In what language was the handwriting on the wall? (Daniel 5:25)
25 “This is the inscription that was written: mene, mene, tekel, parsin
Daniel 7:1
NASB - 1 In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon Daniel saw a dream and visions in his mind as he lay on his bed; then he wrote the dream down and related the following summary of it.
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Asked September 04 2019
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Jack Gutknecht
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For follow-up discussion and general commentary on the topic. Comments are sorted chronologically.
Sydwell Mguye
Were the words jibberish?
Jack Gutknecht
One Bible scholar, S. Michael Houdmann, said, "The Bible never identifies what language the words were in." However, another Bible translation, the Net Bible, which is the one with the most notes as far as I know, said at least the last word was Aramaic.
So I assume all the words were Aramaic. I studied this Aramaic language a little while at Dallas Theological Seminary taking Hebrew, so I am going to say yes, it was Aramaic. But this language, too, had no vowels, and there were no spaces between words, making it difficult to read.
Sydwell Mguye
Perhaps Daniel interpreted what was on the wall in Aramaic since it was the language of the time. I'm not convinced that people could be called wise if they could not even read a language they knew just because it was short of some vowels.
Sydwell Mguye
In other words, "mene mene tekel parsin" was not written on the wall, but it was Daniel's interpretation of the writing on the wall.
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