Biblical Aramaic is closely related to Syriac Aramaic, which until recently was called Chaldaic or Chaldee, and East Syrian Christians, whose liturgical language was this dialect of Aramaic, were called Chaldeans, as an ethnic, not a religious term. Hormuzd Rassam (1826–1910) still applied the term "Chaldeans" no less to those not in communion with Rome than to the Catholic Chaldeans and stated that "the present Chaldeans, with a few exceptions, speak the same dialect used in the Targum, and in some parts of Ezra and Daniel, which are called 'Chaldee'."