Tag Archives: lord’s prayer

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

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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

Aramaic Tattoo Critique – Actually, not too shabby. :-)

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A potential customer brought this tattoo to my attention. Overall it’s not too bad. It’s completely legible and all in the right order (bravo!). There are — however — a few things that need to be addressed:
  1. Half of the small number of things that rub me the wrong way is the inconsistent use of diacritical marks. There is only one seyame (plural marker; the two little dots above a short letter) in the entire design, and when you use seyame in one place, it’s customary to use it throughout the document.
  2. Another stray diacritical mark is a dot under the ܟ (kaf) in ܡܠܟܘܬܟ (malkuthakh = “your kingdom”). Here, this mark’s purpose is to indicate that the ܟ (kaf) is pronounced soft (like ch in Bach). Again, if you use it in one place, you’re expected to use it throughout the document unless it is specifically to disambiguate places where it’s not obvious. (Which this is not.)
  3. Next, we have another stray dot under ܡܢ (men = “from”) as well as a final ܡ (mim) at the beginning of a word. A dot could occur here in un-marked texts to disambiguate ܡܢ (men) from ܡܢ (man = “who”), but again, it’s inconsistent and unnecessary in this context.
  4. Finally, there is a case of incorrect word division, which given its position (a descender right above an ascender, which could potentially overlap) is excusable, but there are other ways to resolve overlapping writing than this.
However, these errors aside, this is one of the better Syriac Lord’s Prayer spirals that I have seen that I did not aid in typesetting (and I know that sounds like I’m tooting my own horn… but seriously it personally pains me when I see avoidable mistakes). 🙂
Peace,
-Steve

The Lord’s Prayer: Nearly Ready

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Over on AramaicNT.org:
As per request, we nearly have The Lord’s Prayer, reconstructed in early Galilean Aramaic in its most primitive form ready to share. It will be presented in the same form as the rest of the translation project so that anyone can pronounce it well and easily without prior knowledge of the language, itself.
It will also be accompanied by a set of notes detailing the different choices and difficulties involved with the translation effort, as well as possible alternate readings, and discussions about the prayer within the context and culture of Biblical times.
But there is a lot more that is coming with it. Project supporters will also have access to:
  1. The Prayer written in Aramaic handwriting contemporary to Jesus and his followers.
  2. An audio recording of how it could have sounded when spoken among early Christians.
  3. Reconstructions of both longer-form traditions (including the doxology) as found in Matthew and Luke as well as extended translation notes for all versions.
  4. The full ARC010: The Aramaic Lord’s Prayer class from DARIUS that includes the following topics:
    • What is So Special About the Lord’s Prayer?
    • A (Brief) History of Aramaic & the Dialect of Jesus
    • The Syriac Peshitta Tradition
    • Other Syriac Traditions and Their Relations to Each Other
    • Scholarly Reconstructions
    • Modern Aramaic Traditions
    • Odd Translations
It’s going to be a heck of a lot of fun.
Peace,
-Steve