Home to some of the last speakers of Aramaic, Maaloula was attacked in Syria’s civil war. Its residents are determined to rebuild–and preserve their mother tongue from extinction.

The Syrian government sent reinforcements Friday to the ancient, predominantly Christian village of Maaloula, where rebels have battled regime troops this week. Maaloula, a scenic village of about ...

What do these three locales have in common: a remote village in Syria; Sydney, Australia; and the Old City of Jerusalem? The answer is: Aramaic, a dominant language in the ancient world. Now, Jews, ...

For his cast, that surprisingly meant asking them – insisting – that they learn and become fluent in the nearly dead language that Christ and his contemporaries spoke: Aramaic. At the time of Christ, ...

A guide at St. Mark's Church in Jerusalem who moved more than a decade ago from her home in an Assyrian village in northern Iraq to work there (photo: Emily Mulder). Just a few hundred feet west of ...

The name “Jesus” is a late arrival; the man from Nazareth did not hear it in his own village. In first-century Galilee, identity was more a function of sound than writing. The economy of sound ...

In a small church north of Nazareth a group of children are reinventing the spoken tongue of Jesus Christ. "Hallelujah, blessed be the Lord," yells out one boy, 7, in Aramaic, in a manner that would ...

“So Israel’s Prime Minister was arguing with the Pope over what language Jesus spoke” sounds like the setup to a weird joke. Which, actually, it is. Lasting just a few seconds, the dustup reflects ...