Gibson film builds interest in the ancient language

If and when the Rev. Joseph A. Fitzmyer goes to see Mel Gibson’s controversial film, it won’t be to see how the movie turns out. As a Jesuit, Fitzmyer already knows the plot.

Instead, he will be listening to what Gibson’s version of Aramaic sounds like on the big screen. The Passion, which depicts the last 12 hours in the life of Christ, will be entirely in Latin and Aramaic, with subtitles.

“I have no idea if I will be able to understand it,” Fitzmyer said. “I imagine he probably got somebody to supply him with various words in Aramaic. I want to see if it sounds intelligible.”

Fitzmyer is an Aramaic scholar. He wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on Aramaic syntax as it appeared in 5th century B.C. texts from Egypt. He has taught the language at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and has helped catalog Aramaic texts from the famous cache of 1st century A.D. texts found at Qumran near the shores of the Dead Sea in 1947, the world-famous Dead Sea Scrolls. Nearly 125 of the scrolls are in Aramaic, not Hebrew