldiers. He felt this may have saved Judaism from annihilation, and thus also saved the still-fledgling concept of monotheism.

The Antonine Plague, also known as the Plague of Galen, was a severe epidemic that struck the Roman Empire between 165 and 189 CE. It's believed that soldiers returning from fighting in the Near East brought the disease to Rome. The plague is thought to have been smallpox, based on the skin eruptions that appeared on the body. 

The Antonine Plague had a devastating impact on the Roman Empire, affecting the economy, military, and population. It's estimated that the plague killed between 5 and 10 million people, which was about 10% of the empire's population. The plague is thought to have contributed to the decline of the Roman Empire, and some historians believe it may have even hastened the empire's collapse.  

Resource:

https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2023/07/how-assyria-in-721-bce-took-over-10.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian_siege_of_Jerusalem#:~:text=Herodotus%20wrote%20that%20the%20Assyrian,disease%20such%20as%20bubonic%20plague.

https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/ancient-cultures/daily-life-and-practice/plagues-pandemics-and-biblical-history/

https://www.kumc.edu/school-of-medicine/academics/departments/history-and-philosophy-of-medicine/archives/wwi/essays/medicine/influenza.html

ARAMAIC- Yesterday's International Language

 Nadene Goldfoot                                 

    "There seems to be a misconception that Aramaic isn't a Jewish language. The Talmud is largely composed in Aramaic, with the exception of the Mishnah which is written in Early Rabbinic Hebrew. There are also the Targums, or Aramaic versions of the Hebrew Bible as well as the Jastrow Aramaic Dictionary, all of these can be accessed on the Sefaria database of Jewish texts. The Dead Sea Scrolls are in Aramaic and even parts of the Hebrew Tanakh contain Aramaic phrases and words. The books of Daniel and Ezra are mostly composed in Aramaic.

Some traditions even argue that Aramaic was the language of the patriarchs, even though evidence suggests that Abraham in particular probably would have spoken Akkadian since neither Hebrew nor Aramaic existed back then." Aramaic originated in the ancient region of Syria, and quickly spread to Mesopotamia and eastern Anatolia where it has been continually written and spoken, in different varieties, for over three thousand years.   Several modern varieties, the Neo-Aramaic languages, are still spoken by Assyrians, and some Mandeans and Mizrahi Jews (Jews that never left the Middle East).                           

 Mandaeans are a closed ethno-religious community, practicing Mandaeism, which is a monotheistic, Gnostic, and ethnic religion (Aramaic manda means "knowledge," and is conceptually related to the Greek term gnosis.) Its adherents revere Adam, Abel, Seth, Enosh, Noah, Shem, Aram, and especially John the Baptist.

This is the Syriac Script, similar to Aramaic of Aram (Syria)  People of Aram were of Semitic Tribes who invaded the Fertile Crescent in the 2nd half of the 2nd millennium BCE, same time as Abraham.  The Israelite patriarchs were of Aramaic origin and kept ties of marriage with tribes of Aram.  (Gen.10:22).  

There are people who have used the Syriac Script since the 1st Century CE.  The Syriac alphabet  writing system was used by the Syriac Christians from the 1st century CE until about the 14th century. A Semitic alphabet, Syriac was an offshoot of a cursive Aramaic script.  Who used Aramaic?  

                                                       

                                Both the top and underneath are Hebrew                      

   Modern Hebrew alphabet  

It was used by the Jews, (but not the Samaritans). 

                                                     

The Samaritans have continued to use this  Paleo-Hebrew script for writing Aramaic and Hebrew texts to this day.  

 Jews  adopted the Aramaic language as their vernacular and started using the Aramaic alphabet even for writing Hebrew, displacing the former Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. (The modern Hebrew alphabet derives from the Aramaic alphabet, in contrast to the modern Samaritan alphabet, which derives from Paleo-Hebrew). The letters in the Aramaic alphabet all represent consonants, some of which are also used as matres lectionis to indicate long vowels.

 Daniel 6:16: “The king spake and said unto Daniel: “Thy God whom thou serves continually, He will deliver you.” 

 Using Hebrew letters to write Aramaic This portion of the Book of Daniel was written in Aramaic which is very difficult to translate into another language.  The writer uses a strange word for serve.  The word in Aramaic is palak which in a noun form means a millstone.  In its verbal form it means to grind or cut up into pieces.  It is possible that what King Darius is referring to is Daniel’s fanaticism, the God that you have ground yourself up into or maybe, the God who has ground you up into little pieces

Certain portions of the Bible—i.e., the books of Daniel and Ezra—are written in Aramaic, as are the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds. Among the Jews, Aramaic was used by the common people, while Hebrew remained the language of religion and government and of the upper class.  Though only about 1% of the Hebrew Bible is written in Aramaic, those are some important passages.

Hebrew and Aramaic are also languages used in the Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of nearly a thousand manuscripts discovered in caves in the Judaean Desert during the middle of the 20th century. About 80% of the Dead Sea Scrolls are written in Hebrew, and about 17% of them are written in Aramaic. There are also a few which are written in Greek.

 Jesus and the Apostles are believed to have spoken Aramaic, and Aramaic-language translations (Targums) of the Old Testament circulated. Aramaic continued in wide use until about 650 CE, when it was supplanted by Arabic.

The most important Aramean kingdom in Syria in the 10th-8th centuries BCE, called after its capital, Damascus, (in Heb: Dammesek);  a constant danger to Israel with disputes with Judah;  but joined the kings of Israel, Judah and Syria in opposing Assyrians in 853, 848, and 845 BCE.  Problems in 805, and by 733-732 BCE taken by Tiglath-Pileser, population exiled, no longer an independent state.  

The Aramaic language is connected to a historical region named Aram (Syria) where the Arameans lived. One of the main kingdoms in the region, Aram-Damascus was centered around the city of Damascus which is now the capital of Syria. When the region of Aram was conquered by the Assyrians around the 8th century BC, resettlements caused the Aramaic language to spread. This led Aramaic to gradually become an international language, spoken in many parts of the near east.  Today, there are still some forms of Aramaic that are spoken in parts of the middle east. But these modern varieties of Aramaic are considered to be endangered languages because they are not widely spoken.

The ancient Aramaic alphabet was adapted by Arameans from the Phoenician alphabet and became a distinct script by the 8th century BC. It was used to write the Aramaic languages spoken by ancient Aramean pre-Christian tribes throughout the Fertile Crescent. It was also adopted by other peoples as their own alphabet when empires and their subjects underwent linguistic Aramaization during a language shift for governing purposes—a precursor to Arabization centuries later—including among Assyrians who permanently replaced their Akkadian language and its cuneiform script with Aramaic and its script.

The Aramaic alphabet is historically significant since virtually all modern Middle Eastern writing systems can be traced back to it. That is primarily due to the widespread usage of the Aramaic language after it was adopted as both a lingua franca and the official language of the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires, and their successor, the Achaemenid Empire.  In other words, Aramaic was as commonly used as English is in today's world.  

Josephus, alive in 70 CE, the Jewish general taken by the Romans who wrote for them, originally wrote them all  in Greek, but the Latin translations became extremely popular and influential during the Middle Ages. One can presume that Greek was becoming equally as popular as Aramaic.  After annexation by the Romans in 106 CE, most of Nabataea was subsumed into the province of Arabia Petraea, and  the Nabataeans turned to Greek for written ...

The first Latin translation was printed as early as 1470.

Resource:

https://www.quora.com/If-Jesus-was-a-Jew-why-did-he-speak-Aramaic-instead-of-Hebrew

Haim Goldfus paper in Acadamia...The Syriac Inscriptions....

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://www.chaimbentorah.com/2018/05/hebrew-word-study-aramaic-continually-serve/

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Aramaic-language

https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/samaritan-pentateuch#:~:text=The%20Samaritans%20have%20continued%20to,via%20our%20Digitised%20Manuscripts%20website.

https://www.trinhall.cam.ac.uk/library/josephus/#:~:text=Josephus'%20works%20were%20originally%20written,printed%20as%20early%20as%201470.

https://vocab.chat/blog/aramaic-and-hebrew.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic_alphabet