The Aramaic-substrate theory notices a real fact - the Quran speaks in a late antique Semitic world - but it overreaches badly. Cognates and background parallels do not prove that clear Arabic words and narratives were misunderstood by the earliest Muslim community.
The argument at its strongest
The strongest version says this: words such as "Quran", "jinn", and "Jalut" resemble Aramaic or Syriac terms, and the Quran often engages Jewish and Christian material. So perhaps "Quran" meant a lectionary, "jinn" in Q 72 meant Jewish judges hearing a reading, and "Jalut" came from "galut", exile, or from the exilarch rather than Goliath. On this reading, later Muslims spiritualized or mythologized what were originally ordinary communal references.
That is a serious proposal in one limited sense: the Quran should be read with attention to Semitic languages and the Jewish-Christian environment of Arabia. Muslim scholars themselves never denied that Arabic shares roots with Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac, nor that some names reached Arabic through earlier languages.
What the Arabic actually supports
The problem is that "jinn" is not an isolated puzzle-word waiting for rescue by Aramaic. It sits naturally inside Arabic. The root j-n-n means hidden or covered: janin is the hidden child in the womb, jannah is a garden covered with growth, and majnun is one whose mind is veiled. "Jinn" are the hidden beings. This is not a later guess; it is basic Arabic morphology and usage.
Say, "It has been revealed to me that a group of the jinn listened and said, 'Indeed, we have heard an amazing Quran.'"
Quran 72:1
Quran 72 does not read like "Jewish judges" without forcing the text. The same passage contrasts jinn with mankind, speaks of humans seeking refuge in jinn, and presents them as an unseen moral community addressed by revelation. Elsewhere the Quran links them with devils attempting to overhear heavenly matters:
Indeed, We have adorned the nearest heaven with an adornment of stars, and as protection against every rebellious devil. They cannot listen to the highest assembly, and they are pelted from every side, repelled; and for them is a constant punishment, except one who snatches a hearing by theft, and he is pursued by a piercing flame.
Quran 37:6-10
This is not a stray "superstitious overlay" attached to one verse. It is part of the Quran's own worldview, repeated in different places and tied to its teaching about revelation, prophecy, and the unseen. A person may reject that worldview, but it is not good philology to replace it with "judges" when the Arabic context resists it.
Jalut is not the exilarch
The same applies to Jalut. In Q 2, the setting is unmistakably the story of Talut, David, and the enemy champion. The verse says plainly:
So they defeated them by permission of Allah, and David killed Jalut, and Allah gave him the kingship and wisdom and taught him from that which He willed.
Quran 2:251
That fits Goliath, not the exilarch. "Galut" means exile; the exilarch is "resh galuta", a different expression. More importantly, David killing Jalut is the narrative anchor. To make Jalut an exilarch, one must change not only a name but the whole story. The simpler explanation is that Jalut is the Arabic form of the biblical enemy known through the Semitic transmission of the story.
What this does and does not prove
The revisionist argument can establish that the Quran belongs to a Semitic world where Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Syriac shared sounds, roots, stories, and religious vocabulary. It may also help explain how some proper names entered Arabic.
It does not establish that "Quran" merely means an Aramaic lectionary, that "jinn" means Jewish judges, or that "Jalut" is the exilarch. Those claims depend on selective resemblance while neglecting Arabic grammar, Quranic context, and the earliest continuous understanding of the text. The traditional reading is not a desperate later repair; it is the reading that best fits the language, the passage, and the whole Quranic pattern.