The Aramaic Blog

David Elkington and the Lead Codices... More Rubbish...

2012-01-07T13:21:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the hiatus. Moved into a new apartment, and now the whole family has come down with a sniffle. :-P It has been madness, but more on that later...

Anyways!

So, Elkington has posted a new video that shows the codices being tested at a lab.

However, taking a close look at the codex that's being tested, it's one of those babble-text examples with little doubt.

These have been turning up in the markets of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, and other places throughout the world, each with a different absolute claim of origins and antiquity.

But here's another kicker. Elkington claims the following on his Facebook page:

Thanks to certain critics of this page, we would like to highlight a correction to a small portion of text found within a transcription of the Oxford (OMCS) metallurgical report. Whilst typing from the original copy (the scanned original is also posted on this site ) a sentence was unintentionally omitted, which has since been corrected. Please note that this has no bearing on the final conclusions of the report.

"Unintentionally" my big toe.

Dan McClellan I think put it best a long while ago:

Will Elkington argue for haplography as a result of homoioarcton? [[my note: YEP!]]Possibly, but it can be no coincidence that the edited text supports a fundamental claim that Elkington highlights and emphasizes elsewhere. Elkington has demonstrably altered the report to support his assertions. This is flagrant and egregious deception, and it shows quite conclusively that Elkington is willing to lie and to openly and transparently manipulate scientific data to make his codices appear ancient. They simply are not.

I have no doubt that this set of lab tests will say that the lead is old, as every example is made of ancient lead. However (as I'm sure I've mentioned before) ancient lead is so common that the quantity necessary to make a codex can purchased on eBay for $5. (Here's some more, too.)

However, the report is very clear that the corrosion is not ancient, and the researcher behind the Oxford report (which was the one that was altered), when asked *specifically* what he meant, he pegged the window of construction at a few decades to about 100 years.

Hardly the 2,000 years Elkington claims.

In any case, the academics are fairly unanimous (including those who are on Elkington's supposed "team"): These codices are bogus.

Peace,
-Steve

"Archaic Aramaic Bible" - Weird

2011-11-09T19:08:00.000-08:00

Over on BLT, there is a very odd modern Bible that they're showcasing with writing in "Archaic Aramaic" script.

At very first glance I thought it was written in Samaritan, but upon closer examination it seems to be lifted from the Mesha Stele (a Moabite flavor of Phoenician script). I recommend you give it a look and check out the comments. Very, very odd.

Peace,
-Steve

Jordan Lead Codices Page on The Biblioblog Reference Library

2011-09-30T18:39:00.000-07:00

On The Biblioblog Reference Library:

In early March 2011 the media reported upon an amazing discovery: Twenty to seventy codices, cast in lead, that potentially held untold secrets about early Christianity. However, from the very beginning something about the discovery appeared improper. Over the course of seven months, an informal group of Bibliobloggers (scholars and students who blog about Biblical Studies) took the time to form a private email list to investigate and discuss the objects and the people behind them. This page serves as a place to showcase their collective insights.

The current consensus is that the Jordan Codices released to date are not authentic.

Jordan Codices: Another Stamp Identified - Marcus Ambiblius' Prutah

2011-09-21T18:08:00.000-07:00

(HT to Tom Verenna)

The "weeping palm" icon was hand-copied very much like the helmet motif on Herod The Great's 8-Prutot Piece (scroll down to the animated gif), only from a poor example.

This motif is only found in one other piece in antiquity, and that is on the coins of Coponius, who was Ambiblius' predecessor (6-9 AD) with slight variation.

I was able to find a good example of a worn specimen that illustrates exactly how similar these illustrations are.

Taking everything into account (as this motif is found on plates that contain repeated, stamped text as well), this yet another strong evidence of forgery/fakery as the iconography on the Codices continues to betray itself as a pastiche of disparate eras, crudely copied en-masse.

Peace,
-Steve

Jordan Codices: More About the Altered Metallurgical Report

2011-09-14T19:14:00.000-07:00

(Lead, from Wikipedia.)

So you may be aware about how the informal group of Bibliobloggers who are putting the Jordan Codices and surrounding circumstances under the microscope recently uncovered that one of the metallurgical reports was tampered with on the Jordan Codices Facebook page. (For background, see Tom Verenna's video and Dan McClellan's post about the debacle thusfar.)

In this post, I'd like to go over what was originally stated in parts of that report with some ambiguous language clarified by the researcher who wrote it, Dr. Peter Northover, himself (of whom I am deeply grateful for taking his time to correspond with me).

When I first contacted Dr. Northover (whose late first wife, I found out, was Alison Northover, a highly respected librarian whose legacy for professional development is held today in memory by a prestigious award; it's a small world for us librarians it seems) back in late August before this was reported in the biblioblogs, I brought to his attention that his report was manipulated by the administrator of the Facebook group and quoted it for him.

I also asked him if he was familiar with David Elkington and what exactly he meant by calling the codices "not a recent production" (as that was a phrase that is emphasized by a number of the Codices' supporters).

He, at first, replied rather surprisingly that he did not know who David Elkington was and that he did not recognize the report I quoted. Although he immediately emailed me back while I was drafting my reply, saying that he was able to recall the report after thinking hard about it because, "the first stretch of text was so edited [he] didn't recognise it at all." (And frankly, I cannot blame him.)

He told me:

"I have only seen two of the codices and only one of them open and that just contained inscriptions. The trace element pattern of the lead was consistent with anciently produced lead, although there is so much of that around that it is easy to get some to re-use. [...] I understand there are some copper ones, which are a much better target for authenticity [studies], which may be why I have not seen them."

And when he got to my question about his choice of words, he revealed:

"My own use of the phrase 'not a recent production' implied that the piece I examined in detail had not been made in the last few years, or possibly decades, but I could not rule out a date of, say, a century ago or so."

This struck me as a very different timetable vis-à-vis the claims the Codices' supporters were touting. Ambiguity with, in hindsight, less than sufficient context is something that is easily preyed upon, and that ambiguous language plus a few carefully made edits was able to turn a good portion of the report's original concerns around.

He then revealed that Robert Feather (one of the earliest individuals associated with the Codices in the media) and an unnamed journalistic partner were the individuals who had commissioned the report. At my request he tried to give me an introduction to Feather via email and contacted him at the very beginning of September.

Despite Feather telling Dr. Northover in reply that he would contact me shortly, it has been two weeks and I haven't heard from him (however, I have conversed with Northover several times in that period). Yesterday I decided to try and be bold and reach out to Feather, so I sent him an email explaining who I was and that I had hoped he would contact me back.

As of writing this article, I still have not heard from him; however, I still sincerely hope that will change.

Peace,
-Steve

NOTE: Out of respect, I have withheld quoting Dr. Northover's emails in entirety until I have obtained explicit permission to do so; however, I took great care not to quote him out of context as it would be a great insult to the kindness he has shown to me in taking the time to explain his words. The reason I did this is because we discussed a number of things (don't get any ideas either, this isn't anything scandalous :-) ) that I do not believe he would like posted all over the Internet.

Do Greek Professors Know Greek? What About Aramaic Professors?

2011-09-14T11:40:00.000-07:00

A rather surprising story comes from Daniel Streett of καὶ τὰ λοιπά (HT to Jim Davila and James McGrath):

A Test for Greek Professors
In November, 2008, I presented a paper at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society on teaching Greek communicatively. As an experiment, I began my presentation by passing out a quiz for attendees to take. I’m guessing it was the first time that had ever happened! Attendance was pretty good–around 30 audience members. Here’s the quiz. See how you can do:

Write the Greek word/phrase for the following common English words or phrases:

1. Yes ______________
2. Chair or Seat ______________
3. Ball ______________
4. Cat ______________
5. Monkey ______________
6. Nine ______________
7. Red ______________
8. Cold ______________
9. Nose ______________
10. To jump ______________
Bonus: “Hello, how are you?” “Goodbye!”_______________________________

What was surprising about it is that, when all was said and done, the highest score was 2 out of 10.

My strength is Aramaic rather than Greek and I got 3 out of 10 off the top of my head ("yes" "cat" and "nose"; Jim beat me!). Like the participants of the experiment, I wager that my grasp of Greek grammar is much stronger than my memorized vocabulary.

There are only three ways to keep vocabulary in your head:

1) Read.
2) Write.
3) Speak.

As an example, doing the same test for Aramaic, I only missed #5 (as monkeys don't tend to come up very often in my line of work -- for the record it is קופא , and now I'll never forget it). :-)

So here's my addition to the challenge: Try your luck in the ancient languages you know. It's an interesting indicator.

Peace,
-Steve

Visualizing the Lead Codices

2011-09-10T21:26:00.000-07:00

When trying to explain the rather disjoint collection of stamped scripts and iconography that are found on the faces of the Jordan Lead Codices, I believe that a picture is worth a thousand words. As such, I have put together the following visualization which I believe can express to the average person (who is not familiar with the requisite linguistic and iconographic features) "what scholars see" when they look at the codices by using more familiar imagery.

Click to enlarge it, and 50 points to whoever identifies where all the component parts come from.

The level of difficulty for each piece increases from top to bottom, so stay sharp! :-)

Peace,
-Steve

eBethArké Lives & Beth Mardutho Revamped

2011-09-08T17:26:00.000-07:00

Wonderful news for everyone interested in Syriac Studies!

First, Beth Mardutho has recently been revamped with a spiffy new website with some more information about the Beth Mardutho Research Library. Jeez, I remember back when the previous version was first instated back at the IVth North American Syriac Symposium back in 2003. This update is a big improvement.

Second, the new eBethArké Syriac Digital Library is finally up and running. From what I've seen of it so far, it's running off of a DSpace install and looks quite spiffy. Since I worked on this a very very long time ago, I'm ecstatic to see that this project has risen from the ashes into something wonderful.

Peace,
-Steve

Jordan Lead Codices: The Book*

2011-09-04T23:42:00.000-07:00

And now all somebody has to do is write it.

50 points to whomever can decipher the subtitle. It's a toughie. :-)

Peace,
-Steve

*Not available anywhere.

Jordan Lead Codices: The Video

2011-09-03T11:34:00.000-07:00

Tom Verenna with his limitless and bountiful zeal has taken the time to painstakingly compile a video that outlines the current evidences against the authenticity of the Jordan Lead Codices.

This video comprises a good chunk of the collaborative research and discussion between Jim DaVilla, Dan McClellan, Jim West, David Meadows, Joel Watts, James McGrath, Tom and myself that has been going on for the past few months. Tom's efforts in making this video should be commended. :-)

Also of note, this video was censored at least a half a dozen times from the Jordan Codices Facebook page, and for screenshots of that (as well as other censored comments made by an archaeologist) take a peek at Dan McClellan's latest post.

In a bit, I'll have another post that actually goes over some clarifications that have been made to one of the metallurgical reports by the researcher who compiled it.

Peace,
-Steve

Jordan Lead Codices: Units of Forgery

2011-08-30T07:42:00.000-07:00

(Ancient Roman lead ingots. One of the most abundant metals of the 1st century.)

Introduction

As a greater number of pictures of the codices surface -- in addition to other numerous points of evidence discussed by others -- virtually every specimen revealed can be discounted as a forgery outright as we see various patterns emerge regarding their construction.

Directly to the point: Each plate thus far has shown itself to be a collage of identical master pattern "stamps" of text arranged in such a manner to make each set seem like a full document rather than a collection of component pieces.

The Pieces

Peter Davies and Dan McClellan have expounded upon this, discussing the "ornamental," repetitive nature of some of the inscriptions and the limited number of graphemes, but in this article I would like to give a bit of visual analysis and propose that the "atomic units" of these texts are in fact these full "stamps" (rather than individual words) and that their use is predictable to the point that (a) we may use them to fully "reconstruct" parts of the plates that are nearly illegible and (b) use them as a yardstick to gauge a number of facts about their manufacture.

Taking inventory of the characters on one of the clearest images of the plates to date, there is a distinct repetition in two places. Separating the sequences out, we get the following:

(Note that the ticks above the first pattern seem to be part of the same sequence, but for the sake of this article, the focus shall be upon the text, alone.)

Each place that these sequences appear we find that they are *identical* down to each grain and bump in the written strokes of the text. Given that the metallurgical analysis indicated that one of them was cast in clay (or sand cast if clay was used as the binder), it enables the strong possibility that each instance of these sequences was created by a master pattern "stamp" pressed into the casting medium.

Another possibility that can produce this same effect include hammering on the opposite side of a sheet of lead into a mold and given some photographs taken of the back sides of some of the plates, hammering may well have been used for some specimens.

(An example of the hammering pattern on the back of a plate. Note how there is evidence of text on the face of this plate that has been hammered out.)

Writing Much But Saying Little

Now, do these sequences occur on any other plates? Unsurprisingly yes, and how they appear also shows us something more:

We can see that in some of the larger plates that they are staggered in such a way to look like a unique sequence of text. This staggered pattern directly demonstrates that there is no attempt to preserve word order of the text itself. To do so, one would have to wrap each individual line until the sequence of characters was complete and this is how it appears on genuine inscriptions, no matter how messy, as it is the recording of the semantic content that is the focus of the exercise.

Because of this regularity and pattern, it demonstrates that the "stamps" are the casting unit rather than the "text" itself that is in them.

Further evidence of this are cases where "stamps" were stamped more than once on top of each other into the casting medium (in numanistics this kind of duplication is known as a "doubled die," granted that it is primarily used in the context of die casting):

Reconstruction

Finally, there are many examples of very poorly corroded plates where one can only make out only a few symbols. However, if we can match the characters we *can* see with corresponding characters in known "stamps," we find that the text matches up perfectly with both visible and partially-legible characters, showing that these plates too were cast using the same impressions in their mold.

Even on the codices that Elkington is claiming are "real" on the Facebook page we see the same stamped patterns, visible through the corrosion.

The Jordan Codices administrator writes:

This is a frontal view of the same codex. Here we can see the Tree of Life, indicative of the figure of Wisdom, but also symbolic of the Royal House of King David. The presence of Eight-pointed stars, left and right tells us that the Messiah is expected - the stars are symbols of the messiah and of the King-High Priest, Melchizedek.

However, on this plate, the two sequences I've outlined show up in a way consistent with the other plates. There are also at least two new sequences (in a slightly different hand) interspersed with them in an apparent attempt to make the same text look different, expanding it as one would use lorem ipsum.

Other Examples

Are there other examples "stamps" that we can identify shared in common amongst the other plates? Yes, several. In the following section I shall outline a few of them and expand upon this list as time permits:

(A motif taken from an Herodian coin. These two images are from two separate codex plates.)

[More coming.]

Conclusion

We can see that the text itself was not understood by the individual who created these plates, and that all of the plates we have seen so far share these identical, mass-produced elements. Given this and previous evidences previously presented by myself and others, if any of these "Jordan Codices" are genuine, they must remain amongst those that have not yet been photographed. (However realistically, hope for such a find is all but dead.)

In a future article, I will outline the disparities in handwriting between the individual "stamps" showing that each unit is not contemporaneous with its brothers and sisters, taken from different eras (another very strong evidence of forgery).

Peace,
-Steve

UPDATE Aug 31: I've added section headings to make it easier to read and have added an example from a plate displayed on the Facebook page as genuine.

Lead Codices: Sequence Lifted From John Hyrcanus I Prutah

2011-08-27T14:47:00.000-07:00

Going on the coin inscription lead, I came across a sequence of characters lifted nonsensically from the prutot of John Hyrcanus I (135-104 BC).

Peace,
-Steve

Jordan Lead Codices: DELETE! DELETE!

2011-08-23T13:21:00.000-07:00

(Is this David/Paul Elkington?)

So I've been commenting on the Jordan Codices Facebook page about the anonymity of the "experts" they were discussing, and then I had the audacity to ask the owner of it who they were...

And suddenly, all of my comments (as well as all of Dan McClellan's comments well) were deleted and we both found that we've been banned from commenting.

If I had to put my money on it (note the *if*), I'd say that Dan and I were talking directly with Elkington, himself given his mantra (both in print, and on the radio) about there are "only four or five people in the world who are familiar with [Paleo Hebrew]" -- which is absolute rubbish.

Mr. Elkington, if you're out there and reading my blog, I would not mind a bit of clarification. Comments are open below to all who are willing to put their real name to their words.

UPDATE 5:07PM: Generally I consider using far too many tabs in Firefox to be a vice of mine, however, this time it proved useful! Here are some screenshots of Dan McClellan's discussion with the owner (who I assume is Elkington) before and after he was banned, with the following response cleanup.

Click all images to enlarge.

Before:

After:

How it appears NOW:

Peace,
-Steve

Narrowing Down The Lead Codices Script

2011-08-23T10:11:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure why I did not realize this before, but I've noticed another possible source for the Lead Codices script presented thusfar (including some of the odder features, such as the omega-shaped shin):

Bar Kochba coinage.

Take a look.

Bar Kochba Revolt. 132-135 CE. AR Sela – Tetradrachm.

Bar Kochba Revolt. 132-135 CE.

This is a second century script and provided that this is a match, this means that the interpretation of the inscription under the menorah as "Elek Ba Tom" (as claimed on the codices Facebook page) would not be correct.

I'd also be curious if any of the iconography could be found on other Bar Kochba coins.

UPDATE Apr 26: According to Philip Davies' editorial:

"The list of dramatis personae is not complete, either: Robert Feather, a metallurgist who has written on the Qumran Copper Scroll, and seems first to have broken the story, has been in contact with Mr Sa‘eeda and has himself a theory that in some places the Hebrew letters on the sheets appear to stand for Bar Kochba, leader of the second-century Judean revolt against the Romans, and for the Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, who according to legend hid from the Romans in a cave for 13 years and also instituted the Kabbalah."

Curious.

Peace,
-Steve

Lead Codices: "Genuine" Forgeries?

2011-08-23T06:31:00.000-07:00

The latest news on the Lead Codices is that the official "academic team" (who I assume has Elkington somewhere in its midst and apparently still remains anonymous -- yeah) has recently claimed the following:

Approximately two months ago, Hassan Saida, the Israeli Bedouin who smuggled the Jordan Codices into Israel, telephoned to inform the team that he and his cohorts had made 500 forgeries of various of the codices and put them into the Jerusalem market. We didn't think too much of it as he tells lots of tales; however, one of team members was sent these two photographs by someone who purchased them in Israel. To those who have seen the real McCoy, these were obvious forgeries. However, even comparing them to the posted photographs, the difference is all too apparent. Below are some observations made by one of the metal experts assisting the team. We expect more will materialise in due course.

Interesting thing about the above image that came with the release: If it is based off one of the codices, it does not resemble any of the codices released thusfar. At first glance, this one is in a much more obvious Hebrew/Aramaic-flavored script rather than the seemingly "Paleo-Hebrew/Aramaic/Coptic" mix of the others. (Something that their "metal expert" noticed as well. I wish I had a name to put to their words.)

I'm going to chew on this text a bit and see what else there is to find, and I invite others to do the same.

UPDATE 10:00AM: Joel Watts observes:

David Elkington is not letting this die – as now the Bedouin who first smuggled out the ‘Lead Codices’ is telling everyone that he has created 500 forgeries. Of course, the ‘real’ lead codices is what David has… Do you know the mental mind-flips it takes to state that that guy who is telling everyone that he has made 500 forgeries is now lying and that your copy is the only real copy?

UPDATE 10:10AM: I have resurrected the Lead Codices topic page on The Biblioblog Reference Library here and I'm in the midst of updating it.

UPDATE: 11:40AM: Jim Davila weighs in:

It looks to me as though someone is realizing that the gig is up and is trying to prolong the news cycle on these items. Could it be that the next step will be for David Elkington to announce that oops he accidentally gave Peter Thonemann one of the fake codices but the rest in his possession are genuine? Meanwhile, we have an admission that the source of the codices "tells lots of tales" and that he has the resources to produce fake metal codices.

UPDATE 11:50 AM: A second image of the "fake fakes" has been posted. This one has a script (or rather several scripts, as there are at least three sets of handwriting) much closer to the codices released thusfar, has some identical iconography, such as the coin image in the bottom left.

However, the text in these "fakes" is much clearer. I'm going to see if it can be matched up to some of the "original" lead codices and use them as a basis for getting a better look at this text.

UPDATE 9:06PM: Well, there is now very little doubt that the "real" codices and the "forgeries" were cast from the same mold. Where Tom Verenna was the first to point this out in detail, take a look at the following gif:

What you're seeing is a picture of one of the "genuine codices" sliding back and forth over the Herodian coin motif found on the bottom left corner of the "fake codex" image. The only thing I've done was keystone it to compensate for camera angle (which wasn't perfect).

As you can see, they are identical. And when I say identical I mean that it looks like a case of "they've-been-cast-from-the-same-mold identical" (or in this case, from the same impression).

I am sure that Elkington and his crew will cry out, "That's because it was taken from the original!"

I cannot help but agree: It is my opinion that they were both made using the same set of tools from the same workshop working from the same impression molds. :-) All that needs to be done now is to test the metal of these "fake codices" and compare that analysis with those of the "real codices."

I look forward to the results.

Peace,
-Steve

PS: The entire release is archived below, sourced from their Facebook page:

Approximately two months ago, Hassan Saida, the Israeli Bedouin who smuggled the Jordan Codices into Israel, telephoned to inform the team that he and his cohorts had made 500 forgeries of various of the codices and put them into the Jerusalem market. We didn't think too much of it as he tells lots of tales; however, one of team members was sent these two photographs by someone who purchased them in Israel. To those who have seen the real McCoy, these were obvious forgeries. However, even comparing them to the posted photographs, the difference is all too apparent. Below are some observations made by one of the metal experts assisting the team. We expect more will materialise in due course.

1. The holes are too clean.
2. The beige 'corrosion layer' looks like it has been sprayed on and then cleaned off.
3. The holes have raised edges and looks like they have been punched hard all together against a die with a slightly larger diameter. Not like the originals.
4. The drawing on the tree is too fine and crisp - the detailing seems wrong - it is almost like they have been cast onto a harder material than the originals. It is also possible that these have been pressed and then distorted - the best indication would be a view of the reverse of each sheet and seeing if there is variation in the thickness of the metal from casting.
5. The edges look like they have been cut round the pattern very closely - particularly the dots - not the same as the previous ones which were not cut cleanly around a pattern.
6. The format looks wrong - too long and thin.
7. The seals - look like they have been struck at the ends - like coins. I didn't see any of that before.
8. The background colour looks like it has been blowtorched - it is less rusty looking than most of the originals
9. They do not have the same build up of accretions of scale and calcium.
10. There is little or no evidence of wear or pressure based slow distortion - although there are a few damaging marks. Some of the wear may have been introduced on the mould. Unlike the originals, which looked like they were cleanly cast and then deteriorated over a long time.
11. The seals have been put on after the corrosion layer has been sprayed on and cleaned off. There should be layers of corrosion sealing them in to the surface.
12. The wires look hammer beaten - not a bad representation.
13. There are a few areas where the 'blue' of the lead shows through.

I can't see the backs but your sealed books were sealed a very long time ago and opened up to clean and shiny lead - I bet these don't.

I wonder if there are any rotational tool marks or bypass shear 'seams' along the edges where they have been cut.

The handwriting is very different and looks a bit too random. I haven't attempted to look at the symbols - although they are more ragtag. I would say that a different person did the drawings from the script - they just look different.

The 8 pointed stars have 12 or 16 points. Some of the other symbols are slightly different and may have a completely different meaning or interpretation.

I would also reckon on the metal still being malleable. Not hard, flakey and cracking. I expect they also smell and taste different. These may have been dipped in acid and coloured with mineral pigments.

OK, I might be taken in if I hadn't seen all your photos. But they don't look right to me. A good mishmash of some of the symbols and text on the photos you and others have published on the Internet.

Firefox 5 on OS X Supports Proper Syriac Connections

2011-07-28T13:22:00.000-07:00

(click to make it bigger)

Well, I was pretty surprised when I was working on a bit of Syriac-related tomfoolery when I noticed -- completely caught off-guard, mind -- that Firefox 5 for Mac OS X properly renders Syriac OpenType fonts.

I haven't tested to see if it's also the case with other OpenType fonts with character joinings, but hey that's a step in the right direction!

Peace,
-Steve

Lead Codices - The "Retraction" From BBC

2011-07-27T10:47:00.001-07:00

I know that there's been a heck of a lot of Aramaic-related stuff that I haven't blogged about as of late from Syriac question marks and printing presses, the SBL Aramaic Studies session, etc. etc.. This is mostly because I've been devoting most of my "free" (hah..) time to The Biblioblog Reference Library, but since the Lead Codices malarkey has hit the press again I somehow feel obligated to comment. :-)

So here's my comment about this latest development:

The Lead Codices have proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to be one of the biggest embarrassments to the press pertaining to antiquities that comes to recent memory. This latest article from the BBC, given the entire debacle as it unfolded, is "too little too late." Regardless of that, I seriously commend Kevin Connolly for writing it and only wish he did so sooner after the initial media blitz.

Peace,
-Steve

Biblibal Studies Geeked-Out USB Flash Drives

2011-07-03T07:27:00.000-07:00

(Image from Wikipedia)

Jim West had a brilliant idea which has inspired me and I'm off to the craft store for materials to make a mockup.

I Still Think Eisenbrauns Should Sell Customized USB Flash Drives

With some cool cuneiform on them. What would be neater? And they aren’t at all that expensive anymore (unlike in former days of old).What do you think, Eisenbrauns? Is the time right?

Eisenbrauns: Be prepared for some competition on this front as I already have an idea what will take this the "next step" further. ;-)

Peace,
-Steve

Miriam daughter of Yeshua son of Caiaphas, priest of Maaziah from Beth Imri

2011-06-29T07:10:00.000-07:00

(HT to Joel and Jim West who has the press release.)

"Israeli scholars say they have confirmed the authenticity of a 2,000-year-old burial box bearing the name of a relative of the high priest Caiaphas of the New Testament. The ossuary bears an inscription with the name “Miriam daughter of Yeshua son of Caiaphas, priest of Maaziah from Beth Imri.” An ossuary is a stone chest used to store bones. Caiaphas was a temple priest and an adversary of Jesus who played a key role in his crucifixion. The Israel Antiquities Authority says the ossuary was seized from tomb robbers three years ago and has since been undergoing analysis. Forgery is common in the world of biblical artifacts. The IAA says in Wednesday’s statement that microscopic tests have confirmed the inscription is “genuine and ancient.”"

Now the image that was released is tricky to pull anything off of due to its resolution, but I can see enough of the inscription to tentatively say it matches what they say it does. But let me see what I can do...

UPDATE: Here's what I was able to pull off at first glance:

(~~Note: Please excuse the typo. Where the illustration is correct, the transliteration should read ישוע not יושע. I'll post an updated image later.~~ Image updated.)

Of course, this is a bit of "reading into" the inscription on a low-res photo. Once higher-resolution photos are available, I could be completely wrong in portions.

UPDATE: Antonio Lombatti seems to agree with my reading here:

Recita:
מרים ברת ישוע בר קיפא כהן דמעזיה דבית עמרי
Maria, figlia di Gesù figlio di Caifa sacerdote di Maaziah di Bet ‘Imri

UPDATE: Robert Cargill has a higher-resolution image of the inscription that is much clearer than the image I had to work from and he managed a much better job sketching the text out. :-)

(click on it to expand)

Peace
-Steve

Lead Codices: British Archaeology Magazine Gets It Right

2011-06-24T16:51:00.000-07:00

Over on Unsettled Christianity, Joel noted that British Archaeology Magazine ran an article about the Lead Codices and actually got it right. The article also mentioned some of my work in connection with it, too. :-)

Peace,
-Steve

The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon is Up

2011-06-21T11:23:00.000-07:00

Blogger is behaving oddly, so I'll make this brief.

Here's the official announcement about what happened to The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon:

A Note to our users: We apologize for the unavailability of our system during the six weeks between early May and mid-June, 2011. The CAL server was struck by a hacker from an ISP in London, UK precisely on the day that Dr. Kaufman left the country, apparently simply because he or she wanted a complete copy of our online version of Sokoloff's DJPA and wanted to save the $100 for the second edition and received instead an early draft of the first edition, while totally comprimising the system. There is no indication that the identity of any of our users was looked for or their own privacy comprised in any way. The length of the delay is a direct function of the fact that we have failed to have any NEH funding renewed for many years now and the CAL continues on solely as a labor of love without any paid researchers.

If I find out who did this, it may not be pleasant.

Now off to get some queries done... :-)

Peace,
-Steve

Aramaic News About the Blogosphere

2011-06-20T09:54:00.001-07:00

I've been busy as anything the past few days, so I have not had the time to report directly about these, but here's some fresh Aramaic-related news:

Re: the Aramaic misclassification: Who in the press is checking their sources nowadays? Not as bad a blunder as some of the Lead Codices related nonsense, but it's still irksome.

Peace,
-Steve

The Jordinian Lead Codices... Expressing My Raw Feelings

2011-06-15T19:07:00.000-07:00

Sometimes a picture is the only way I can express how I feel.

But if you want more words, this is what I have to say.

Peace,
-Steve

The Jordinian Lead Codices... Again...

2011-06-15T18:33:00.000-07:00

(Kudos to Jim West for the photos.)

I have been holding back on commenting because I am getting a bit more than irked about this story and the gross oversights by both the press and the "authorities" who are handling it. Now the Jordinian Department of Antiquities has announced that, via carbon dating, they believe that the codices they have date back to the early 1st century.

Here's quick list of prominent voices over the Biblioblogosphere:

And here's my two cents, some of which I repeat and endorse from other Bloggers, and some of my own observations:

Obviously they weren't dating the plates, themselves, as you cannot carbon date lead. Why did they not use lead isotope dating? The plates are made of lead. Lead isotope dating is perfect for dating lead. Where is the disconnect?

Secondly, the more images I see of the script on the plates, the more I am convinced that it is not Hebrew or Aramaic. I'm still waiting to hear back from a few scholars who study Coptic. Perhaps now is the time to give them a poke.

UPDATE: Tom Verena has done a character chart of his own on the new images as well as analyzed the coin iconography.

Peace,
-Steve

New Aramaic Word Coined

2011-05-17T08:01:00.000-07:00

Today, my daughter helped coin a new Aramaic phrase to use in time for the mushroom hunting season:

תרנגלא דחורשא

(More info here. :-) )

With the above, this would only follow naturally:

תרנגולתא דחורשא

(More info here. :-) )

But perhaps it might be better to swap things around a bit. In the mushroom world, there is the "Chicken of the Woods" (Laetiporous sp.) "Hen of the Woods" (Grifola frondosa) and what some people call the "Rooster of the Woods" (Meripilus sp.).

Since Galilean Aramaic really has no individual word for "chicken" (only "rooster" and "hen," the latter generally used for generically referring to the species itself as a whole) perhaps it might be better to refer to "Chicken of the Woods" as תרנגולתא דחורשא, "Hen of the Woods" under its other common name "Sheep's Head" which would make it something like ראשא דאימרא (the Galilean spelling of ריש is ראש) and reserve תרנגלא דחורשא for "Rooster of the Woods."

Or maybe one could even make it even more descriptive, dropping דחורשא ("of the woods") entirely and use a compound with ערדא ("mushroom") instead...

And it is here that I find I may be over-thinking the issue. :-)

Anyways back to work with me... .

Peace,
-Steve

The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon Hacked

2011-05-05T10:03:00.000-07:00

Yep, some punk thought they wanted to spread more malware, so they found an exploit somewhere on the bowels of the CAL server and uploaded some nasty files. Since Dr. Kaufman is out of the country, it's going to take until some time after May 25th (when he gets back) to get the entire thing sorted out.

This is the second major hack against the project this past year, and the last hack resulted in the old perl implementation of DJPA being pulled down indefinitely with no replacement. With so much 20+ year old code that's up there I'm yearning to get some of the new stuff I've written up and running; however, due to a funding shortage, the entire project is kinda puttering in place right now.

If you have any emergency lexical inquiries (i.e. things that cannot wait until the CAL is fixed), feel free to send them my way via email.

Peace
-Steve

The Lead Codices: Coptic Characters?

2011-04-29T13:58:00.000-07:00

"But first, we must TEST!"

So, there's been a new development concerning the Lead Codices where the Jordinian Government apparently has seized several of them.

In the article that announced this, the Jordinian Department of Antiquities Director Ziad Saad, is quoted saying,

“There has been a debate all over the net - some think they are fakes, some think they are very genuine - but we have yet to have a definitive conclusion based on a scientific approach.”

Overall, Saad's words surprise me. There really hasn't been anyone who thinks they are "very genuine." The consensus among scholars and expert bloggers has been that they're fakes from the very beginning.

Jim Davila has already voiced his opinions about this latest development as well as a lengthy list of the evidences against it. Looking over everything, Saad's declaration of this consensus as "premature" is (in my opinion) refusing to call a spade a spade. The only shred of hope, at this point, for anything truly genuine is to investigate the pieces that haven't been photographed yet.

So here's where I'd like to share a funny thing I've been mulling over. I've come across a couple of characters on one of the plates which are certainly not Aramaic or Hebrew.

The only thing that it seems it could match would be Coptic, and if parts of this are in Coptic it would suggest that the initial claims by Elkington about their source were true (i.e. that they came from Egypt, and not Jordan).

Which would make the Jordinian Government seizing them look very, very silly.

However, since Coptic is a bit beyond my expertise, I'd love to hear some more learned opinions on this matter. :-)

Peace,
-Steve

UPDATE May 2nd: I, showing how much I actually know about Coptic, didn't get the dates right. :-)

UPDATE May 2nd #2: I've contacted a few Coptic scholars about this and I'm waiting to hear back.

Hebrew University and eTeacher Group Offer Aramaic Language via Online Program

2011-04-27T12:13:00.000-07:00

There's a new online course to learn Biblical Aramaic from Hebrew University, online:

Hebrew University and eTeacher Group Offer Aramaic Language via Online Program

The Ancient Language of Daniel's Prophecies

April 27, 2011 03:07 PM Eastern Daylight Time

JERUSALEM & TEL AVIV, Israel--(EON: Enhanced Online News)--The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and eTeacher Group announced the addition of Aramaic to its unique offering for students around the world to participate in its joint Biblical Hebrew program.
The new program builds upon the success of the Biblical Hebrew program introduced in 2007 and which now boasts students from around the world including North America, South America, Asia, Australia and Europe.

The 14 week course focuses on reading Aramaic-based texts in the Old Testament more specifically examining the Aramaic prophecies of Daniel and the sections of the book of Ezra.

So if you have an interest in Daniel or Ezra, check it out. :-)

Peace,
-Steve

Aramaic Finds in Saudi Arabia

2011-04-25T07:23:00.000-07:00

Archeological finds announced

RIYADH: The Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities (SCTA) has announced a series of discoveries of historical interest made over the last year at sites across the country.

An annual report from the SCTA’s Antiquities and Museums Research Center said explorations by a joint Saudi-German team of archeologists at the site of a village in the Tayma region of Tabuk uncovered Aramaic engravings and earthenware pots decorated in the style of similar artifacts found in Madina and usually dated to the second millennium BC.

Also in Tabuk, in the area of Kilwa, a Saudi-French team found a number of rock drawings of humans and animals, as well as engravings in the Thamudic script from pre-Islamic times. In Jarash in Ahad Rufaidah in the province of Asir, Saudi archeologists uncovered a stone town fort and containers of various types, segments of baked brick, and other artifacts from different layers of the earth dating to different periods from before Islam to both early and late Islamic times. Also found at the site were several drawings and engravings, one of the most prominent being the image of a lion killing a bull.

At Najran’s Al-Akhdoud site, a Saudi team uncovered an earthen pot containing metal coins and rings, as well as stones bearing engravings in the South Arabian Musnad script.

Surveys and digs were also conducted at Al-Ghat and Al-Quwaira in Riyadh, with findings including engravings and rock drawings, as well as in Mada’in Saleh and the Eastern Province.

The SCTA report added that a Saudi-British team conducted an archeological survey of Juba in Hail, taking aerial photographs of sites with engravings and rock drawings.

SCTA vice president Ali Al-Ghabban said the commission currently had a range of archeological digs on the go.

Read it all here in the Saudi Gazette.

Jim Davila mentions a very pertinent point:

"The second millennium BCE sounds early for Aramaic inscriptions. If the date is accurate, this would be an extremely important find. I would guess the first half of the first millennium or later to be a more likely date. Perhaps there is an error here or perhaps the pottery and the inscriptions are from different strata."

I hope to see some pictures of these finds in the news some time soon so we can all take a peek. :-)

Peace,
-Steve

Happy Easter!

2011-04-24T08:51:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter to everyone out there!

Peace,
-Steve

So Who's Making Money on the Lead Codices?

2011-04-16T22:05:00.000-07:00

So, just for fun I decided to search Amazon.com for David Elkington's book on the Lead Codices; however, instead I came across what you can see in the image above.

In short, where there appears to be a strange and overly convenient hole in the Internet where one would expect his book to exist (i.e. a number of listings, but nowhere is it "in stock"), I found that anything else with Elkington's name on it had a price that shot sky-high:

$176-$187 for his book "In the Name of the Gods."
$300-$757 for a multimedia CD on Classical Civ.

Nearly 200 bucks? What?? I found that a signed first edition copy of "In the Name of the Gods," went for 20 quid over at BooksAndRecords.

The second one I'm not even sure is the same Elkington, as it goes new for $300 from Oxford University Press.

In either case, it seems that anything that has his name on it has inflated considerably since the Codices broke to the press.

Perhaps the phantom book may yet show up somewhere? Unlikely. In the meantime, Elkington memorabilia is selling like hotcakes.

Peace,
-Steve

The Biblioblog Reference Library: Featured Articles

2011-04-16T09:49:00.000-07:00

A request for comment has gone out to figure out what a good set of categories would be for Featured Articles over at the Biblioblog Reference Library.

Peace,
-Steve

Chicago Assyrian Dictionary - From Alap to Taw

2011-04-13T20:42:00.000-07:00

Via James McGrath:

The news that the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary has been completed, and all its volumes are free online, has been shared by Charles Halton, Duane Smith, H. H. Hardy, and AWOL.

Peace,
-Steve

Introducing The Biblioblog Reference Library (Beta)

2011-04-12T09:16:00.000-07:00

And after all of this craziness in the press... and how it doesn't seem to want to stop... I am proud to introduce:

After getting a bit more than irked with the recent press coverage concerning the Lead Codices and other sensational news, one Biblioblogger decided to find a way to bring together all of the rapid research, commentary and genuine peer review that had been done by his fellow Bibliobloggers into one organized, indexed, and searchable place.

The Biblioblog Reference Library is the fruit of that brainstorming, combining over 270 Biblioblog feeds with full text search.

In the future, there are hopes to fully develop a number of specialized indexes that go over key commentary on pertinent Biblical Studies issues as well as a Press Room to aid news reporters towards getting the story right the first time.

Will this be successful? Only time shall tell. In the meantime, the care of this experiment is left in the hands of:

-The Reference Librarian

Check it out the Biblioblog Reference Library here.

Peace,
-Steve

The Lead Codices on LiveScience - And My Interview

2011-04-11T13:43:00.000-07:00

This morning I was contacted by Natalie Wolchover who is a writer for LiveScience and Life's Little Mysteries and she wanted to interview me about my script analysis of the Lead Codices. I could not be more pleased to lend my assistance. :-)

Here are links to the articles:

Early Christian Lead Codices Now Called Fakes - LiveScience
Early Christian Lead Codices Now Called Fakes - Life's Little Mysteries

Peace,
-Steve

The Lead Codices: Character Sheet

2011-04-09T23:02:00.000-07:00

(Click to enlarge. Careful, it's big!)

So I've gone over each clear picture of the Lead Codices I've been able to get my hands on, and I've compiled a table of every readable glyph with more to follow.

In summary:

Only 8 characters are shared amongst all plates thusfar. This is rather odd, given the number of characters on each plate.
Assuming it's Aramaic, it seems to be a mix of Old Aramaic, Palmyrene, and Nabatean forms, not a single known and well-established script. There may even be a bit of Samaritan influence. Where some mixture of scripts has occurred in ancient documents under rarefied circumstances (such as with the tetragrammaton amongst some of the Dead Sea Scrolls), this mix is unprecedented. Also if we were to ponder about an "Old Palmyrene" or "Old Nabatean" we'd more expect to see "Imperial" forms mixed in, not Old Aramaic forms. To me, this seems like someone was trying to make this look older but blundered the script (like others have done recently...).
There are a number of features in the stroke order that indicates that these were not written by a professional scribe (see the examples with numbers for each stroke). Scribes were taught very carefully what order to write characters in along with their shape, and it is this consistency that we are able to apply some of the principles of epigraphy to date inscriptions in the ancient world. This is a "stroke" against its authenticity that needs to be weighted with everything else.
The "Christ Head" and "Palm" plates were made by the same person / at the same time, and seem to have repetitive gibberish as the letter variety is very slim and the distribution of letters doesn't look like a natural Semitic language. Specifically on the "Palm" plate, the well-defined "words" aren't known words in any Aramaic dialects I am familiar. These are *big* strokes against their authenticity.
The "Menorah" and "Crusty Menorah" plates were made by the same person / at the same time. There are a few funky things with the distribution, but there are more "letters" than the previous pair. Several letters on the prior pair appear to be "flipped" in comparison. I would not be particularly surprised if we find these were copied from somewhere, albeit badly (badly enough that I still cannot make anything sensible out).
This is certainly not the script used on the Madaba bilingual inscription where the Greek was lifted from. That script was distinctly Nabatean. However, looking at the "Aramaic" script on the Greek plates (look at the top of the image) we find it matches the above script neatly (a *HUGE* stroke against their authenticity, as the Greek plate was proven to be a forgery). I've tried a number of times to align the text on the plates to the Madaba inscription in hopes to use it as a "Rosetta Stone" to decipher the rest of the script (i.e. match up known Nabatean characters to this script's odd variations) but so far to no avail.

Again, to reiterate: On a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 is fake and 5 is genuine, all signs point to 1.

UPDATE APR 11: I've cleaned up this post a bit and expanded the bullet points.

Peace,
-Steve

The Lead Codices: Nabatean Script Watch

2011-04-08T17:28:00.000-07:00

Daniel McClellan via Mark Chan realized that the inscription that the fake Bronze Codices came from a bilingual funerary inscription in Greek and Nabatean.

However upon examination I've determined that the Nabatean portion of the inscription does not match any of the text on any of the good quality pictures on the plates revealed thusfar (although I'm still running comparisons).

As such I am issuing a "Nabatean Script Watch" if any new photographs emerge so that Bibliobloggers keep an eye for any similarities to the above inscription. :-)

Peace,
-Steve

Call for Papers: Ancient Religion, Modern Technology Workshop

2011-04-06T20:42:00.000-07:00

Via James McGrath:

Via The Stoa Consortium, [he] learned of this call for papers:

Workshop Call for Papers
February 13-14, 2012
Brown University

The Program in Judaic Studies in collaboration with the Brown University Library’s Center for Digital Scholarship is pleased to announce plans for a two-day workshop devoted to investigating the ways in which the digital humanities has or can change the study of religion in antiquity. The workshop will take place on February 13-14, 2012, at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

We invite proposals for papers and presentations that explore the intersection of ancient religion and the digital humanities. We are particularly interested in presentations of projects that have the potential to open up new questions and avenues of research. Can digital tools not only allow us to do our work faster and more thoroughly but also enable entirely new kinds of research? How might different digital data (e.g., textual, geographic, and material culture) be used together most productively? The workshop will concentrate primarily on research rather than directly on pedagogy or scholarly communication. One session will be devoted to “nuts and bolts” issues of funding and starting a digital project.

The focus of the workshop will be on the religions of West Asia and the Mediterranean basin through the early Islamic period. Proposals relating to other regions, however, will also be considered.
Please submit proposals of up to 300 words by October 31, 2011, to Michael Satlow (Michael_Satlow@Brown.edu).

Workshop Themes

While all areas relating to the intersection of the ancient religion and the digital humanities are open, we anticipate focusing our discussions on four themes and encourage submissions that relate directly to them:

Corpus Development. While this has comprised the bulk of the effort to date, we welcome further discussion and investigation of best practices, challenges, and standards. How should data be structured?
Digital Tools. What resources that might apply to the analysis of our data already exist? Can they be easily configured to work with the data? We will be demonstrating some projects that might have applications to our data. What tools would we like developed?
Interoperability. How might data from different corpora operate together? How might data interoperability advance research?
Visions. In an ideal world, what would we like to see? What do we want to be able to do and what scholarly questions could these new approaches help to solve or open? We welcome presentations of prototypes or even mock-ups.

Workshop Accommodations

Attendance at the workshop is open to all. Travel subsidies may be available for presenters. Discounted accommodations are available at The Saunders Inn at Brown (http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/Saunders_Inn/). All workshop activities will take place within walking distance of the Saunders Inn.

For travel information, see http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Conference_Services/prov_travel.php.

Repeat after me: Abba does not mean Daddy.

2011-04-06T18:42:00.000-07:00

I'm glad to see that I am not the only person who is habitually troubled with the whole "'Abba' means 'Daddy'" meme. (Keep fighting the good fight, Doug!)

You may have heard on the Internet, or through a sermon, or even may have read in a number of books that the Aramaic word "abba" is akin to the English word "daddy."

Unfortunately, this anecdote is just as true as "the eye of the needle" being a gate in Jerusalem or a rock formation where one had to dismount their camel in order to get through. (Read: It's a myth. It's false. It's not the case.)

If you'd like to learn more, please check out my earlier post on this issue, here where everything is dealt with in greater detail.

Peace,
-Steve

"Paleography" in Unexpected Places

2011-04-04T17:32:00.000-07:00

So earlier today when I blogged about some of my findings concerning the script of the Lead Codices, I was asked via email, "[Steve,] where did you get your ability to recognize errors ancient scripts like that?"

I jokingly replied, "Well, I think it's in my blood."

To better explain what I mean I request that you, the reader, examine the as of yet unpublished inscription at the top of this post that I was recently studying. I have enhanced the image a bit to make it more readable.

As you can see, in a rather sloppy hand there is scratched out with some sharp instrument, "יומדין אית שמש בשמיין". I assume it was meant to convey, "Today it is sunny," as it literally reads, "Today there is sun in the sky." Where the letters are malformed, they exhibit all of the characteristics of an Herodian hand (perhaps arguably with a few late Hasmonean elements with the mims, but the shins look a bit stretched)... :-)

However, looking at the original photo before I enhanced it may speak more to its condition and context:

It was composed on our chalkboard by my 4 year old daughter. Not quite the way I would have rendered it, but not bad for a 4-year old with her own drive to learn Aramaic. :-)

Peace,
-Steve

Finally a Good Look at the "Lead Codices" Script

2011-04-04T06:31:00.000-07:00

Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots has been going on around these "Lead Codices" among the Biblioblogs and media (and unfortunately, the latter just isn't comparing notes with the former).

After a bit more digging here and there I finally was able to come across a picture with some of the writing on it clear enough to "read" at the Examiner (shown above).

If it was in Hebrew in "code" (as the media claims), this alphabet is completely out of place from where the codices are "supposed" to come from, not to mention that some of the letter forms are simply wrong (what appears to be gimel and lamed to me is flipped compared to other letters such as mim and nun).

UPDATE: Here's an illustration of what I mean:

(Feel free to use the above image however you like, but I'd appreciate a link back here in case anyone has any comments and so its context remains intact. :-) )

On a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 is fake, and 5 is genuine, on consideration of the script alone, I'd give it a 1.

FURTHER UPDATE HERE: Daniel McClellan via Mark Chan realized that the inscription that the fake Bronze Codices came from a bilingual funerary inscription in Greek and Nabatean.

However upon examination I've determined that the Nabatean portion of the inscription does not match any of the text on any of the good quality pictures on the plates revealed thusfar (although I'm still running comparisons).

As such I am issuing a "Nabatean Script Watch" if any new photographs emerge so that Bibliobloggers keep an eye for any similarities to the above inscription. :-)

Peace,
-Steve

Delmeh d'Kefa Arnva Cover Art

2011-04-03T12:59:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd share the draft cover art for Delmeh d'Kefa Arnva (דילמיה דכיפא ארנבא "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" in Galilean Aramaic).

Peace,
-Steve

The Satirical Use of Christian Material in the Mandaean Book of John

2011-03-31T10:59:00.000-07:00

James McGrath just learned that his paper "The Satirical Use of Christian Material in the Mandaean Book of John," has been accepted for the Aramaic Studies section at the Society of Biblical Literature 2011 Annual Meeting in San Francisco!

More on Exploring Our Matrix.

Peace,
-Steve

The Tale of Peter Rabbit in Galilean Aramaic: Hopefully by Easter

2011-03-21T16:23:00.000-07:00

Where it looks like all publishing companies who have expressed any interest in The Tale of Peter Rabbit in Galilean Aramaic have also expressed regrets that it would be impossible to get published by Easter this year, I am now in the midst of planning to follow in the footsteps of Beatrix Potter, herself.

(A picture of the privately published edition in 1901)

Not many people know that before Frederick Warne picked up Peter Rabbit as its official publisher that Ms. Potter had a private printing of some 250 books made to distribute to her family and friends. (Another neat tidbit was that among those who obtained a copy from that first run was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who bought a copy for his children.)

The first private printing was so popular that it ran out, so she had a second private printing of 500... which also quickly ran out.

Now, since there have been a significant number of individuals who have contacted me, asking when it'll be ready for purchase, I don't wish for them to be disappointed.

As such, an initial "private" first edition of 250 seems to be just about right with hope it'll be just as popular. :-)

This week I'll be dedicating to editing the manuscript and compiling the glossary, and once those two things are taken care of, I'll be setting up some means for pre-ordering.

If all goes well, I'll also be able to reach my goals for affordability, as children's books in ancient languages "ain't cheap." The Little Prince in Syriac goes for nearly $30 (yikes!), where Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in Latin goes for $25.

Peter Rabbit on the other hand (and with much negotiation on Ms. Potter's part) originally sold for a shilling. In modern currency that's roughly $10 (depending on how you calculate it) so I figure that $10 is a good enough price to shoot for. If it's not affordable, why bother?

In any case, wish me luck and there'll be more news on this front soon. :-)

Peace,
-Steve

Arshama Project: Imperial Aramaic Course

2011-03-16T12:39:00.000-07:00

And for The Aramaic Blog's 200th Post:

David Taylor over at Oxford put up a skeleton of the class he's teaching in PDFs on Imperial Aramaic. Well written and well done. :-)

http://arshama.classics.ox.ac.uk/aramaic/index.html

Peace,
-Steve

Project to Trace and Preserve Syriac Christian Texts in Progress

2011-02-20T04:23:00.000-08:00

From Aina.com:

Thrissur, India -- A project to trace, catalogue and digitise lost documents relating to religious practices, culture and heritage of Syrian Christians of Kerala has been launched by the Church in collaboration with some European universities and local historical research bodies.
"The main objective of the project is to unearth valuable 16th and 17th century documents in Syriac, which had either been vandalised or stashed away by Portuguese Missionaries in their quest for bringing the ancient Christian community of India under Papal dominance," Metropolitan Mar Aprem, Metropolitan of the Church of the East, told PTI.
As the initial result of the programme, a facsimile edition of a manuscript has been brought here after its original text was lost seven centuries ago.
According to local church historians and secular scholars, a large volume of literature concerning the Syrian Christian culture and heritage were destroyed by Portuguese Missionaries by burning after the historic Synod of Diamper, held at Udayamperoor near Kochi in 1599, which offered a last chance to non-Catholic denominations to fall in line.
[...]

http://www.aina.org/ata/20110220002332.htm

Peace,
-Steve

Happy Valentine's Day! (Now also in Mandaic)

2011-02-14T19:09:00.000-08:00

Firstly,

My colleague James McGrath composed a beautiful Mandaic poem for the annual Eisenbrauns Valentine's Day Contest and took first place!

Sadly, my entry (the Syriac Heart Pendants I've made) didn't make it this year, but I'm glad to have helped co-edit the winning entry. :-)

Next year however, James, Charles, and I may collaborate on another Mandaic endeavor and actually submit a Mandaic prayer bowl with poetry inscribed upon it, so we'll see how that goes. :-)

Secondly,

Here's a bit from the GAL010: Everyday Aramaic (Galilean) course over at DARIUS in line with the season, how to say "I love you" in early Galilean Aramaic:

Latest Lesson: Holiday: Valentine’s Day

	From a man to a woman
	From a woman to a man

If you wish to be sweet, you can also follow it up with (“with all my heart”).

Peace,
-Steve

Aramaic Peter Rabbit: Warne & Co's Copyright Bluff

2011-02-12T18:52:00.000-08:00

So today I heard back from Warne, one of the publishers I sent The Tale of Peter Rabbit in Galilean Aramaic to. Also also of note, they were the book's original publisher...

(Well in truth it's second publisher. They originally rejected Peter Rabbit when Beatrix Potter threw the idea in their way the first time, but reconsidered when they saw a self-published run, of ~250 copies, that she was distributing to her family and friends.)

Anyways, I had sent them a prospectus with all of the details of the project and the workbook I'm putting together for it asking if they were interested in publishing it themselves. They forwarded me to their editing department, and then a number of days later I received this:

From: Stefan.Davey@[.......]
Subject: FW: The Tale of Peter Rabbit in Galilean Aramaic w/Study Guide
Date: February 12, 2011 5:20:03 AM EST
To: [Steve Caruso]

Dear Steve Caruso,

Thank you for your enquiry regarding translation rights to "The Tale of Peter Rabbit".

Unfortunately Frederick Warne does not publish or distribute local language editions, instead we license the rights to local language publishers who translate and manage the distribution process of their own editions within their territory.

If you know of a publisher or an academic press that is interested in publishing a Gallilean Aramaic edition using yourself as the translator, please pass on my details. The licensing of the translation rights for a retail edition can then be discussed but royalties are payable on the retail price of the edition. Alternatively, if the translation is to be used for academic purposes a permission licence may be granted for a one off fee.

If you wish to apply for a permission licence, please send an email to the following address: [the address]@uk.penguingroup.com. You will receive an automated response containing an permission application form. Please complete the form and return it to the same email address.

Frederick Warne & Co. is the owner of all rights, copyrights and trademarks in the Beatrix Potter character names and illustrations. Translations of the works must not be published or used in any context without the prior written consent of Frederick Warne.

Kind regards,
Stefan

Stefan Davey - International Rights Director
Warne, Ladybird & BBC Children's Books
[Address]
Tel: [number]
Fax: [number]
Mobile: [number]

You can probably see right off the bat how I, as a trained Librarian, the course of whose study is to understand copyright and public domain issues was a bit more than irked.

If you don't, please allow me to explain how the above email: Where it is seemingly professional, it is a bluff.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit was originally publicly published in 1902 and Warne failed to properly register its copyright with the United States. Over 100 years later, any copyrights that could have been secured have more than expired under US Copyright law and as such, the entirety of The Tale of Peter Rabbit is in the Public Domain.

However, this has not stopped Warne from obtaining Trademarks associated with the Peter Rabbit series, including the phrases "Peter Rabbit," "The Original Peter Rabbit Books," "Peter Rabbit's" (for materials of the formula "Peter Rabbit's X", etc.) for items from cookies to toilet soaps.

They also own Trademarks on ~~two~~ several images including:

The image of Peter Rabbit running on the cover of the book (at the top of this entry).

(In court documents, Warne claims that their customers associate this above image with their firm as much as Mickey Mouse is associated with Disney. However, hardly anyone in America knows who Frederick Warne & Co. is. Americans certainly associate it with its author Beatrix Potter, though.)

And the line drawing of a coney from the title page. (Which I personally think is ridiculous, as no one associates those images with Fredrick Warne [or "Fredrick who?" I'm asked when I've discussed this with dozens of others unfamiliar with this issue]; they associate them with the author Beatrix Potter.)

Interestingly enough, they do not own the Trademark to "Peter Rabbit Farms" as that Trademark is owned by Peter Rabbit Farms, Inc. in reference to fresh vegetables.

Warne, however, does not hold a Trademark that would prevent the publication of the original The Tale of Peter Rabbit or a derivative book such as my translation (provided that I do not use ~~either~~ any of their Trademarked images).

Especially since this has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt through the courts. In Frederick Warne & Co. v. Book Sales, Inc., 481 F. Supp. 1191 (Southern District of New York, 1979) we find them admitting that, "Warne concedes that the seven works [in question, one of which includes Peter Rabbit] are in the public domain."

--

So in essence, where I made an inquiry about their company publishing my work, their representative answered a very different question in a carefully-worded manner so that I would be of the impression that I need a license from them for rights they do not own.

Don't get me wrong, they are 100% correct when they state, "Frederick Warne & Co. is the owner of all rights, copyrights and trademarks in the Beatrix Potter character names and illustrations. Translations of the works must not be published or used in any context without the prior written consent of Frederick Warne," as they *do* hold copyright to Beatrix Potter's works that *are not* in the Public Domain (such as The Tale of Little Pig Robinson), but note how they don't mention Peter Rabbit by name in this declaration.

Very deliberate.

I'm now waiting to hear back from two more publishers on this matter, so we'll see if something can still be arranged for in time for Easter.

Peace,
-Steve

Aramaic Designs Valentine's Day Special

2011-02-06T07:25:00.001-08:00

Aramaic Designs has a bunch of Syriac Heart Pendants looking for new homes in time for Valentine's Day.

They have upon them the Syriac Aramaic word for "Heart" curled around in the shape of one. :-)

Peace,
-Steve

Sid Meier's Civilization 5 - In Aramaic! ... Well part of it.

2011-01-23T16:57:00.000-08:00

So, a while back I took a rather elaborate translation job by a voice acting company who wanted to translate a large amount of dialog from English into Imperial Aramaic so that Darius The Great of Persia could speak in his native tongue for a video game. After it was done, I tried emailing them back a few times to find out how the work was used and if I could get some samples from the voice actor they used to no avail...

(Darius being a bit cocky during his introduction. :-) )

You should have seen my shock when I came across Darius speaking those very lines I translated in a YouTube video for Civilization 5 released back in September. Talk about ultimate geek street-cred.

It was a project fraught with perils that only William Fulco could understand. :-)

Darius' native tongue was Old Persian, but Aramaic was sort of his "hobby language" of which he had enough enthusiasm for to make it the official language of the western half of his empire and the vehicle of international commerce. It was a language that he, himself, did a good deal of correspondence in.

I started working from actual documents that he sent, using the greetings and partings, and for some of the more modern lines I had to get a bit creative, even re-writing them to things that were more period-appropriate. When it was all said and done, I packaged everything together in sound files to give the voice actor something to go by as well as a little pep-talk about its historical significance.

He seems to have done it justice. :-)

...

And now the ironic bit?

I'm *horrible* and I mean *absolutely horrible* at Civ... :-)

Peace,
-Steve

Peter Rabbit Almost Done

2011-01-16T08:28:00.000-08:00

So, recapping what anyone might have missed: I'm in the middle of translating The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter into early Galilean Aramaic, typeset in a printed form of Herodian script in an effort to provide reading material for my young daughter as she learns the language, herself. My students at DARIUS have also taken a liking to it and it seems to have some novelty appeal.

At this point, I nearly have all of the text of the original book completed with just a few of the most lengthy pages remaining. I have also made very minimal use of coining phrases to express modern ideas. Huzzah!

However, the most interesting question that I am facing now is, "Who would be interested in publishing this?" which I must admit is quickly followed by "Forget that, who could I possibly ask to edit or review this?" :-)

It does pose quite a problem. How many people would have the necessary experience, let alone be willing to take the time to edit or review such an odd endeavor in preparation to submit a manuscript to a publisher?

I'd also love to have someone to chew over some quandaries I've had together, such as, "Would rav or mar be more appropriate as Mr. MacGregor's title?" and "What do other people think about how I've rendered the occasional onomatopoeia?" or "In the greater context, do any of these issues actually matter?" :-)

In any case, once it's in a presentable form I'll post here again with an update. Then, onto some self-editing and making some further decisions about orthography before figuring out where to go from there.

Peace,
-Steve

The Tale of Peter Rabbit... In Galilean Aramaic

2011-01-07T20:14:00.001-08:00

I never in my entire life expected I would undertake such an endeavor, but now I find myself in the midst of translating the Public Domain works of Beatrix Potter (one of my personal heroes) into Galilean Aramaic, printed in Herodian script so that my children will have material to read.

When I'm finished with the first one, The Tale of Peter Rabbit (or in this case dêlmâ d-kêfâ ârnvâ) it's probably going to be the first available title in the DARIUS Library (perhaps even as a learning aid).

I must admit that so far it is quite the challenge, but I'm doing fairly well to keep the translation true to the whimsical nature of the original text.

Not quite ready to tackle Harry Potter yet though.... but luckily I have some time to wait. :-)

Peace,
-Steve

DARIUS Up and Running

2010-12-31T07:00:00.000-08:00

Apparently our hosting service was having trouble with one of its database servers that was hosting the DARIUS database which caused things to slow down to unbearable sluggishness.

I've since moved it over to a new server and things should be fixed.

Peace,
-Steve

100 Free Subscriptions to GAL010: Everyday Aramaic During the 12 Days of Christmas

2010-12-24T22:27:00.001-08:00

Yep, the title pretty much says it all.

Click here for the Learning Pass.

Merry Christmas!

Pass it along. :-)

(PS The enrollment glitch is fixed now, so have fun!)

Peace,
-Steve

Dr. David Taylor Teaching Aramaic at Oxford

2010-12-21T12:15:00.000-08:00

(Dr. David G.K. Taylor)

I picked up on Twitter that Dr. David Taylor (who I was fortunate to meet and talk to for a bit at the First Hugoye Syriac Symposium where he gave a fascinating lecture on Syriac printing in the 19th and early 20th-century in the Middle East) just finished teaching a class on Imperial Aramaic over at Oxford to the tune of about 40+ students. :-)

With the pending "official" release of GAL010: Everyday Aramaic (Galilean) I've been working on over at DARIUS (which has managed to attract a few students already), I'm more than thrilled to see more Aramaic language courses and classes being offered in a way that is meant to make it easier to learn and more conversational.

Perhaps I should get in contact with him and bounce some ideas back and forth. :-)

Peace,
-Steve

Announcing GAL010: Everyday Galilean Aramaic

2010-12-02T08:13:00.001-08:00

Everyday Galilean Aramaic (GAL010)

How better to get back into the swing of things than sharing a family project?

Inspired by the serendipitous find of a metal-backed classroom-sized chalkboard (who just throws out a full sized chalkboard??!), we've embarked on an old-fashioned one room schoolhouse style experiment in teaching and learning Aramaic. But which dialect of Aramaic to use? Any dialect of Aramaic we chose would functionally become a private language in the hands (mouths?) of our family. We first considered Classical Syriac (a la Kthobonoyo) as it is a well-established literary dialect with a very wide vocabulary; however, Classical Syriac is admittedly only about 5-10% of what happens at Aramaic Designs.

Most of the translations I do focus upon reconstructing Old Galilean, i.e. Jesus' Dialect) which is, needless to say, rather obscure, rather slim in attestation... and rather *dead.* Eastern Aramaic dialects are by far more common and survive to present day, where Western Aramaic dialects, like Galilean are only survived by *one* example (Ma'loula).

Nevertheless, the challenge that the idea presented seemed to be intriguing: Adapting a form of Galilean Aramaic to be an at-home language that would allow my family greater understanding of my work (and perhaps even the spark to carry it on).

So the following plan was devised:

As a matter of keeping a family routine, every day I put a short lesson up on the board (small enough to go over in 5 minutes) and we keep it in mind during the day and reward ourselves.

In these lessons, I'd devise a way to make this ancient dialect applicable to modern life while keeping as many archaic features intact as possible. There will obviously be compromises, but a working knowledge of a language in modern context (which is what a large number of our clients are after) would certainly make things easier to cast back into older literary forms in the day-to-day work that I take part in.

So, now it's been about a month of lessons based on the alphabet and phrases relevant to our everyday lives, and it's amazing how quickly my wife and eldest daughter are picking things up.

Things were going so well, that about a week ago my wife inquired why I didn't put this up on DARIUS. I still felt that there were a number of kinks to work out, and that the lesson plans were very unstructured, but after some discussion, we realized that the way lessons were progressing was more of an advantage than a disadvantage.

Despite any drawbacks, sharing this on DARIUS looked like the best thing to do, not only to promote awareness, but to see who else was interested. So, I took the time to work out a consistent orthography and a rather "have at it" approach on whatever subjects come up in daily life.

The current lesson will always be up and available on DARIUS here for free:

http://darius.rogueleaf.com/courses/GAL010

The archives with extended commentary, exercises, and questions and answers will be available to access for less than a dollar a day. Anyone can enroll in the archive here:

http://darius.rogueleaf.com/courses

Before the archive opens, I'm going to have at least a week's-worth of content ready to go, but preregistration, as well as the current day's lessons (as soon as they are posted in the morning) are both up and ready.

Tell me what you think. :-)

Peace,
-Steve

Ugh Another Long Stretch

2010-12-02T08:12:00.001-08:00

Seems like this year is getting to be a bit more crazy afterall. I have a number of updates to post, which I hope to get to soon, so stay tuned and watch this space. :-)

Peace,
-Steve

The Dead Sea Scrolls - Google Style!

2010-10-20T06:57:00.000-07:00

There's a lot of buzz on Twitter and about the web about how Google has apparently struck a deal to digitize and post the Dead Sea Scrolls publicly.

This might be enough of an excuse for me to push ahead with an appropriate "Language of the Dead Sea Scrolls" course on DARIUS.

Peace,
-Steve

Big Unicode News: Mandaic Has Arrived

2010-10-14T15:24:00.000-07:00

In between fighting off a cold and trying to keep myself getting *some* work done today, I came across a very pleasant news article about the release of Unicode 6.0: Now with support for the Mandaic Alphabet!

This brings the count of ways to express Aramaic in Unicode up to 6 (Imperial Aramaic, Hebrew, Mandaic, Phoenician, Samaritan, and Syriac).

Now it's just a matter of how long it'll take for operating systems to implement it.

Once I'm feeling well enough to pick back up with the grants I'm working on, I'm going to lay out the framework to integrate this into the translation software.

I'll also have some more to say about the resurgence of the James Ossuary in the news, but for now... must rest.

Peace
-Steve

Archbishop of Canterbury opens Tur Abdin exhibition at Southwark Cathedral

2010-09-28T11:53:00.000-07:00

In the news:

The little ancient Christian community in the mountains has been immune from Roman influence but suffered in recent upheavals which saw death or exile from beginning of the 19th century to the 1990s. The Syrian Orthodox minority now finds itself struggling with little support from the Turkish authorities.

"The Syrian Church represents a very ancient and a very rich strand in the great tapestry of Christian witness," said the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

"And perhaps most importantly to most people in maintaining the language that is closest to the language spoken by Our Lord himself across these centuries.

"I can still remember the experience of first hearing the psalms sung in Syriac and realising that was probably the same kind of sound heard by Our Lord as the psalms were sung in Aramaic in his day."

http://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/4837

Peace,
-Steve

Mandaic Book of John Project Software

2010-09-27T12:49:00.001-07:00

Today I am beginning work on the software to aid translating the Mandaic Book of John, and am using this blog post as a means to get my thoughts and design goals in order.

The original thought was using a collaborative wiki-like environment to manipulate and edit the content which can store Mandaic text in a standard transliteration for editing, but otherwise output it as images (or whatever other format we need) for viewing.

From that basic idea, for this to be a successful and useful tool, I feel it will need:

A means to store each manuscript we're working from, separately.
A means to divvy up each manuscript into workable "chunks."
A way to display each parallel chunk of the manuscript side-by-side for comparison purposes.
A means to annotate the Mandaic texts with footnotes, cross-references, and lexical tags.
A means to display the Mandaic text as images, unicode (Hebrew, Syriac, and Mandaic if it goes through) or other encodings.
A place where all members of the project can access and contribute to the English translation and tag the Mandaic texts.
A means to annotate the *English* text with footnotes, cross-references, and lexical tags.
A way that all changes are tracked and can be rolled back or reviewed.

Some other features to implement once there is enough data in the system to experiment with would be:

Automatic export features to a variety of formats (.doc, .pdf, LATEX, etc.)
Automatic concordance and lexicon/dictionary generation.
Adding in hooks for standard Natural Language Processing (NLP) libraries.

Right now I'm going to see about sketching out some potential workflows and database models and get a "toy" version working to play with.

Peace,
-Steve

Odd Aramaic Floating About YouTube

2010-09-19T18:18:00.001-07:00

Today, following one of my news feeds, I came across two very odd videos on YouTube. Here's the first one:

When I was reading the title and watching the verb forms it was going over, I began scratching my chin in puzzlement. In Imperial Aramaic, Pe'il and Pu'al forms are *extremely* rare (in fact they tend to only show up in participle forms if at all) and are not the direct passives of Pe'al and Pa'el.

The three forms this video *should* have been going over were Hithpa'al, Hithpe'el and Hoph'al.

Now here's the second one:

Among other things, notice how they use "merci" for "thanks." This immediately struck me as odd, as "merci" is distinctly French, not Assyrian Neo-Aramaic.

I would have expected "basima/basimta" or even "taude," and I was not the only one judging by the comments; however, one of the comments mentioned:

[...] One thing, though is like a little scratch to my ear."Merci' , which is used mainly by Lebanese and Iranian Assyrians. Other Assyrians, who went from Atra to different countries, like Russia, and were not subjected to Western influence, don't use it. It is French, [...]

The rest of the comments (especially on the 4th page) also reveal some interesting regional differences.

Curious. :-)

Peace,
-Steve

I Can Read Aramaic in 10 Transliterations

2010-09-18T21:34:00.000-07:00

Not quite as impressive as being able to hold one's breath for 10 minutes, I admit, but after last night re-posting a lecture about transliterating Syriac on SYR101, more transliteration antics sought me out. :-)

As those who have heard me rant about the problems with Aramaic computing, dealing with a way to store Aramaic text is an absolute nightmare of What Dreams May Come proportions.

In essence, if you're working with one or two dialects that share a script, there is little difficulty; however, if you're trying to work with the language on a broader scale, things suddenly become tricky.

Within Unicode, there are no fewer than 4 different Unicode blocks to choose from that would represent different Aramaic scripts (Hebrew, Syriac, Phoenician, Imperial Aramaic) not to mention a number of others that are either used to write some Neo-Aramaic dialects (Arabic) or are under consideration (Mandaic).

If one were to store the raw Unicode in a database, writing queries would become abominable, as none of the scripts have character equivalence (i.e. a MySQL database wouldn't know that כתב and ܟܬܒ are potentially the same word, as their character values are different).

The easiest way to get around such snags is to store language data in a standard transliteration, casting and typesetting the text into whatever script is necessary to display it (in effect letting the content be content and the script be styling, like the current trend in HTML/CSS standards).

One could make their own transliteration, but that causes your data some trouble importing it to other systems, so one of the best bets is to utilize something based upon an already accepted standard.

Generally, for Aramaic, three different "flavors" of transliteration are used, each suited towards a particular purpose.

TRANSCRIPTION OF SYRIAC:
========================
Consonants: A B G D H O Z K Y ; C L M N S E I / X R W T
Vowels: a o e i u
Diacretics: ' dot above, Qushaya
, dot below, Rukkakha
_ line under
* Seyame

First there is SEDRA encoding used to encode the Syriac Entry Data Retrieval Archive, put together by George Kiraz et al. at Beth Mardutho. It is magnificent for transliterating Syriac with its diacritical marks, but the transliteration itself is a bit odd to type and use. With such conventions as O for waw, W for shin, and I for pe, it's a bit confusing, but make a bit more sense when one realizes that they are seemingly based upon how the Syriac letters themeselves look.

Also, it's stuck to Syriac. There aren't any Tiberian vowel encodings for 'Hebrew'-script dialects, nor is there any Mandaic support.

In either case, the data contained in the SEDRA database (a lexicon to the Syriac Peshitta) is a wealth of information that is consistently encoded and tagged.

Michigan Claremont Encoding:
) B G D H W Z X + Y K L M N S ( P C Q R $ T
A F I E U : . - ] [

An earlier solution, actually, was Michigan Claremont encoding, which was a lot more "phonetic" and easier for an English speaker to encode and decode. It's only awkward features were the use of f for zqapa/qamets, and that the character + tends to get lost when typed into URLs manually (as "+" in a URL denotes a space).

Michigan Claremont is currently one of the most widely used transliterations in the field. The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon adapted it with four changes:

Most of the consonants could be written in lower-case rather than in caps.
+ (which represented teyt) was changed to T because of the aforementioned + problem.
f was changed to A under the impression that a for "short" a and A for "long" a are more intuitive.
A subset of the encoding was re-engineered so that it could encode Mandaic Aramaic (which has a very, very different script).

The only problem with these adaptations is that if you forget to query your database as a binary compare (i.e. *strictly* match the characters against their values) searches may confuse "t" and "T" to be the same letter.

For that reason when I built the Aramaic Designs database, I used a CAL code with teyt back once again to +, simply allowing for my software to escape all +'s to their appropriate URL-friendly form.

Between Michigan-Claremont/CAL and SEDRA you can account for the vast majority of transliterations within academia and fonts...

... however a newer one is very popular on the Internet, and that is the keyboard layout for the Estrangela font used on Peshitta Primacy websites, and that is what I bumped into tonight....

[However... now I must get some sleep. :-) I shall reveal the nature of the encounter once I have had more rest!]

Peace,
-Steve

SYR101 Ready!

2010-09-15T21:26:00.000-07:00

Soon an invite will be going out to all of the old active SYR101: Introduction to Classical Syriac students as everything from the backup right before the hack of the Moodle install is up and working, along with a new quiz module (which is so much easier for me to use).

New content is on its way, and once that is posted, the course will open back up again for general enrollment! :-)

But again, for now... time to rest. Zz...

Peace,
-Steve

SYR101 Almost Ready

2010-09-14T18:38:00.001-07:00

The new Quiz module on DARIUS seems to be working fine and I'm almost done importing all of the old content from the Moodle install.

Now all that needs to be done is to reformat and clean up the index page, link everything back together, and import the quizzes and if all goes well we should be ready to roll again tomorrow evening (Wednesday).

But now... sleep.

Peace,
-Steve

6th North American Syriac Symposium

2010-09-14T09:26:00.000-07:00

The 6th North American Syriac Symposium is being held at:

Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
June 26-29, 2011

Mark your calendars! The theme is magnificent, as you'll be able to read below.

Perhaps I should submit the part of my book pertaining to Syriac in popular culture? Everyone may find the rampant Ricky-Martin-Tattoo-Lord's-Prayer-Klotz-Lamsa-Peshitta-Primacy-tomfoolery entertaining.... and a bit sobering, too. :-)

The Sixth North American Syriac Symposium will be organized at Duke University on June 26-29, 2011. Held every four years since 1991, the North American Syriac Symposium brings together university professors, graduate students, and scholars from the United States and Canada (more than half of the participants) as well as from Europe, the Middle East, and India, in particular from the State of Kerala. The Symposium offers a unique opportunity for exchange and discussion on a wide variety of topics related to the language, literature, and cultural history of Syriac Christianity, from the first centuries ce to the present day.

While adopting the general template of previous symposia, the Duke Symposium will at the same time be organized in such a way that it aptly reflects current trends in Syriac studies. Additionally, it will allow Duke scholars and students to communicate to a wider audience some highlights of their research, teaching, and resources.

To serve as a general framework and organizational principle, the following theme has been chosen:

Syriac Encounters

Encounters and interactions between individuals, generations, communities,traditions, ideas, languages, and religions.

This general theme allows us to highlight various kinds of diachronic and synchronic interaction and dialogue, formation of communal identity, construction of tradition, language contact, and religious conversation both within Syriac Christianity and between Syriac Christianity and other traditions, in particular Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Islam, and various forms of Western Christianity. The overall theme is not meant, however, to exclude topics that are not directly related to it.

Depending on the response to the Call for Papers (which will be sent out in September 2010), a number of (partly parallel) sessions, each consisting of three or four papers, will be put together. These may include some of the following:

(1) Syriac Christianity in its Graeco-Roman context.

(2) Syriac Christianity and Judaism.

(3) The Syriac Bible: Old Testament, New Testament, and Apocrypha.

(4) Ephrem and fourth-century Syriac Christianity.

(5) Aphrahat and fourth-century Syriac Christianity in the Sassanid-Persian Empire.

(6) The fifth and sixth centuries and the development of separate West-Syrian and East-Syrian traditions.

(7) Syriac Christianity and Early Islam.

(8) Syriac Christianity in the 11th-13th centuries and the “Syriac Renaissance”.

(9) Syriac Christianity in the modern period and its contacts with the West.

(10) The Syriac-Christian Diaspora in the 20th and 21st century.

(11) Literary genres in Syriac Christianity, or more specifically: biblical interpretation, historiography, poetry, philosophy.

(12) Asceticism in the Syriac Christian context.

(13) Syriac liturgical traditions.

(14) Syriac in the Aramaic language family.

(15) The study of Syriac manuscripts.

(16) Art and material culture of Syriac Christianity.

(17) Syriac Christianity: continuity and transformation.

(18) New methodologies, tools, and projects.

(19) Syriac Computing (as in previous symposia, this section, or these sections, will be organized and directed by George A. Kiraz, Director of Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute).

In addition to the standard papers (20 minutes plus 10 minutes of discussion), there will be five plenary sessions, delivered by invited speakers several of whom – as was the case in previous symposia – are from Europe. At present, all five speakers have accepted our invitation; a sixth speaker, whom we invited to deliver the opening lecture, will make his decision in September. The five speakers are:

(1) Riccardo Contini, Professor of Semitic Philology, University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’, Italy.

(2) Sidney H. Griffith, Professor and Chair, Department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures, The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC.

(3) Amir Harrak, Professor of Aramaic and Syriac, Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, University of Toronto, Canada.

(4) Heleen Murre-van den Berg, Professor in the History of Modern World Christianity, especially in the Middle East, Leiden University, The Netherlands.

(5) Alison G. Salvesen, University Research Lecturer at the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford, and Polonsky Fellow in Jewish Bible Versions at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, UK.

Peace,
-Steve

ARC010 Back Up -- Onwards to SYR101!

2010-09-06T06:27:00.001-07:00

I'll be getting in contact with all of the ARC010 students tomorrow about login credentials for the new site.

SYR101's next on my list of things to get working, and once that's done, it'll be time to have some Mandaic fun. :-)

Peace,
-Steve

ARC010: The Aramaic Lord's Prayer

2010-08-29T16:22:00.001-07:00

ARC010 is almost completely transitioned over to DARIUS. I'm still tinkering with getting some of the filters to work properly, but the moment it's ready I'll be contacting everyone who's enrolled and set them back up with a new username and password.

Peace,
-Steve

The DARIUS Upgrade Commenceth

2010-08-27T21:35:00.001-07:00

I'm now working on migrating the old courses from Moodle, over to the CMS I've developed for DARIUS, and then taking the classroom modules for DARIUS live. Unfortunately with how late it is now, I fear that I might have to call it quits for the night and go at it again early tomorrow morning.

Peace,
-Steve

Featured at Rutgers

2010-08-24T14:11:00.000-07:00

It's sometimes the little things that make me smile. :-)

I've been put on the "interesting career paths" list over at the Rutgers School of Communication and Information's website.

Peace,
-Steve

John The Baptist's Remains Found?

2010-08-03T10:26:00.001-07:00

More along the Mandaic theme, some Bulgarian archeologists believe that they have "found the remains of John the Baptist." Where this was "presided over" by the Eastern Orthodox, John the Baptist is a central figure in Mandaism, and with all of the funding going out to preserve Mandaic works, I found it ironic. :-)

I honestly don't know much more about this than the video over at BBC says about it, nor the reliability of the claims.

[Remains of John the Baptist 'found' - BBC]

Peace,
-Steve

Israel Science Foundation to Fund New Aramaic Research Project

2010-08-02T13:09:00.000-07:00

Crazy how two projects I'm currently working on "converge" in such a way, between the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon and the Mandiac Book of John. :-)

August 02, 2010 via Biblical Archaeology Review

"The Israel Science Foundation will be funding a three-year research project to transcribe and study the unpublished manuscripts of the Mandaic culture. Mandaean religious texts were written in a dialect of Eastern Aramaic, which is very grammatically similar to Jewish Aramaic of the Babylonian Talmud. Mandaeans are the last surviving Gnostic religious group and can be traced back to the Talmudic period; political problems over the past few decades have threatened the continued existence of this ancient culture.

The Mandiac texts themselves will be kept in Israel, but they will be digitized through the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon Project of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio. This will be the first time the texts will be made accessible to the public. They will eventually be made into a dictionary of the Mandaic language."

Peace,
-Steve

Iraq's last Sabeans take sad New Year dip in Tigris

2010-07-20T18:14:00.000-07:00

"BAGHDAD — Sheikh Alaa Aziz was saddened by the sight of only a handful of fellow Iraqi Sabeans in simple white cloths dipping in the muddy waters of the Tigris in an ancient purification rite for their New Year. [...]
Also known as Mandaeans, the Sabeans traditionally speak a variety of Aramaic, the language of Christ."

[Read the rest here.]

Peace,
-Steve

Another Translation From My-Aramaic-Tattoo.com

2010-07-19T07:05:00.000-07:00

As long-time readers know, I am not happy with My-Aramaic-Tattoo.com.

This sentiment I feel is re-enforced every once and a while when I get emails from individuals who have ordered from their website and wish to have their translations verified. Most of what I see are, in my opinion, what I'd call "dictionary translations" -- that is to say, individual words that are looked up in a dictionary without a greater understanding of the language, itself to discern between forms.

As such, very much like with the "Tattoo eBook" they offer, I've seen rare forms of words that bear specific connotations, ambiguous forms of words that could mean one or another, words that are typeset in the scripts inappropriate to their dialect, etc.

This time, however, I have seen a translation that seems like a "dictionary translation" even moreso than before, because the manner in which it was executed was distinctly not what their customer had requested:

(Images utilized under the doctrine of Fair Use for critique and educational purposes.)

I was told by the customer that they had requested, "Love to dance" but were instead, given the above.

It is simply the two words "love" (khuba) and "dancing" (reqda; both nouns) in Syriac, not the simple verbal phrase "love to dance". Furthermore, instead of using the unambiguous word for "dance" (raqadutha [1]) they chose a word that could mean either "dancing" (reqda) or "dancer" (reqada) due to lack of disambiguating vowels.[1][2]

If either of these words were to have been used in separate context, I would not find this odd at all. However, "love, dancing" is not the phrase that was requested (i.e. "love to dance") to the point that their customer even noticed the disparity upon receipt of their order and decided to contact me.

Caveat venditor.

Peace
-Steve

NOTE: The Aramaic Blog is not affiliated with My-Aramaic-Tattoo. Statements about My-Aramaic-Tattoo and their services are opinions. Permission was granted by the customer to share their experience on The Aramaic Blog.

1) LS2 743
2) J. Payne-Smith 549.

Aramaic eBay Whoops

2010-07-06T11:35:00.000-07:00

I'm fairly sure that famous Australian surfers were *not* amongst the authors of the Christian Palestinian Aramaic New Testament. :-)

Peace,
-Steve

Why is Aramaic so Important?

2010-06-28T00:04:00.000-07:00

So in forcing myself to work harder on writing that book, I've decided to do a bit of freestyle thinking aloud on The Aramaic Blog (which after all what else are blogs for?). The bulk of the book itself is about Aramaic in modern times, how it expresses itself in popular culture and why it is such an important family of languages to study. As such, I suppose I should ponder upon the weightiest of those three topics and dive right in:

Why *is* Aramaic so important?

Usually when people answer this question, they start out with something like, "Aramaic has a history that spans over 3000 years and is one of the oldest continually written languages we have on record, blah blah blah..." which is all nice and good, except that it is the kind of dross that 1) can put you to sleep before you can say "lelya tav" and 2) because of this, it appeals to a very small group of people (mainly nerdly and academic individuals such as myself).

What I *need* to do is find a way to make it relevant for a modern readership. Find topics that engage the average individual and give them a sense of ownership towards learning more about the language on their own (in essence, pique their interest so they *want* to learn).

Again, from *this* angle, the stock answer is to say "Well it's the language of Jesus!" That tends to snap up the attention of at least ~2 billion people. But I want to interest more.

Say, "It was the tongue of the ancient rabbis and the language at the very foundation of Modern Judaism" and then you have another ~13.3 million interested.

But if you think about it, those two groups (i.e. adherents to Christianity and Judaism respectively) are the obvious ones. Every Christian has read the words "talitha koumi" or "eli eli lama sabachthani" and wondered, and every Jew has heard the Kaddish recited on various occasions. Who else can find Aramaic *important*?

Say, "Syriac Aramaic had an influence upon early Islam and Nabatean Aramaic's script is the mother of modern Arabic calligraphy," and you might make a handful of Arabic purists very upset, but you also might snag the attention of another ~1.5 billion people.

Then if you say, "Aramaic was one of the languages used to spread early Buddhism," you'll have piqued the curiosity of another ~500 million people.

Putting all of these numbers together, we can see that with our rough estimate, *~4.1 billion people* have some important connection to Aramaic that is related to their *faith* (something which is certainly of personal interest). Out of a world of roughly 6.5 billion people in total, that means that ~2/3rds of individuals upon the face of the earth have an Aramaic influence upon their religion.

This number also doesn't include other vectors for Aramaic's prominence (further writing system influences, the languages of empires that shaped the ancient world, etc.), as well as all of the minority faiths (Mandaism, Zoroastrianism, Kabalism) and even Aramaic's fractured legacy today that rests upon ~2 million Neo-Aramaic speakers.

Because of this large interest, Aramaic has also been given recent attention in the media. Between horribly mistaken tattoos obtained by foolhardy celebrities to movies such as The Passion of the Christ and truly extraordinary claims about interpreting the Lord's Prayer, and "true" meanings behind various Aramaic words, the language has developed a considerable amount of "folklore" in modern times.

But since there is so little reliable information about it which is available to the public, and the almost unbelievable disconnect and separation between Aramaic in the public sphere and the very scholars who study it, we see too many people riding upon the excitement, but failing to do their homework.

That is what I hope to influence in writing such a book. I want to bring Aramaic to the forefront so that the average layman amongst those ~4 billion people can walk away confidently with the tools they need to quench the thirst to learn more on their own.

Peace,
-Steve

Scraper Sites and Aramaic

2010-06-26T06:42:00.000-07:00

For those of you who aren't familiar with them, a "scraper site" is an automated program that roams the Internet, grabbing existing content (which is usually copyrighted) to interleave with links to products and post to a "dummy" blog in a formulated way that manipulates search engine rankings.

For some reason, they love doing weird things with Aramaic. See exhibit A:

Horrible, erroneous misinterpretation! For "Chanel" I'd expect maybe xnl or even $nl. Then again, the consonant sequence nl ("nel," "nal") is rather rare in Aramaic to begin with. Must be some sort of crazy loan. ;-)

Peace,
-Steve

Translating The "Drashia D-Iahia" - The Mandaic Book of John

2010-06-16T13:31:00.000-07:00

(That's pronounced something close to "Drash-ee di-hya," btw.)

Well, the cat is finally out of the bag with the NEH announcing the award of the grant so I can speak freely. :-)

And James McGrath is so blasted quick with his blog that he scooped me on it too! :-)

However since he put it so much better than I could, I simply must steal what he said:

The NEH has announced that it will be funding a grant proposal I [James] wrote for a project to translate the Mandaean Book of John into English. Over the next two years, the focus will be on producing a typed eclectic Mandaic text using the available manuscript evidence, and an English translation. The longer-term goal is to publish the Mandaic text and English translation in a volume that also includes commentary.

My principal collaborator on the project is Dr. Charles Häberl of Rutgers University, an expert in Semitic languages whose doctoral research and first book are on a spoken dialect of Neo-Mandaic. Also involved as a consultant is Dr. April DeConick, well known not only for her contribution to scholarship on the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Judas, Gnosticism and mysticism in antiquity, but also for her blog, Forbidden Gospels. Steve Caruso, whom you may know from The Aramaic Blog, will also be involved.

(Emphasis mine.)

In other words: This is a big deal. Not only for Aramaic geeks like me and the rest of the team, but for the Mandeans who are very quickly losing their language (Mandaic Aramaic) and culture.

My primary part in all of this (at least as of now) will be dealing with wrangling and typesetting the actual Mandaic text, for which I foresee developing appropriate fonts and typesetting tools etc., as well as creating and tending a website for the book.

In short, I can't get wait to get started! Stay tuned.

Peace,
-Steve

Interesting Quirk With "kul" in Galilean Aramaic

2010-06-03T14:39:00.000-07:00

In looking over the use of kul in Galilean Aramaic, I noticed an interesting quirk of spelling:

It is generally not plene, but plene when it takes on pronominal suffixes.

For example we see in 1025 of the 1075 examples of kul (as a noun) in the Galilean corpus of the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon:

[kl] => 587 
[bkl] => 122
[wkl] => 76
[dkl] => 45
[lkl] => 21
[mkl] => 7
[wbkl] => 4
[dbkl] => 3
[kl`mh] => 2
[wlkl] => 4 
[kl@)ymt] => 2

(The above format is [form] => attested number of times. There are a handful of examples not listed here.)

But then we see:

[kwlhwN] => 40
[kwlh] => 32 
[kwl)] => 19
[kwlyh] => 8
[kwly] => 8
[dkwl)] => 7
[kwlhN] => 6
[wkwlh] => 5
[wkwlhwN] => 5
[kwlkwN] => 4
[dkwlyh] => 3

Although there are a few exceptions, but as you can see, these are strictly in the minority:

[klhwN] => 6
[klh] => 4

I wonder if anyone else has noticed the same? Time to hit the books.

Peace,
-Steve

The Revision History of the Peshitta

2010-05-28T19:19:00.000-07:00

Peshitta Primacists: There! Indisputable proof that the Peshitta has been revised! The paper trail is extensive:

(For those of you who are familiar with the "Peshitta Primacy" movement, you may find this image as amusing as I have. :-) )

Peace,
-Steve

HAADS: A Hebrew Aramaic abbreviation disambiguation system

2010-05-28T06:07:00.000-07:00

First, I promise that I'll blog about the Hugoye Symposium soon. I've just been so busy. :-P

In the meantime, for all of you NLP enthusiasts who are also into Aramaic like me:

In many languages abbreviations are very common and are widely used in both written and spoken language. However, they are not always explicitly defined and in many cases they are ambiguous. This research presents a process that attempts to solve the problem of abbreviation ambiguity using modern machine learning (ML) techniques. Various baseline features are explored, including context-related methods and statistical methods. The application domain is Jewish Law documents written in Hebrew and Aramaic, which are known to be rich in ambiguous abbreviations. Two research approaches were implemented and tested: general and individual. Our system applied four common ML methods to find a successful integration of the various baseline features. The best result was achieved by the SVM ML method in the individual research, with 98.07% accuracy.

http://sciencia.org/stories/758882/HAADS_A_Hebrew_Aramaic_abbreviation_disambiguation_system.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencia%2FfOkO+%28Sciencia+-+Informatics%29

Peace,
-Steve

First Hygoye Syriac Symposium - Tomorrow!

2010-05-19T09:02:00.000-07:00

If all goes well, I'll be at the first Hugoye Syriac Symposium tomorrow for most of the afternoon. Look out for the guy in a dark brown corduroy vest with watch fobs and a tweed cap. :-)

If something further goes crazy with the family and I cannot attend at the last minute, I'll be logged into the online attendance system all day and on Meebo (widget's on the left) to chat.

Back a number of years ago, I coded the alpha and early beta for the eBethArké Syriac Digital Library Project, which was a hell of a lot of fun. I can only say that I'll be ecstatic to see the brick-and-mortar Beth Mardutho Research Library first-hand.

Peace,
-Steve

Yah Ribon 'Alam

2010-05-18T11:02:00.000-07:00

From PaleoJudaica (albeit a bit late from me):

Although it's a little funny to see Jewish Aramaic written in Estrangela (even when they do use Square "Hebrew" Script as well), it was overall a lot of fun. :-)

Peace,
-Steve

Picking Back Up

2010-05-18T07:20:00.000-07:00

(Getting back on the proverbial horse.)

I've been out and off this blog for the past month or so due to a death in the family, and as such DARIUS and my other projects have been on hold.

However, I'm now trying to make a concerted effort to get back on top of things and I have some fun Aramaic-related stuff to share soon. :-)

Awesome DARIUS updates, victory against hackers messing with the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon, new jewelry designs, letters to the editor, crazy tattoos, more Sunday Static, and contests. :-)

Stay tuned. :-)

Peace,
-Steve

DARIUS Project Updates - Learn Aramaic on Your iPhone or iPad

2010-04-21T23:34:00.000-07:00

Some quick updates on the DARIUS Project:

1) It will be iPhone and iPad compatible. :-)

2) The matching module will support multiple scripts per unit (for example, learn Classical Syriac in Estrangela without vowels, or Madnhaya or Serto with their appropriate vowel systems).

3) There will be games, both single player and multi-player (but more on that when there's a demo to play with). :-)

Peace,
-Steve

Aramaic Relations in Syria Strain Further

2010-04-18T07:25:00.000-07:00

"Syria is according to information received by the Society for Threatened Peoples -STP (Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker GfbV) increasing pressure on the Assyrian Aramaic language and culture. The international human rights organisation with its centre in Göttingen stated on Tuesday that the Syrian secret service has forbidden a performance of the popular Assyrian Aramaic musician, Habib Mousa, at a concert of another artist in the city of Kamishli in the north-east of the country. For the Assyrian Aramaic Christians this ban is a sign that the totalitarian Baath Party, which has ruled since 1963, is still pursuing its goal of forcible Arabicisation of the Assyrian Chaldaic and Kurdish ethnic groups", criticised the chair of the German section of the STP, Tilman Zülch. "The intention is to ensure that the Christians give up among other things their New Aramaic language in favour of Arabic." The opposition Assyrian Democratic Organisation ADO also sharply condemned the ban on the performance by the Syrian authorities."

http://www.aina.org/news/20100415195933.htm

Peace,
-Steve

"The Talpiot 'Jesus' Tomb: An Impressive New Website"

2010-04-13T10:21:00.000-07:00

Via James Tabor's blog:

There is a most impressive new website just up dealing with the Talpiot “Jesus” tomb in all of its aspects at talpiottomb.com. It is sponsored by JTERP (Jesus Tomb Education and Research Project), headed by Jerry Lutgen who works in the informatics health care field. You can read more of him as well as JTERP, its history and its purposes here. Some of my readers might remember Mr. Lutgen from his published article “The Talpiot Tomb: What are the Odds?” published at Bible & Interpretaton, that dealt with why the various studies using statistics differ so wildly in their conclusions. Lutgen also has a most interesting new study titled “Did the Set of Names from the Talpiot Tomb Arise by Chance,” which you can download at this new website.

Although I haven't had time, myself, to look over it yet, I noticed that right at the top of the page it uses my reconstruction of the inscription on the "'Jesus' son of Joseph" ossuary.

I'm always surprised at how far that image has gone, both across the Internet and in various 'popular' publications. :-)

Peace,
-Steve

PS: Huzzah! Post 150 :-)

Mandaic incantation bowl up on eBay

2010-04-08T19:19:00.000-07:00

The listing can be found here.

A rather beautiful specimen if I might add.

Peace,
-Steve

Sneak peek at DARIUS progress

2010-04-04T21:23:00.001-07:00

The foundations of DARIUS are coming along nicely. Here's a screenshot of the vocabulary builder running some dummy data:

It runs in any standards-compliant web browser and can mix and match focus and response types (for example, where the above is picture & sound -> written word, you can view the lesson in any combination).

Still lots to do, and this is only one feature. There is an entire array of social networking hooks that are going to be integrated, a large digital library of learning resources with an OCR wiki so that readers can add in notes and help make the texts more searchable, as well as a distributed hints system so that users viewing the same document can chat about it as they leaf through.

Stay tuned. :-)

Peace,
-Steve

Languishing Languages

2010-04-01T15:51:00.001-07:00

From a good article on Haaretz:

"The Jews who lived in the regions of northern Iraq on the border with Turkey, Kurdistan and Azerbaijan brought a plethora of languages to Israel with them, some of which were classified as "Neo-Aramaic."

The key to the development of these different languages was the isolation of the various Jewish communities in the region. Linguists explain that when an innovation is introduced in a language, it moves like a wave between the communities that speak that language. However, in mountainous areas, linguistic innovations cannot easily spread, and the more isolated the communities were - especially Jewish communities that kept to themselves - the more likely it was that a unique language would arise. "

Read the rest here.

-Steve

The CAL is Brewing

2010-03-31T05:50:00.000-07:00

Well, over the past few weeks I was putting the finishing touches on the first chunk of the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon redesign.

After some surprisingly brief troubleshooting, a few days ago Dr. Kaufman was able to get the code I wrote up and working. Over the next month or two things should start going live!

I'll post updates here as it unfolds. :-)

Peace,
-Steve

Stephen Colbert's Aramaic Antics on Twitter

2010-03-10T12:09:00.000-08:00

Interesting tweet came in over Twitter today.

From StephenAtHome (i.e Stephen Colbert):

Sometimes I wonder, "what would Jesus tweet?" But you can't say much with 140 characters of Aramaic

It's been re-tweeted hundreds of times, clogging my normal searches for Aramaic. :-)

My reply?

@StephenAtHome -- Re:140 characters of Aramaic -> מא צבי את מימר -- "ma çabey at memar?" -- "What do you want to say?"

Peace,
-Steve

Victor Alexander's Aramaic Bible Translation-- or How To Tell Apart Syriac From Galilean Aramaic

2010-03-07T08:08:00.000-08:00

I've been aware of Victor Alexander's website V-A.com for quite some time now. It was one of the very first places on the Internet which sported an Aramaic Bible translation, and it today has a significant amount of web traffic each month.

As of late, however, I've noticed links popping up often on Twitter, sporting that Alexander's work comes from "Galilean" Aramaic and sure enough when clicking through (at least as of March 7th) I found claims that it was from "the Galilean dialect of the Ancient Aramaic."

However, listening to the audio recordings, such as his recording of the Lord's Prayer, it is immediately evident that there is little "Galilean" (such as Jesus' dialect of Old Galilean, a Western 'Old Aramaic' dialect) about his work, and that it instead rests very heavily upon the Syriac Peshitta (a work composed in Classical Syriac, an Eastern 'Middle Aramaic' dialect).

An an example of this, allow me to provide his rendition of the Lord's Prayer:

Galilean transliteration of the Lord's Prayer
(from v-a.com)

Avvon d-bish-maiya, nith-qaddash shim-mukh.
Tih-teh mal-chootukh. Nih-weh çiw-yanukh:
ei-chana d'bish-maiya: ap b'ar-ah.
Haw lan lakh-ma d'soonqa-nan yoo-mana.
O'shwooq lan kho-bein:
ei-chana d'ap kh'nan shwiq-qan l'khaya-ween.
Oo'la te-ellan l'niss-yoona:
il-la paç-çan min beesha.
Mid-til de-di-lukh hai mal-choota
oo khai-la oo tush-bookh-ta
l'alam al-mein. Aa-meen.

First of all when listening to the audio recording, the first red flag to stick out was his pronunciation:

He pronounces soft kaf like "CH" in "choo-choo-train."
Endings that were classically pronounced "-akh" he pronounces as "-ukh."
He pronounces soft beyt as "W" in all contexts rather than a mixture of "V" and "W".

These are not Galilean features.
They are features seen in Neo-Aramaic dialects.

Secondly, there are matters of morphology. Where there are many more, these are the most obvious and glaring:

What he shows as "nith-qaddash" and "nih-weh" would have been closer to "yith-qaddash" and "yih-weh" in Jesus' dialect.
"kh'nan" would have been, at least in written form, "enan" although the gutturals overall would have been softened in Galilean and sometimes written differently.

These are Eastern Aramaic (specifically Syriac) features, but this is no surprise as upon further examination what he was trying to call "Galilean" Aramaic was simply taken verbatim from the Syriac Peshitta.

As far as I am able to ascertain, there is nothing about this translation that places it closer to Jesus' language than any of the other "Aramaic Bible" Translations out there. :-)

So, when you read over his website (or any other website that sports "original Aramaic" claims), keep this information in mind and compare the language features. If you see one "nethqadash" (or something like it in the Lord's Prayer) you know you're probably looking at Syriac.

Peace,
-Steve

Absolutely Beautiful Aramaic Needlework

2010-03-06T19:59:00.000-08:00

Janet Granger over on her blog shared pictures of her "Shlama Bag." It's absolutely gorgeous, and spelled properly to boot (quite the rarity nowadays). :-)

Peace,
-Steve

Announcing: DARIUS

2010-02-27T10:25:00.000-08:00

Where learning a new language is tough, learning rare, obscure or ancient languages that are no longer spoken is exceedingly difficult.

DARIUS: The Digital Aramaic Research Initiative for Students is an upcoming Internet-based tool that uses modern living-language techniques adapted for individuals who wish to learn various Aramaic dialects.

More information forthcoming. :-) I'm really excited about this.

Peace,
-Steve

The First Hugoye Symposium!

2010-02-25T16:02:00.000-08:00

Two fantastic bits of news came in on the Hugoye List:

The First Hugoye Symposium

ܥܐܕܐ ܕܣ̈ܝܡܐ ܣܘܪ̈ܝܝܐ: ܐܘܪܚܐ ܐܪܝܟܬܐ ܡܢ ܒ̈ܬܝ ܐܪ̈ܟܐ ܠܢܘܠܐ

Libraries in the Syriac Tradition

May 20, 2010 at the
Beth Mardutho Research Library, Piscataway, N.J.

Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute will hold its First Hugoye Symposium on May 20, 2010 to celebrate the opening of the Beth Mardutho Research Library in Piscataway, NJ. The Symposium papers will focus on libraries in the Syriac tradition, and will be published in Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies

The speakers are:

Keynote Address: Sebastian P. Brock (University of Oxford): Kthobe Mphasqe: Some Examples, Ancient and Modern, from the Libraries of St Catherine's Monastery Sinai and Dayr al-Suryan.

David Taylor (University of Oxford): Syriac Printing in the 19th and early 20th-Century Middle East: Tool of Western Propaganda or Local Resistance?

Andreas Juckel (Münster University): A Guide to Syriac New Testament Manuscripts and Editions.

Muriel Debie (CNRS, Paris): Cataloging a Syriac MS collection in the Middle East: the Case Study of Charfet.

Kristian Heal (Brigham Young University): Corpora, eLibraries and databases: Locating Syriac Studies in the 21st Century.

George A. Kiraz (Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute): The Beth Mardutho Research Library: A Modest Beginning.

The Symposium will begin at 10 AM and end at 5 PM. A dinner will follow at a local restaurant (for which there will be a fee for those who choose to participate).

Those who would like to attend the symposium are requested to register with helpdesk [at] gorgiaspress [dot] com (please have the subject line read “Hugoye Symposium Registration”). Please provide your name, affiliation, contact information, whether you request parking, and whether you would like to attend the dinner. Registration is free (donations to Beth Mardutho to support the library are appreciated). Deadline for registration is April 15th, 2010.

Those attending from afar are expected to arrange for their own accommodation. Information can be found at http://www.piscatawaynj.org/hotels.

And secondly:

Internship : Cataloguer in Syriac and Arabic

Gorgias Press, an academic publishing firm based in Piscataway, NJ, is seeking applicants for a 3-month internship for the position of cataloguer in Syriac and Arabic. The candidate will be asked to catalogue books in Syriac and Arabic (mostly on Syriac topics) published in the Middle East during the 1800s and early 1900s. The cataloguing involves entering bibliographical information about the books (author, title, subject, etc.) in an Excel sheet, as well as writing a 200 word abstract in English for each of the books. A good command of Syriac and Arabic is required, as well as general knowledge in the field and literature. Strong writing skills in English are also required. The candidate is expected to catalog an average of 10 books a day. The candidate must be in residence in the area for the duration of the Internship (apart from weekends).

The candidate will receive free housing, a stipend totaling $2,250 payable in monthly installments (or $5,000 in Gorgias books), and up to $500 towards travel. The housing is in the same complex as the Gorgias office for female candidates, and 1 mile (20 minute walk, 2 minutes by car) for male candidates.

Piscataway is located 40 miles from New York City, and 30 miles from Princeton. The nearest train station is New Brunswick, 3 miles from Piscataway. The only public transportation available within Piscataway is taxis.

The position is open until filled. The candidate may start anytime between March and June, 2010. Interested applicants should send a CV, and letter expressing their interest to jobs [at] gorgiaspress [dot] com indicating their strength in Syriac and Arabic.

Peace,
-Steve

The Gemara Not Written in Aramaic?

2010-02-24T18:18:00.001-08:00

I was shocked as well!

Apparently, Yeranen Yaakov over on their blog found definitive attestation from a very well known and well-respected source that the Gemara was not written in Aramaic as is commonly believed. Apparently it was originally written in Indonesian!

Peace,
-Steve ;-)

Syriac Medical Palimpsest Imaging at Walters

2010-02-23T05:28:00.000-08:00

(Not the MSS in question, but it sure looks pretty. :-))

Via Michael Thoth's blog on EUREKA!:

Today we begin imaging a Syriac Medical Palimpsest believed to be a work of Galen, with an integrated spectral large-format imaging and LED illumination system. Over the past decade, our imaging capabilities have been refined and adapted in the Archimedes Palimpsest Program and at the Library of Congress. We set up the camera and illumination system yesterday, and with the support of Vincent, a conservator who is an expert in manuscript handling, we hope to begin moving forward with full imaging tomorrow after calibration, focus checks and workflow prototyping today.

Stephan Huller's Musings on "Peter"

2010-02-21T14:23:00.000-08:00

Looking over my news feeds today, I came across an interesting article by Stephan Huller entitled "Could the Editors of the Catholic Canon Have Thrown 'Cephas' as a Diversion from the Real Meaning of Simon's Name."

In essence, the argument is that the origin of the title "Peter" is not from כיפא ['kefa'] but from פתור ['pitor'].

Where I'm not sure I agree with some of their assertions (for example that כיפא ['kefa'] means "little stone" when it is used in phrases such as "ארון דכיף" ['arun d-kif'; "a coffin/chest of stone"] in Ham 575:152 etc., because both אבנא ['ebna'] and כיפא ['kefa'] are used in either sense) as well as some of their conclusions (I'm one who takes conspiracy theories with skepticism by default, especially when kephas as כיפא ['kefa'] is a less-elaborate, more Occam's Razon-friendly solution), it is certainly thought provoking and draws some interesting connections.

In Palestinian Aramaic (but rarely in other dialects) the root פתר ['ptar'] did carry the sense of "to interpret" as the cognate to the Hebrew פשר ['pesher'] which makes his connection between Peter as an "interpreter" an alluring one. However, interpreting πετρος ['petros'] as פתור ['pitor'; i.e. 'interpreter'] is a bit sketchy, as besides being very rare, פתור ['pitor'] was almost exclusively used in the context of interpreting dreams (i.e. פתור חלמיה).

(Also as a completely frivolous side-note, I must admit that when I first read the proposal, when I saw "pitor" I immediately though to myself, "Well then, what about פַתוּר ['patur' = table]?" a much more common homograph. :-) )

In either case, the blog post is certainly worth a read. :-)

Peace,
-Steve

Family-Friendly Jesus is Unavailable...

2010-02-19T07:57:00.001-08:00

I came across an interesting tweet on Twitter today, culled from my large Aramaic-seeking nets that wasn't completely a match for the Aramaic Blog's regular musings. However it was too long to retweet, so I've decided to post it here instead for everyone's enjoyment:

From messianicisrael on Fri 19 Feb 10:47 AM EST via Facebook:

For those looking for a family friendly, Yeshua... { "errorCode": 503, "errorMessage": "Service unavailable.", "statusCode": "ERROR" }

It seems that when technologies don't mesh quite right...

We now return you to your regular Aramaic blogging. :-)

Peace,
-Steve

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