Aramaic as the language of the Jewish people. In contrast, Hebrew was the holy tongue. The early witness to the period of change is the Biblical Aramaic of the books of Daniel and Ezra. The language shows a number of Hebrew features have been taken into Jewish Aramaic: the letter He is often used instead of Aleph to mark a word-final long a vowel and the prefix of the causative verbal stem, and the masculine plural -īm often replaces -īn. Different strata of Aramaic began to appear during the Hasmonaean period, and legal, religious, and personal documents show different shades of hebraism and colloquialism. The dialect of Babylon, the basis for Standard Aramaic under the Persians, continued to be regarded as normative, and the writings of Jews in the east were held in higher regard because of it. The division between western and eastern dialects of Aramaic is clear among different Jewish communities. Targumim, translations of the Jewish scriptures into Aramaic, became more important since the general population ceased to understand the original. Perhaps beginning as simple interpretive retellings, gradually 'official' standard Targums were written and promulgated, notably Targum Onkelos and Targum Jonathan: they were originally in a Palestinian dialect but were to some extent normalised to follow Babylonian usage. Eventually, the Targums became standard in Judaea and Galilee also. Liturgical Aramaic, as used in the Kaddish and a few other prayers, was a mixed dialect, to some extent influenced by Biblical Aramaic and the Targums. Among religious scholars, Hebrew continued to be understood, but Aramaic appeared in even the most sectarian of writings. Aramaic was used extensively in the writings of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and to some extent in the Mishnah and the Tosefta alongside Hebrew. Diaspora The First Jewish–Roman War of 70 CE and Bar Kokhba revolt of 135, with their severe Roman reprisals, led to the breakup of much of Jewish society and religious life. However, the Jewish schools of Babylon continued to flourish, and in the west, the rabbis settled in Galilee to continue their study. Jewish Aramaic had become quite distinct from the official Aramaic of the Persian Empire by this period. Middle Babylonian Aramaic was the dominant dialect, and it is the basis of the Babylonian Talmud. Middle Galilean Aramaic, once a colloquial northern dialect, influenced the writings in the west. Most importantly, it was the Galilean dialect of Aramaic that was most