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• Syriac was the most important, the predominant, dialect of Aramaic across a vast swathe of the Middle East, from around 500 B.C. all the way through and beyond the times of the Crusades. Indeed, as we saw in our video lesson about Aramaic in Crusader Times, Syriac was the dialect of Aramaic in which many of the classic histories of the Crusades were written in.
• Syriac is also the dialect of Aramaic in which the Aramaic Peshitta Old Testament, the translation of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, was written in, probably either around the time of Jesus, or with its origins potentially several centuries beforehand.