Language of Jesus Being Destroyed by IS Radicals; Aramaic Christians Flee N. Iraq to Avoid Murder

Aramaic -- the language used by Jesus -- may soon be destroyed due to the recent establishment of the Islamic State (IS) in northern Iraq, the Newser website reports today (August 15, 2014).

Aramaic had a strong foothold in northern Iraq among Assyrian Christians, until about 200,000 of them fled the area earlier this month when Islamic militants invaded Nineveh plain and vowed to kill all Christians who did not convert to Islam.

Aramaic was once a nearly universal language spoken from Egypt to India. It thrived in the Babylonian and First Persian Empires, resisted Alexander the Great's imposition of Greek in the fourth century BC, and was spoken by Jesus when He said on the cross, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" (My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?")

Now, we may witness the deliberate extinction of the Aramaic language as a result of Aramaic-speaking Christians being dispersed by murderous Islamic radicals in the newly-established Islamic State.