Setting the record straight

[Christina]

According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, to "plagiarize" means:
1. To steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own
2. To use (another's production) without crediting the source
3. To commit literary theft
4. To present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source.

Blah, blah, blah, give it up dude, this doesn't apply to public domain works, everyone I know agrees. And Andrew has already pointed out your inconsistency:

Shlama all--

3) Nevertheless, you David say that the preface was the proper place to give attribution, not the footnotes. Which leads to these observations:

a) You admit that I give credit in the footnotes.
b) You have NO PROOF for his assertion that I did not give attribution. Where and how I did so is less important than the fact that I did so.
c) As a matter of fact, I do give attribution in the Preface section. If you David had bothered to read the rebuttal I gave on Refiners Fire, or just go to p v of AENT, this is what you would have seen:

"To retain as much consistency as possible, Paul Younan's translation has been compared from Matthew 1 to Acts 15 and James Murdock's translation for the remainder, each word has been cross-checked with Aramaic"....

In some cases, both sources are woven together with translation, under a unifying editorial vision and approach. That approach includes the following: In places where James Murdock used the later Western Peshitto readings, the Eastern originals have been restored. In places where a more accurate or detailed reading was required than detailed by my mentors, the preferred readings were substituted in this edition.

"cross checked" also has a meaning that you apparently don't understand. Really, it's not my fault you don't understand English fully.

...I am not only not sorry, I am proud of my work and the way I explained it. I call the work MARI (Murdock-Roth-Younan). I also call it "a compilation, annotation and translation". I give attribution in the Preface, in the footnotes and throughout the work. It is not my fault that you are so ignorant as to neither understand these words nor the proper defintion of plagiarism.

...I suggest that you repent of your nastiness, anti-Semitism and religious prejudice. I have refuted you with words from your own mouth.

Basic psychology 101 declares that inconsistency is a sign that the person is lying, trust me Dave, you're not fooling anyone!

Andrew, your quote from your intro. does not attribute the translation text to Paul Younan and Murdock.
You say you"compared them". Proper credit would have been rendered if you said you "copied them".
There is a big difference between "compared" and "copied".

Wrong, the definition of copying is to duplicate something WORD FOR WORD, even a school kid will tell you this. The AENT is NOT identical (doesn't read WORD FOR WORD) to Murdock or Younan, so your argument falls flat on its face.

The plagiarism testing program- "Essay Rater" lists this site as the suspected source for practically every single line of every chapter of the 60 chapters I tested from your book.
Are you denying having used the "English only" files prepared by Lawrence Sheets, for your translation?

Question: how did you test "EVERY line of EVERY chapter of the 60 chapters" of AENT? Did you type everything out yourself or did you hack into the publisher's computer to obtain the master file? And I know that the AENT is not available in electronic format! Your hypocrisy truly amazes me, if you did the former then you violated the copyright notice which restricts quotations to 70 verses - AS BY YOUR OWN ADMISSION YOU QUOTED EVERY LINE OF 60 CHAPTERS!!! If you did the latter then you not only breached copyright but also committed cyber-theft!

Andrew cannot be prosecuted for plagiarism anymore than Thomas Nelson, Paul W. Esposito, J. P. Green, or the publishers of the WEB or NRSV. You however can be prosecuted for breaching copyright and possibly cyber-theft, if you did indeed obtain the master file by hacking into the publisher's computer.

"Public domain" is irrelevant. If I were to publish Etheridge's translation with my name on it, it would be plagiarism, even though Etheridge is public domain.

You all seem to be saying that plagiarism either cannot exist in the Bible translation world, or that it simply does not matter.

Actually "public domain" makes all the difference. If you don't know what "public domain" means, I'll explain it to you:

When you place something in the public domain you are saying in layman's terms: "this is not mine, it belongs to the public, anyone can do whatever they want with it." Katalaves?

And Christine, I quoted 27 verses of MARI, not hundreds, and 27 < 70, n'est ce pas?
And you couldn't copy a footnote, due to copyright notice? Did you have more than 70 verses in mind?

Dave you, Albion & Ryan have quoted much more than 70 verses of the AENT on amazon.com, there are several pages of quotes, anyone can go to amazon.com and see for themselves:

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Simply because Paul Younan says his interlinear is not a translation, does not make it so.

Here is Paul Younan's Preface to his Interlinear:

Conventions used in this translation.

Aramaic, like its direct Semitic descendants Hebrew and Arabic, is written from right to left. A study of the Aramaic alphabet and language is required to utilize this work effectively. The closest English equivalent is written above the corresponding Aramaic word. Words are also added to the English translation which have no corresponding Aramaic word, but are required for sense in English. Such words are enclosed in square brackets [ ]. Words in Aramaic which would be superfluous or redundant in English are translated, but they are enclosed in angle brackets < >. When two or more Aramaic words are translated by one English word or phrase, the English translation is underlined. The words of Mshikha (the Messiah) appear in red.
Disclaimer: This translation is not sanctioned by the Church of the East. This is a personal translation only, and all readers are encouraged to verify the work on their own. This translation has not been edited nor verified by anyone other than the author (who does not have official sanction for this work) and is likely to have numerous errors.

So if Paul never did a translation, why does he say he did six times in the Preface on this very web site?

No one I know considers an interlinear an actual translation, neither do I, and Paul said over and over again that he doesn't either, so get over it!

And why do you sheep all so stupidly go along with whatever he says, no matter what? Where are your brains? Paul says, "I never did a translation", and you all simply nod your heads and say, "baaaah"! He says, "I never took part in translating; I am not a translator"; "Baaaah!", "Baaaaah".

"I am no expert in Aramaic", says Paul. "Baaaah", Baaah", say the sheep.

Translation is scripture, and scripture cannot be plagiarized or copyrighted or protected, says Paul; "BAAAAH,BAAAAH,BAAAAH,BAAAAH!", comes the chorus from the corral of sheep.

Andrew says:

PUBLIC DOMAIN works can NOT be plagiarized.

Sheep, altogether now....

Now this is just plain childish Dave, now you've finally convinced me without a shadow of a doubt that you are just plain egotistical & nasty and are not be taken seriously at all! All you want to do is to fight with and haul insults at anyone who doesn't agree with your views, that's the only thing you've really proved to everyone here!

As for Paul saying that "he's no expert in Aramaic" although he is humble about his credentials, the fact is being a native speaker does indeed make him an expert. You on the other hand are no expert on the Aramaic language, not because you're incapable of learning Aramaic, but because you flat out refuse to understand core concepts of the language ON ITS OWN TERMS. Paul, Andrew and others have exposed your blatant ignorance many times, examples:

Shlama Akhi Dave,

Firstly, "Burkate" is spelled with a Kaph, not a Khet! <!-- s:crazy: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/crazy.gif" alt=":crazy:" title="Crazy" /><!-- s:crazy: --> Secondly, you have no place telling anyone what Qnoma means if you can't even spell an Aramaic word properly!

FIRST OF ALL YOU HAVE SOME MAJOR CHUTZPAH TO GET ON THIS FORUM AND DICTATE TO PAUL AND MYSELF WHAT WORDS IN OUR NATIVE LANGUAGES CAN AND CANNOT MEAN...

...PROVE TO US YOU UNDERSTAND ARAMAIC. IF YOU DO NOT ACCEPT THE ORIGINAL ARCHAIC DEFINTION OF QNOMA AND IF YOU REJECT THE TESTIMONY OF ONE OF THE WORLD'S LEADING ARAMAIC SCHOLARS THEN CONGRATULATIONS. YOUR LEARNING HAS EXCEEDED ALL OF US PUT TOGETHER.

...EXCUSE ME AGAIN, BUT DO YOU KNOW A SEMITIC IDIOM WHEN YOU READ IT? CAN YOU NOT SEE THAT BLOOD AND WINE AND OTHER THINGS ARE METAPHORIC IN SUCH A CASE? IS LIVING WATER A LITERAL REFERENCE OR IS IT SYMBOLIC OF ETERNAL LIFE? WHY THEN CAN YOU NOT SEE THAT THE BLOOD OF YHWH IS SYMBOLIC OF THE DIVNE NATURE THAT GIVES ETERNAL LIFE? YOU THINK THAT BECAUSE YOU CAN READ AND HIGHLIGHT A LITTLE ESTRANGELA THAT SUCH A THING PROVES TO US YOU ARE AN ARAMAIC SCHOLAR? IF YOU CAN'T GET THE IDIOMS DOWN, PLEASE DON'T COMPOUND IT WITH THE AUDACITY TO LECTURE US. YOU MIGHT AS WELL SAY THAT THE WINE AT THE LAST SUPPER IS LITERAL BLOOD, WHEN Y'SHUA SIMPLY SAYS, "DO THIS IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME."

IF WE FOLLOW YOUR LOGIC, THEN WHY HAVE YOU NOT PLUCKED OUT YOUR EYE WHEN YOU SINNED LAST? WHY DID YOU NOT HANDLE SNAKES AND DRINK DEADLY POISON AS IT SUGGESTS IN MARK 16? IT SEEMS TO ME YOU ARE SELECTIVE AT WHAT YOU SEE AS IDIOMATIC AND WHAT YOU DO NOT, AND THE FIRST MISTAKE ANY NOVICE AT ARAMAIC MAKES IS OVER-LITERALISM. GET BEYOND THE DICTIONARIES AND SEE THE TRUTH.

...NO, NO, NO AND NO, RESPECTIVELY. KNOW WHEN BLOOD IS LITERAL AND WHEN IT IS NOT AND MAYBE YOU CAN HAVE SOMETHING WORTHWHILE TO SAY.

...YOU STILL SHOW THAT YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT QNOMA IS. THERE IS ONLY ONE NAME, AND THAT IS YHWH, AND HE GAVE IT TO HIS SON. OTHERWISE, I GUESS YOUR BIBLE HAS THE PASSAGE OF JOHN 17:11 AND HEBREWS 1:3 TORN OUT.

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More proof:

Shlama Dave and all,

Obviously Akhan Paul is the true expert, but I would also like to weigh in here a bit. In my opinion, the use of "self" by any stretch linguistically as an equivalent of QNOMA would be disastrous.

In fact, such an equivalence invites a flexibility on the English side that leads to more confusion...

...I resist the SELF defintion because the references in Scripture do not support it, and it makes a huge difference to me doctrinally and personally...

...These are important concepts, but the use of SELF and the concept of SELF is Hellenistic, and we need to leave such masks behind us when looking at this original text.

In fact, the greatest problem with QNOMA as SELF, is that we could also say the PARSOPA is SELF. In other words, those characteristics that make me different from you, my individuality, is my SELF. PARSOPA's cognate in Greek is PROSOPON (person) and that is where the west got this whole gig wrong in the first place. And, if you read the history of how the West got this wrong, you will see how they first changed the meaning of the Greek word HYPOSTASIS (originally having a closer meaning to QNOMA) and then declared that HYPOSTASIS (and QNOMA by implication) was the same as PROSOPON/PERSON, leading to divine persons, and in my view, idolatry.

It may then seem hard to fit a word like QNOMA into our western frameworks, but we have to. We have to make a space and a distinction for it that our previous understandiings did not have available previously. We should not make the word fit us. Rather, we should have our minds and understanding fit the word...

Shlama Akhi Dave,

...The piece you are missing is that this word, Qnoma, has an archaic meaning (pre-Hellenism) and another totally different meaning, post-Hellenism. The archaic meaning has been preserved by the Church of the East, while the altered (post-Hellenistic) meaning has been adopted by other groups such as the Syriac Orthodox Church...

...The bottom line is that, as any bi-lingual person can attest, sometimes there can be no 1-to-1 relationship between words in two different languages (especially when the languages are as different as Aramaic and Greek (or English) are.) This is an unfortunate consequence of the tower of Babel. But it's a fact we have to live with.

We have to leave Qnoma alone. I know both Aramaic and English, so trust me when I say that we don't have an English "Qnoma." The concept doesn't even exist, let alone a word.

Akhi Dave, when dealing with Elohim-breathed sacred text, theology is the key to everything, and it arises from linguistic and etymological grounds. It is those original meanings that draw us to this text to begin with. As for emotion, I do not think either myself or Akhi Paul has exhibited one bit of that. The word means what it means.

...With all due respect Akhi Dave, you need to see this through Eastern eyes...

...We are dealing with terminology that has NO COGNATE IN GREEK. The only way to deal with QNOMA is to describe it at length. Or you can do what Paul did with MILTHA--list a bunch of terms and descriptions but leave it UNTRANSLATED.

In both cases, there is nothing that substitutes totally for it in any other language. And so, by your example, you are looking at the difficult and incomplete choices that Luke had to make to get his Gospel into Greek, and now, from the view of how that Greek was itself brought into English, are imposing a flexibility on the meaning that does not exist in Aramaic that began it...

...QNOMA is not abstract but an actual occurrence of a nature. It is not theory, but real living fact. By western standards that can mean "person", but from the viewpoint of the word QNOMA it does not...

...Therefore, it is not for anyone to look at how the Greek handled the word and think that is fine for English too. Instead, we need to look at the original Aramaic and translate IT AND ONLY IT DIRECTLY INTO THE BEST ENGLISH WORD OR DEFINTION. If there is no matching equivalent, which is true a lot of the time, then the task is define it, explain it, and do whatever is necessary for however long it takes, until the concept matches the original.

Shlama Akhi Dave,

This has nothing to do with any club mentality or elitism. It has everything to do with the basic fundamentals of linguistics. It is very naive to suggest that every word in Aramaic must have a direct cognate in every other language that has ever existed, including English, Eskimo or Swahili for that matter!

...There is no English cognate for Qnoma, either linguistically or conceptually, no matter how badly we think there should be. The words of the world's leading Aramaic scholar at Oxford University are nonsense to you? Well, I'm afraid to say that if I had quoted a Church of the East scholar, you would probably have charged that he was theologically biased and would have summarily dismissed his testimony outright!

Akhi Dave, with all due respect, I strongly suspect that you are a monolingual person. No one who can effectively communicate in more than one language would ever suggest that there must be direct cognates in two different languages 100% of the time, all the time. That is nonsensical. Think about it...

The fact remains that we have no English cognate to Qnoma - never was one. We can make one, though. But we don't have one right now...

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and:

Shlama Akhi Dave,

Please excuse me for seeming obtuse, but do we know that BAR BAHLULE is giving a meaning that was current in Yeshua's time?

The very fact that some Greek manuscripts of Mark contain the "rope" meaning, should be enough to tell you that "Gamla" meant the same thing in Meshikha's time that in did in Moshe bar-Kepha's time.

bar-Bahlul, bishop of the Church of the East, live in the 9th-10 centuries. He quoted Moshe bar-Kepha, who lived in the 8th-9th centuries. If Moshe bar-Kepha gave this definition in his lexical work (now extant), during the 9th century, it must have been an established meaning for many centuries before he was around. Moshe bar-Kepha didn't make up the meaning.

...You seem to me to be narrowing the criteria that will satisfy you to only those witnesses directly related to the primary sources. That, in my opinion, is a rather dangerous approach to lexical study. There are many words the are only used once in the NT. If we were to rely on the NT alone, we would not know what that word meant.

Yes, Khawla is used in the NT to mean "rope." It is also used in Acts, where the Greek translator misread and translated it as "pains." Much in the same way most Greek translators misread Gamla and translated "camel" instead of "rope". You are willing to convict the former and forgive the latter, based on what seems to me to be your own preference for contextual meaning.

Does "camel" work in the passage? Sure, as would "elephant" or even "pig". But why on earth would we prefer "camel" to "rope" when referring to a needle?

Both meanings are equally impossible through a needle. I've never seen a needle eye that you could thread a rope used to bind bridges and ships. That's one hell of a needle. I don't know how you consider that a possibility. You could grind up camel flesh into patties and push them through that way, about as easily as you could do the thick rope thread-by-thread.

But alas, it appears your mind is made up and it's really not that important of a topic, except for the fact that in either case, it proves the NT was written in Aramaic and not Greek, otherwise you wouldn't have some manuscripts of Greek Mark containing the "rope" meaning.

Shlama to all and you Akhi David--

For the record, I agree with Shamasha Paul and also translate this instance of GAMLA as "heavy rope". I have been astonished as well David at how narrow you have been in assessing the objective evidence. The fact is, in addition to all the reasons Shamasha Paul stated, we do NOT use Greek as our guide nor is it the case that "heavy rope" doesn't work contextually.

...I know you can read this in the Aramaic as easily as we can, and this whole "it doesn't matter how fluent these others are I am right" tactic is not worthy of you my friend.

Staying on point here, a heavy rope CAN fit through a literal needle's eye IF, and only IF it is unraveled into the thinnest possible strands. That unravelling is a clear visual metaphor for the rich man "unravelling his fortune". I don't need to tell you how key a concept unravelling is in Aramaic though to "disslolving/destroying". This is true, for example, in talking about divorce as the unmaking/unravelling marraige. Is it easy? NO. But Y'shua's point is that in the real world of the everyday man (which is why he talks in parables of mustard seeds, sowing, fishing, etc) is that it can be done if the commitment is strong enough.

I think this is ironclad. "heavy rope" fits not only Y'shua's speech patterns but also the exact context of the actual event in the Gospels. Instead, what we have seen from you is that the Greek disagrees and my point back is, again, who cares about the Greek? Aramaic Primacy is NOT CONCERNED with what the LATER GREEK redactors did. If I were you I would not be so quick to dismiss the ancient Semitic traditons that Shamasha Paul refers to, nor would I devalue Paul's scholarship, my scholarship and yes, not even Lamsa's. The fact is Lamsa got this one right.

And finaly, you crossed the line with personal attacks. I think you owe Stephen Silver an apology.

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Also you are no expert on the Aramaic language by your own admission:

Akha Paul,

Thankyou for correcting my spelling; I hate incorrect spelling in any language; I admit I am not an expert in Aramaic; I am quite good at NT Greek and French; Hebrew to a lesser extent.

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and:

Shlama Akhi Paul,

Exactly what is a "Casus Pendens" ? I gather from Gesenius Hebrew Grammar that it involves a participle.

It seems that your subject always includes the main verb and that the non verbal predicate is usually a predicate nominative, renaming the subject in the previous category which you call casus pendens.

Please clarify. I am very interested in your Semitic syntax idea being used by The Greek. It seems to be valid. I just want to be sure of the grammatical argument involved.

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Your attitude hasn't changed since you first started posting here. Going through your various posts on this forum has lead me to agree with Andrew's statement in his rebuttal that you are actually not qualified to translate the Peshitta.