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Steve Caruso
#1
It's been years since I checked what this dude is up to. But I just went to his site <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://aramaicnt.org/">http://aramaicnt.org/</a><!-- m --> and I see he's started his own translation project beginning with the Gospel of Mark, looks very promising. He's got some new projects in the pipeline that I'm looking forward to though he's only making select material available to non supporters while supporters get all the goods. Here's his translation of Mark so far: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://aramaicnt.org/the-gospels/mark/">http://aramaicnt.org/the-gospels/mark/</a><!-- m -->
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#2
Well, it's good to see that people are checking up on me from time to time, and geez it has been years since I've been here. :-)

If anyone has any questions about AramaicNT.org's rebirth, I can certainly answer them.

Peace,
-Steve
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#3
:

Hi Steve, Your ideas sound interesting and your website style looks great. How do you determine what is Galaliean Aramaic, as to how it's written, and spoken? And how different is it from the Aramaic found in the Eastern Aramaic Peshitta texts, such as The Yonan and The Khabouris Codexs?

Also, what are the sources of your translations and transliterations of the New Testament Text?

I like the fact that you are going to have classes up at your site, where we can learn to read, write, and speak this dialect of Aramaic, but how certain can we be that this is how Jesus and his Disciples/Apostles would have spoken and written like?

Peace,
Chuck
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#4
Very good questions. :-)

The dialect that I am using for retrotranslation is an effort in reconstruction, but not by as much as you'd think. I first start with early Jewish Palestinian Aramaic (found in the early portions of the Palestinian Talmud and other works like Bereshit Rabba and even graffiti and ossuary inscriptions) and comparing it alongside other contemporary Western dialects (Samaritan, and the later Melkite, or Christian Palestinian Aramaic), the Peshitta and the actual Greek of the New Testament, I then piece together a translation that would, in my assessment, best reflect what could have originally been said and from there transmitted.

The style of writing is based off of contemporary writing styles to the 1st Century in Jerusalem and Galilee which is predominantly a Herodian hand with some occasional Hasmonean holdovers. This is close to what you see in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in mosaics and other artwork in contemporary synagogues that have been excavated.

Galilean is a Western dialect, where all Syriac Aramaic dialects (even "Western" Syriac) are Eastern and since this distinction is one of "trunk" forks in the language family there are a number of differences in:

- Grammar - Word order and the function of different tenses and forms. Galilean, like other Western dialects, retains the Absolute-Emphatic distinction. Subjects often come before the verb (SVO) -- especially in the participle -- than after (VSO) like in Syriac, etc.
- Vocabulary - Some words exist in Eastern dialects like /som/ [to place, to put] that simply do not appear at all in Western dialects, and vice versa
- Orthography - Which in Galilean is very plene and phonetic compared to Syriac with many pronunciation cues including doubled matres lectionis to indicate diphthongs and consonantal yod and waw; and
- Pronunciation - There are a bunch of examples of how Galileans reduced or changed vowels and "confused" some letters due to rabbinic critiques that survive in Talmud Bavli and other sources.

These would make Galilean and Classical Syriac mutually unintelligible in some circumstances, but for the most part understandable albeit very distinct. Using this methodology -- although imperfect by nature -- has already revealed some wordplay that appears to have been "missed" by the Peshitta, which itself retains a lot of wordplay simply due to the nature that it's written in some form of Aramaic to begin with. That said, I am curious to see what the rest of my translation efforts will reveal as I progress through the Gospels vis a vis the Peshitta.

Peace,
-Steve
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#5
:

It?s a first of its kind approach. I'll give ya that, Steve.

So, as far as I can see there, from what you have up on your site so far, you have not actually translated any English NT text. The English text that's shown is from the public domain "World English Bible", which is an edited version, that was made to conform more to the Majority Greek Text, while being based on the text of The New American Standard version of 1901, which in turn is a translation straight from the Greek NT itself...Westcot and Hort's critical text, I believe, with the American translation teams choices over those from the British teams version, called The Revised Standard Version, published in 1885.

So...it seems you are simply transliterating, the English, back into what you think it would be in the ancient Galilean Aramaic dialect spoken at that time, and not translating from any original language source, Greek, or Aramaic, but straight from The World English Bible's English text...in the parts where the Messiah or an Aramaic speaker is speaking, leaving the narrated parts as is. Or am I way off?

Peace,
Chuck
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#6
Indeed, it's more of a translation of the directly spoken portions of the Bible from Greek (while being informed by other early sources as I mentioned above) to Galilean Aramaic.

The English text used in the project is actually incidental, and in the future I hope for it to be "swappable" against the Aramaic readings. This way, someone could read the English in WEB (which is Public Domain and why I used it as the base), or NASB, ASV, or NIV, or whatever they wish along with intoning the Aramaic portions as a liturgical and learning tool (with perhaps some exceptions where the English translation severely deviates from the Aramaic text presented, itself). Besides the actual resulting Aramaic text, the project will have footnotes and embedded articles that expound upon quirks of the Aramaic text and discuss insights garnered from the retrotranslation about other possible readings, the times and culture of the Bible, and direct explanations of the puns and wordplay so that the reader is given an idea about the potential undertones of the text.

Peace,
-Steve
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#7
Weird, I come here almost every day and before seeing this thread I was just checking out Steve's website and blog.

Very cool work you're doing. That Lord's prayer you're working on would definitely be something to hang in the house! Love the old hand written script!!
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#8
Hi Steve,
If (and only if) you happen to modify the WEB text, keep in mind that the authors asked that if anyone modify the text, that the end result no longer be the World English Bible. See:
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://ebible.org/web/copyright.htm">http://ebible.org/web/copyright.htm</a><!-- m -->

Warm regards,
~DC
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#9
Hi Steve,

I love your work too! Great!

Have you seen this movie on youtube?

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8IJOgMVE1Q">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8IJOgMVE1Q</a><!-- m -->
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#10
Oops! Typo! Accidental word omissions....

*The authors asked that if you modify the text, that it no longer be called the World English Bible. (This is to avoid confusion).
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#11
Time to catch up on this thread while there's breathing room from the hurricane madness.

@Luc - Thanks. :-)

@DrawCloser - Aye I was aware of that, but thanks for bringing it up. When I get to implementing version swapping, I'm going to have the proper gamut of disclaimers and copyright notices. :-)

@distazo - The Aramaic in that video is in some ways closer to Jesus' dialect than Classical Syriac, but is still Eastern (rather than Western) as it demonstrates with its grammar. There are also a few quirks that I don't agree with. mi-'Ar`a (="From the earth") would not be confusable with mhar (="tomorrow") as they argue, because they are (for some reason) omitting all initial alefs that are preceded by prepositional prefixes. This is not proper orthography for the dialect in question as the alefs would certainly be written out.

They also have some other odd orthographical choices, such as spelling hobeyn (="our sins") as `obeyn (swapping het for 'ayin). Granted the two letters were sometimes swapped in spelling, but this is only attested in specific circumstances due to vowel placement and shifts in pronunciation (for example heywey = "snake" was often `eywey). In Galilean, "our sins/debts" would most likely be hobeynan with the suffix duplicated.

Overall, still very interesting. :-)
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#12
Just as a heads-up, I've just posted some of my work on a reconstruction of The Lord's Prayer in Galilean Aramaic here:

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://aramaicnt.org/articles/the-lords-prayer-in-galilean-aramaic/">http://aramaicnt.org/articles/the-lords ... n-aramaic/</a><!-- m -->

As all stuff on AramaicNT.org it's a work in progress, but it's a fun work in progress. :-)

Peace,
-Steve
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#13
SteveCaruso Wrote:Just as a heads-up, I've just posted some of my work on a reconstruction of The Lord's Prayer in Galilean Aramaic here:

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://aramaicnt.org/articles/the-lords-prayer-in-galilean-aramaic/">http://aramaicnt.org/articles/the-lords ... n-aramaic/</a><!-- m -->

As all stuff on AramaicNT.org it's a work in progress, but it's a fun work in progress. :-)

Peace,
-Steve

Hi Steve,
Nice project.
Why don't you consider the peshitta as a valid source for the prayer? Yesus did not speak Greek (and why should he for instance mention the yod and the serta as a parable referring to the Hebrew text) if he was (say) Greek?
Why would he forbid to say Raqa, if the people were Greek?

So, if you reconstruct the prayer, from Greek, and find a unique way of addressing Father in John 17, why not look at the Peshitta? It is not translated from Greek and uses abba/abby a lot more times than just the Greek has 'Pater' (vocative) in John 17 along with 23 other place in the NT.

So, if you also would consult the Peshitta as an authority for reconstructing the prayer, I certainly would support the project.
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#14
Actually, I'm not looking at the Peshitta as an "invalid" source by any means. My entire premise is that Jesus spoke Aramaic, and in reconstructing the precise dialect that was his (early Galilean) I have made rather extensive use of the Peshitta as an example of a text that is (for all intents and purposes) much closer to his original words than the Greek. However, using the Peshitta towards these means has some limitations that I have expounded upon in earlier posts in this thread (i.e. vocabulary, grammatical, and orthographical variations between Syriac and Galilean) and this has shown up in a few places that I have found to date where an idiom or some wordplay is missed by the Peshitta simply due to that difference in dialect.

So in short, yes I'm making use of the Peshitta as an example alongside the Greek.

Peace,
-Steve
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#15
ok.
Thanks for the update <!-- sSmile --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="Smile" title="Smile" /><!-- sSmile -->
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