“... So, even if one may reasonably understand “Chaldean” here as equaling the language of the Jewish Scripture, namely, Hebrew, it should be noted that Philo’s statement totally lacks a differentiation between the particular language of the Hebrew Bible and that of a broader Aramaic- or Syriac-speaking realm. [...] Such a lack of differentiation is also reflected—but this time polemically rejected—in the second source to be related to in this section, the second-century b.c.e. Letter of Aristeas. In the beginning of the letter (Ar. 3, 11), the author criticizes those in his intended Jewish audience who believe that the Torah was written in Syriac, arguing instead that its language is Hebrew. Whatever the actual ability of the Hellenistic Jews to distinguish between the two closely related languages, Philo’s Life of Moses and the Letter to Aristeas witness for both the possibility that Aramaic and Hebrew would remain undifferentiated in Diaspora Jewish perception and the possibility that under certain circumstances the polemically charged differentiation would become instrumental for Jewish identity building. ...”