Kanon, tradition och konstruktion : En historiografisk analys av araméerna som vetenskapligtbegrepp

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines how the concept of aramaic is constructed and reproduced withing academic scholarship. The thesis asks how researchers across Semitic studies, religious studies and historical studies use, distribute, and reproduce the term of aramaic. The analysis draws on Foucault’s notions of discourse, episteme, and genealogy. Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence and Hacking’s notion of looping effects. These ideas are then applied to twelve texts ranging from the early twentieth century to the most recent research. The study proceeds through three themes. The first codes how the concept is used and finds that its meaning rarely stays distinct, sliding between language, people and dialect speakers in all but one of the texts. The second maps which groups are given prominence and finds a consistent emphasis on Jewish and Christian context; an emphasis partly explained bu the availability of surviving source material. The third theme examines the possible consequences of these patterns for the groups the scholarship describes. A central finding is that the same patterns recur regardless of period. A small number of older works, specially Nöldeke and Beyer, function as shared anchor points across more than a century. This stability points beyond individual choices the researchers may have and points us towards a shared framework of what counts as valid knowledge, while the limited and unevenly available sources accounts for only part of it.