c. 2004 Religion News Service

KOCHI, India _ Every Saturday night, six old men crowd together on a wooden bench in a damp church foyer with pens and notebooks. Some are small-time traders, some retired clerks. Two of them are over 60 years old. Some take notes while others throw queries at the Rev. Raphael Rappai, a 63-year-old priest tutoring them.

Topic of study: Aramaic, the language many believe Jesus Christ used.

This motley language class in Thrissur district in Kerala state in southern India has proved a new lease on life for Jesus’ language here ever since the release of Mel Gibson’s film “The Passion of the Christ” on May 9.

Gibson’s blockbuster film employed Aramaic _ with English subtitles _ to re-create dialogue between Jesus and his disciples.

“They know by learning Aramaic they get nothing materially,” Rappai said. “Yet their desire to learn the language of Jesus is intense. I’m an old man and wanted a sabbatical and tried to dissuade them. But my students were adamant,” he said with a loud guffaw.

“It has some magic, this language,” said Rappai, who learned Aramaic from a visiting Assyrian Malpan, or tutor, back in 1956. “I think it’s the way it’s spelled out, the style and accent of the ancient language. With more students coming in, I’m afraid my sabbatical will have to wait for long.”

Kerala has the largest number of Christians in the country. Scholars believe the use of Aramaic-Syriac dialect here began with migration of Christians from the Middle East to Kerala during the third and fourth centuries.

In the following centuries, colonialists led by the Portuguese began to translate the liturgy into Latin, which gradually led to the demise of Aramaic. The situation is now being slowly reversed by Gibson’s film, albeit on a modest scale.

“Since the release of Gibson’s film, nearly 50 persons wrote e-mails or rang me up to buy my book,” said Mar Aprem Mooken, metropolitan of the Chaldean Syrian Church of the East, one of the smallest but most ancient Christian communities in India.

“This is wonderful. The film will do only good to the language,” said Mar Aprem, the author of 62 books, including “Teach Yourself Aramaic,” a grammar guide to the language.

While the first edition of his book took 13 years to sell 500 copies, boxes containing 2,000 copies of his second edition released in 1993 are nearly empty. He is now preparing a third edition.

In recent years, proponents of the language found it difficult to propagate Aramaic. But they got a boost when Mahatma Gandhi University, one of India’s prominent academic centers, launched an Aramaic wing for its language department.

“Several people called up here asking for crash courses on Aramaic,” says the Rev. Jacob Thekkeparambil, director of St. Ephrem Ecumenical Research Institute at Kottayam. “Once we get a quorum of 20 students, we launch such quick courses. Yes, I guess Gibson’s film is bringing in fresh students for us.”

The institute, the only one of its kind teaching Aramaic in the country, now has about 15 students attending its two-year postgraduate course. Since its inception in 1985, as many as 500 students have graduated able to read and converse in simple Aramaic.

“Many are lay people and more from laity are coming in,” Thekkeparambil said. “Semitic languages were in touch with our Dravidian languages in the subcontinent from as early as 52 A.D. when St. Thomas is believed to have come here. Malayalam, our native language, has several words in use which are pure Aramaic.”

Nearly 9 million Kerala Christians in seven Catholic denominations follow Syrian traditions of liturgy. “We have made some incredible contributions to Aramaic literature, especially in the genre of poetry. Poems of Mar Aprem Mooken in Aramaic are some of the best ever written in that language,” said Thekkeparambil, a scholar in Aramaic liturgy.

Services in Keralan churches were held in Aramaic until 1959 when the first Aramaic-Malayalam bilingual Bible came out. Even now, the Chaldean Syrian Church of the East holds many prayers during its two-hour-long Sunday services in Aramaic.

“Obviously many don’t understand those prayers. But they still prefer to attend Aramaic services,” said Mar Aprem, metropolitan of the church. “That’s the magic of Aramaic.”

KRE/PH END NEWTON