Word: maloula
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Dates: during 1972-1972
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Only a handful of Middle Eastern communities still speak Aramaic, the language in which Jesus preached. One is the Syrian village of Maloula, most of whose 1,000 inhabitants are Christian. The roots of their everyday speech go back at least to the 10th century B.C.; Aramaic was the language of parts of the Old Testament books of Daniel and Ezra, much of the Jerusalem Talmud and of the common people at the time of Christ, when Hebrew was used principally by the upper classes. Maloula, isolated in the hills, held out for centuries against both the Moslem religion...
Some accounts credit St. Thomas with converting Maloula to Christianity. Others ascribe the conversion to a passing hermit, a fervent Christian who was horrified to discover lascivious goings-on at a Roman bath in the village and cursed the place, thereby causing the bath to collapse over the heads of the libidinous bathers. A church now stands on the site of the baths...
Still another legend has it that a woman named Takla, a follower of St. Paul, was driven into the desert by her pagan father in A.D. 45. Fleeing soldiers intent on raping her, Takla ran into the cul-de-sac of Maloula's canyon. Trapped, she raised her hands in desperate prayer to the Holy Virgin. Miraculously the mountains parted, creating a narrow passage at the top of the valley that permitted her to escape. Villagers still dip their hands in a fountain at the Convent of St. Takla, built into the rock face, in belief that the water...
Perhaps the most enduring of Maloula's legends concerns Holy Cross Day, which the village celebrates on Sept. 14. In the 4th century, the Roman Emperor Constantine, a convert to Christianity, dispatched his mother Helena to the Holy Land to search for the true cross. He also ordered the lighting of fiery beacons from Jerusalem to Constantinople to flash the joyous news if she should find it. Two of these were placed on either side of Maloula's narrow canyon. In modern times, one beacon has been tended on feast days by Melchites, the other by Greek Orthodox...
Everyone in Maloula is now bilingual in Arabic and Aramaic (which sounds roughly like Hebrew, much as Dutch, say, sounds like German). The villagers seem oblivious to the fact that they are among the last custodians of the language of Jesus. But don't they at least feel a kinship with Jesus at Christmas? "No," says Father Philipos, a Lebanese priest of the village, "the reason the language has survived is that all the surrounding villages are Moslem. A second reason is that, if the villagers speak Aramaic, others will not understand. It helps the Maloulans to keep their...
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