Classical scholarship In the 17th and 18th centuries,
John Lightfoot and
Johann Christian Schöttgen identified and commented on the Galilean Aramaic speech. Schöttgen's work
Horae Ebraicae et Talmudicae, which studied the New Testament in the context of the
Talmud, followed that of Lightfoot. Both scholars provided examples of differences between Galilean and Judean speech. The 19th century grammarian
Gustaf Dalman identified "Galilean Aramaic” in the grammar of the Palestinian Talmud and Midrash, but he was doubted by
Theodor Zahn, who raised issues with using the grammar of writings from the 4th–7th centuries to reconstruct the Galilean Aramaic of the 1st century.
Modern scholarship Porter (2000) notes that scholars have tended to be "vague" in describing exactly what a "Galilean dialect" entailed. Hoehner (1983) notes that the
Talmud has one place (Ber. 53b) with several amusing stories about Galilean dialect that indicate only a defective pronunciation of gutturals in the 3rd and 4th centuries. Hugo Odeberg attempted a grammar based on the Aramaic of the
Genesis Rabbah in 1939. Michael Sokoloff's English preface to Caspar Levias's 1986
A Grammar of Galilean Aramaic (in Hebrew) also sheds light on the controversy that began with Dalman.
E. Y. Kutscher's 1976
Studies in Galilean Aramaic may offer some newer insights. More recently, attempts at better understanding the Galilean dialect in the New Testament have been taken up by Steve Caruso, who has spent over 10 years compiling a topical lexical reference of the Galilean dialect. Caruso has noted the difficulties of the task: {{quote|Galilean has proven to be one of the more obscure and misunderstood dialects due to systemic – albeit well-intentioned – corruption to its corpus over the centuries, involving the layering of Eastern scribal “corrections” away from genuine
Western dialect features. To this day there is no easily accessible
grammar or fully articulated
syntax, and due to the academic predisposition towards viewing Aramaic languages through an
Eastern Aramaic lens, assessing vocabulary with appropriate orthographical and dialectical considerations has proven difficult. ==Personal names==