It Lives! Kinda. New Site & Archive

Hey guys,

Is this thing still on? Steve here. 🙂

The summary of what I’m about to tell you is twofold: (1) I’ve published a “living book” on Galilean Aramaic online; and (2) this site is going to be pulled down and archived soon.

If you want the particulars, read on. 🙂

The Particulars

The state of dealing with Galilean Aramaic studies really brought some difficult folk out of the woodwork, an I’ve poked at this site here and there, not doing very much, until essentially shuttering it back in 2022.

However like with most things on the Internet, time goes on — and unless you update your tech, it does not. AramaicNT.org currently runs on an ancient version of WordPress which is in desperate need of updates, and has been degrading into a large gordion knot of trouble to maintain. The server is so old that depending on the day of the week I don’t have access to the backend (like I do now to publish updates) and this has led me to give up several times when trying to do something new with it.

Meanwhile, back in 2017 I finished the first rough draft of a grammar of Galilean Aramaic — something, in the grand scheme of things, which is waaay overdue. I had a rather generous offer to have it published… but I biffed it and never followed through. And that’s 100% on me — I had a lot on my plate at the time, and Aramaic studies weren’t my primary focus anymore. I have students over at RV who needed my full attention, and where I would do a little bit here and there with Aramaic, that was about it.

So I was essentially left with two problems: An unpublished monograph, and an unmaintainable website. This year I’ve decided to finally handle both.

Introducing GalileanAramaic.com

At the beginning of April, I began to transcode all of the LaTeX files into Markdown and have published the grammar in its current unedited state (with appropriate disclaimers) over on http://galileanaramaic.com and, more importantly, the source code for the grammar over on GitHub.

Due to a generous donation, the first initial pass is complete, and I would now like to solicit help proofreading the work from the general public. Errors can be reported over on the GitHub Issues page (which is best), on the Aramaic Designs YouTube community page, or over on my Ko-Fi page. The idea of treating this work like any other code repository has made it much more manageable.

The End of AramaicNT.org (Kinda…)

And this now brings me to the last bit: What to do with AramaicNT.org?

There is no salvaging the WordPress install. It’s too fragile and too much of a security risk. So what I am planning on doing is archiving and deprecating it. The domain, AramaicNT.org will continue to host 90% of the content it hosts now, but I’m going to give it similar treatment to what I’ve done with my monograph.

All pages here will be converted and hosted on a flat-file website. This means comments will go away, and any interactive bits too. However the most important articles (like the Lord’s Prayer, etc. and perhaps some of the lessons) I want to update, improve, and move over to GalileanAramaic.com.

Final Thoughts

Overall I would like to do more Aramaic-related stuff. An article here or there, some more videos over on the YouTube channel, or perhaps pick back up the old bracelet project (which I still have the olive wood and silver for). In any case it’ll be much easier to do so when things here are stabilized and I can put some effort into a much more focused work (i.e. the grammar).

If you’d like to participate, check out the following links — and I hope I’ll see you around. 🙂

Peace,
-Steve

State of the Site

So, you’ve likely noticed that this website has been quiet for a while with not much happening here, and that subscriptions have been disabled. A lot has happened in the 15 some-odd years that I’ve been blogging about the Aramaic language, and a lot has changed as well.

The main reasons for much of that change are simply a matter of where I am in life right now. Translating was, at one point, my full-time endeavor, and my sole academic focus. But since then I’ve landed a tenured position at a local college and am the head of my own program with my own students and they have had to take priority.

Additional matters of focus in life are upon my family and our health. During the ongoing pandemic, our household caught Covid twice. Some of the residual effects of it still haven’t left us. To this day, I am continuing to deal with occasional bouts of neuropathy and some memory problems. In an effort to help mitigate them, we’ve focused inwards for a bit and we’ve begun a number of projects, including major renovations to our home, gardening, and animal husbandry to help us weather this thing. As it can be imagined, these also take a significant amount of our time and attention, too.

Finally, one of the peripheral reasons that has also been of influence to my involvement is a matter of the kind of people that my work has attracted. Let me be clear: The vast majority of folk have been respectful of the language and its historical context, and academic in their pursuit of it. However, a consistent contingent of enthusiasts have been interested in it solely to promote various kinds of charlatanism, and that has been incredibly difficult (emotionally and practically) to deal with.

Here are but a few examples:

  • I have had many students and customers take the knowledge of Galilean Aramaic I had freely shared with them to promote websites and churches or other organizations that implied that without this “secret knowledge” of the “true words” of Jesus that they were at some kind of theological disadvantage, even to damnation.
  • I have had a “messianic yeshiva” claim that I was a “visiting professor” and use my name and face to endorse their website without my knowledge or consent.
  • I have had a customer use a translation I had given them to deceive other people to believe that they could speak in tongues.
  • I have had another student take a translation I had given them to deceive other people to believe that they were possessed by a demon.

And these are only some of the things that I am willing to share. If any of these were untrue, I would not have listed them, and some of these – as you can plainly see – are extreme and even damaging.

So, with all of this in mind, I do not have the ability to keep on top this site and what it entails in addition to my current set of responsibilities – there are simply not enough hours in the day. That said, I have no intentions of taking AramaicNT.org or its content down, but in the next few months I may convert it to a flat-file site away from WordPress for archival purposes and make the subscription content freely available. (No guarantees as to when.)

And this leaves one last thing: At one point I had planned on publishing my grammar of Galilean here – but because of everything above (both the crazy and the practical) – it has been permanently put on the back burner. Right now I am uncertain as to where it will land. It is not in a state that I could readily release, but perhaps one day in the future I could put it up on a GitHub repository for folks to make use of and submit additions. Once the site is archived, I may have more information in that direction as well.

In the meantime, stay well, and we’ll see what the future brings. 🙂

Peace,
-S

So, Yeah… There Will Be an Announcement Soon. :-)

Yep, I haven’t posted much or followed up on many Aramaic-related things because I’ve been extremely busy at RV.

Admittedly, this isn’t a very good picture – but it represents about 4-5 years worth of work, including the past 6 months’ worth of constant testing and refinement (no joke).

Yes, that’s olive wood. Not seen: Sterling silver chain work.

The first one is already in the hands of its owner.

More information will be coming before the end of the month. 🙂

Peace,
-Steve

“Jordan Codices” Proven Fake – Jordan’s Department of Antiquities Concludes

From the Jordan Times:

AMMAN — The Department of Antiquities (DoA) has announced that the lead codices allegedly found in a northern Jordan cave between 2005-2007 have been proven forged. […]

The DoA Director General Monther Jamhawi said that the codices are a kind of “professional” forgery that was executed skillfully.

“This advanced counterfeit has created confusion as ancient materials were used, such as lead and stones, and inscribing them with ancient look-alike texts and drawings that are hard to be tested,” Jamhawi told The Jordan Times on Saturday. […]

The department formed a committee of researchers and epigraphists, who examined the books and confirmed that they were not authentic.

In its report, the taskforce concluded that the examination from an archaeological point of view proved that the metal books were false and worthless as they contained “irrelevant old letters and images” and that the manufacturer had no background about ancient inscriptions and their technical details or religious significance.

Or in other words, what most of us have been articulating since the beginning. 🙂

Peace,
-Steve

New Galilean Aramaic Online Course BETA Open

Happy New Year!

I was hoping to have this ready-to-release today, but instead I’d rather share what I have already competed, and solicit feedback to make it even better:

I’ve been working on a brand new Galilean Aramaic 101 course. 🙂

Using the LearnPress plugin, I’ve been able to more rapidly work on a bunch of stuff that was slow and difficult to handle before (when it came to making supporting multimedia, editing, or coding, coding, coding… it was off-putting). Now if I have an idea for a new lesson, I can put it together in a matter of hours instead of weeks, or if I have an idea for a new course, I can put it together in a matter of days, rather than months.

Right now it’s in BETA. That means it’s not complete, but it’s well on its way there, and that I also need your feedback to make it better. Visit the course page, sign up, try out the lessons and quizzes, and leave comments on the courseware.

Other courses I’m currently working on outlines for are the second level of this course (which will be more comprehensive), a re-do of the Lord’s Prayer course, and a course on the Sermon on the Mount. Once the Beta period is over for 101, we’ll see what direction these will go. 🙂

Peace,
-Steve