קָלָא דְּיֵשׁוּעַ

Qala d’Yeshua

An Aramaic-aware translation of the four Gospels

Jesus taught in Aramaic. The Gospels were written down in Greek. This is a translation that listens for his voice beneath the Greek to try to learn from him on the firmest possible ground.

What is this?

A new combination. Not a new source.

Qala d’Yeshua is Aramaic for the voice of Jesus.

The intention is to listen to Yeshua on the firmest possible ground. It is a rendering of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It starts from the Greek text, and it asks one question of every word: what Aramaic most likely stood beneath this?

Every verse is rendered from a blend of the Greek text and the Aramaic beneath it, weighted word by word according to how surely that Aramaic can be known. Where the evidence is strong, the Aramaic leads. Where it is thin, the Greek holds.

Read & Listen

All four Gospels. Read and listen.

Eighty-nine chapters, rendered whole. Read them here in your browser, or take them with you as Word documents and MP3s.

One page for each Gospel: read it with the verse numbers kept for study, and when you press play the voice reads along, verse by verse, the numbers slipping away for a pure listen. Each Gospel remembers where you stopped. The Word edition and the full recording are on each card, for your desk and your shelf.

Matthew
28 chapters
Read & listen
Download: Word · MP3 · 92 MB
Mark
16 chapters
Read & listen
Download: Word · MP3 · 58 MB
Luke
24 chapters
Read & listen
Download: Word · MP3 · 98 MB
John
21 chapters
Read & listen
Download: Word · MP3 · 76 MB

These are living drafts.

Matthew 5 · The Beatitudes
“Flourishing are those poor in Ruha, for the reign of heaven is theirs.”
Where the evidence supports it, the Aramaic shapes the English:
Turn around, not repent
Release, not forgive
Reign, not kingdom
Flourishing, not blessed
The Immerser, not the Baptist
Students, not disciples
John 14 · The parting gift
“Wholeness I leave with you; my wholeness I give to you, not as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not be afraid.”
Shlama is not just a truce, it is wholeness. Nothing missing, nothing broken.
Method

One question, asked of every word.

The Greek critical text is the base. The claim is never that the Greek is wrong. The claim is that beneath the speech of Yeshua there was Aramaic, and that sometimes, with discipline, we can know what it was.

So the method asks one question of every word in the four Gospels: can the Aramaic beneath this Greek word be responsibly identified? The answer places the word on a ladder with four rungs, and the rung decides which language governs the English.

T1Certain→ Aramaic-governed
The Aramaic word is known beyond reasonable doubt: preserved in the Greek text itself (Talitha, qumi. Abba. Amen.), or locked by the language: one standard word, no serious competitor (Ruha, malkūtā, bar-nāshā). The English is translated from the Aramaic. The Greek supplies context and syntax.
T2Confident, not certain→ Aramaic-enriched
Strong confidence in the specific word, with real uncertainty remaining. The Aramaic governs or enriches the English, and the Greek stands beside it as the translation witness.
T3Uncertain→ Hybrid
It was spoken in Aramaic, but two or more candidates survive and the word cannot be pinned. Both feet stay planted on the Greek: the Greek governs the meaning, and the rendering bends toward Aramaic rhythm and concreteness where it honestly can.
T4Greek-composed→ Greek-governed
Material written in Greek from the start: the evangelists’ narrative frame, John’s prologue. There is no Aramaic word underneath, so the Greek fully governs. No guessing. No decoration.
Tiers attach to words, not verses.
A single verse can hold a T1 word inside a T4 line. There is no global tier: the point is honesty, not uniformity. More →
A note on the witnesses.
Yeshua spoke Western Aramaic, the Galilean dialect; the Syriac witnesses are Eastern and later. Where a dialect speaks, it is named. More →
The scriptures inside the scripture.
When Yeshua quotes the Torah, the words underneath are Hebrew: the 88 Old Testament quotations render from the Hebrew source. More →
Two questions, never collapsed.
Is this the right Aramaic word? And what is the right English for it? Tracked separately on every entry. More →
Sources

Each rendering draws on the Greek critical text, the Peshitta consulted per token, the Old Syriac as a provisional witness, the Palestinian Aramaic lexicons, scholarly retroversions weighed source by source, the Hebrew Bible for the quotations, and a published caution layer for Syriac translator habit. By occurrence, most content words in the glossary now carry a Palestinian Aramaic or DJPA label (64.5%); the Peshitta remains the word-choice engine and the shown form. Behind the text stands a per-word apparatus (an 89-chapter interlinear and a felt-sense glossary of 1,180 root entries), now open on this site. If a rendering cannot be traced to its sources, it does not ship. Every source, cited and linked →

Study the Gospels

The apparatus is open. Every word shows its work.

Behind the reading text stands the full working apparatus: an 89-chapter talk-along interlinear with every evidence row a toggle, the felt-sense glossary of 1,180 root-grouped entries, and the Living Map that draws the Gospels’ vocabulary as one living network. Every word shows its work; the cards here open each one.

Honesty by design: empty cells show as gaps, never hidden. Provenance is badged: nothing is called Galilean without evidence.

Try it: open Talitha, qumi · Mark 5:41, where the Greek itself preserves the Aramaic.

Or go deeper: Learn Aramaic by root: the 75 core roots of the Gospels, one page a day.

Framing

What this is, and what this is not.

This is
A way to hear the Gospels with Galilean ears
A rendering built from the Greek text of the written Gospels
Graded word by word on one four-tier ladder
Open and human-reviewed
This is not
· The entire Bible: this is the four Gospels alone
· A claim to possess all of Yeshua’s exact words
· A claim that the Greek Gospels are wrong
· A secret original Gospel
· The Peshitta dressed up as the original
· Root-mysticism; nothing renders without a lexical anchor
· Finished. These are drafts, and they say so