was originally spoken by the ancient Middle Eastern people known as Aramaeans.It subsequently became the official language of the Achaemenian Persian dynasty (559-330 BCE), though after the conquests of Alexander the Great, Greek displaced it as the official language throughout the former Persian empire.The mass deportations of people by the Assyrians and the use of Aramaic as a lingua franca by Babylonian merchants served to spread the language, so that in the 7th and 6th centuries BCE it gradually supplanted Akkadian as the lingua franca of the Middle East.It was most closely related to Hebrew, Syriac, and Phoenician and was written in a script derived from the Phoenician alphabet.Jesus and the Apostles are believed to have spoken Aramaic, and Aramaic-language translations (Targums) of the Old Testament circulated.