RandallButh wrote:the idea that the populace first replaced Hebrew with Aramaic and then revived Hebrew is a figment of people trying to match the mistaken assumptions from the 19th century with facts on the ground.
Are you referring to mistaken assumptions about 19th century notions of romantic nationalism especially the relationship between nation-state and language? For example, the emergence of a number of literatures that accompanied the emergence of the post Othoman states especially in the Balkans?
RandallButh wrote:Aristeas (allegedly fitting the 3rd c BCE, but being written later) explicitly said that the people of Jerusalem do NOT speak Aramaic as is commonly assumed.
I can't find that reference in either Greek or English.
I can't think of a way to express that in Greek either.... Was there even a word for Aramaic in Greek. How were Hebrew and Aramaic differentiated?
[So far as I've heard that Greek doesn't have a separate word for Aramaic - reason being that Ἑβραϊστί means "What the Hebrew's speak", refering more to the people than to what we would define as "language". Modern Greek, with a new way of thinking about language, has the word Αραμαϊκά, but a word like Ἀραμαϊστί in the Koine period would mean the language of the Aramaeans - a people group's way of speaking.]