Sources

The Greek base text. The reading starts here, and its claims are keyed to Greek words. Morphology via MorphGNT; lemma, part of speech and the Louw–Nida semantic-domain codes for each Greek word via MACULA Greek (Clear Bible, CC BY 4.0). Where the SBL text differs from other major editions, or the manuscripts divide, the interlinear marks the verse; that comparison comes from the Tyndale House tagged Greek New Testament in STEPBible-Data (TAGNT).

The main Aramaic witness. It gives the sentences their order and tenses and supplies the Syriac form shown in the interlinear, as a witness to the Aramaic rather than the original. The meanings, and on the Lord’s Prayer and Beatitudes pages the words themselves, lean on the Galilean and other Western Aramaic sources below wherever they attest a word. Electronic text by ETCBC; morphology from SEDRA 3.

The two surviving manuscripts of the Old Syriac Gospels, an earlier Syriac translation than the Peshitta. Their text is the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon’s transcription, used by permission of Stephen A. Kaufman. Each verse sits where CAL numbers it, and the interlinear shows a line for each manuscript that has the verse: the Sinaiticus under 3,342 verses and the Curetonian under 1,861. The comparison with the Peshitta of the same verse records agreements and differences; where a manuscript has the Peshitta’s word, it counts as a second, independent Syriac witness in scoring (the per-word tiers shown in the interlinear did not change). The earlier editions read from the page here (Lewis 1910, Burkitt 1904) are kept as a record and are no longer shown.

Fragments of Gospel books in Christian Palestinian Aramaic from the early period, older than the lectionaries below: the Codex Climaci Rescriptus, the St Petersburg, Damascus, Cambridge, New York, Göttingen and London fragments, Khirbet Mird, and several pieces CAL lists without a manuscript name, as CAL transcribes them (by permission of Stephen A. Kaufman). They cover 961 verses, 661 of them verses no Christian Palestinian witness here had before; with the lectionary, the interlinear’s CPA band now reaches 1,493 verses. Each manuscript is named on its own line, the early ones first. Where a fragment and the lectionary share a verse, both are shown.

Christian Palestinian Aramaic, the Western Aramaic of the Melkite churches of Palestine, from the same branch of Aramaic as Yeshua’s Galilean. These three lectionaries (Vatican, 1030; Sinai, 1104 and 1118) are its fullest Gospel text, though late and touched by Syriac; the older palimpsests below are the better text where they survive. Each page is read in two independent passes (208 of 318 pages read as of 5 September 2026, 117 of them clean enough to use). The checked lines are shown on the interlinear (658 verses so far), after the older manuscripts where both have the verse. Christian Palestinian Aramaic counts as Western evidence; Galilean attestation is shown separately. As a translation of the Gospels it shows the words its translators chose, not Yeshua’s own wording.

A second Christian Palestinian Aramaic Gospel witness, independent of the lectionary: Lewis’s 1909 edition of the palimpsest. Its printed text cannot be recovered by OCR, so its 260 scripture headings were indexed first (the Gospel pages are mostly Matthew). 22 of its 24 Gospel pages have been transcribed in two passes, as with the lectionary; 10 are settled, 11 await a third reading, and 1 could not be read (as of 2 September 2026). Where CAL has the Codex Climaci text for a verse, CAL’s transcription is shown and this reading fills the rest; the CPA band carries a Codex Climaci line under 228 Gospel verses.

CCR II (the Pauline epistles) and CCR XI (Acts and the Catholic epistles) in a modern edition. Not Gospel text: it can attest Christian Palestinian Aramaic word forms beside the lectionary and the lexicons. Its text pages are not yet transcribed, so nothing from it is shown. Christian Palestinian Aramaic counts as Western evidence; this edition adds nothing yet because its text is not transcribed.

Gospel books copied around the 6th century (the dates rest on the handwriting), later scraped and written over, many of them at St Catherine’s, Sinai. They are the oldest Western Aramaic Gospel text known. The New Finds codex Sin. syr. NF M56N, a continuous Matthew and Mark described by Alain Desreumaux (2023), keeps Matthew 5:3, 5:5 and 5:9–11 of the Beatitudes but not the Lord’s Prayer; its edition is in progress. Codex Climaci Rescriptus I, the palimpsest shown above from Lewis’s 1909 edition, has been re-read from multispectral images by Kim Phillips (2024). The fragments are gathered in Müller-Kessler & Sokoloff, A Corpus of Christian Palestinian Aramaic IIA (1998). No Gospel manuscript in Galilean Aramaic itself is known.

The New Testament in the Western Aramaic still spoken in Maaloula, Syria, a modern translation by Aramaic Bible Translation. Read only as a comparison: it is a living dialect, not an ancient witness. Its Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11, on Rinyo with audio) shares two Western features with the Galilean page: the y- of yitqaddash where the Peshitta has n-, and the verb ‘bring in’ (ʿ-l-l) for ‘do not bring us’.

Bensly, Harris & Burkitt, The Four Gospels in Syriac (1894): the same Sinaitic palimpsest as Lewis 1910, in its earlier transcription; CAL’s transcription now stands above. Pusey & Gwilliam, Tetraevangelium Sanctum (1901): the volume in hand is the Latin translation and apparatus, not the vocalized Syriac, so SEDRA 3 still supplies the vowels. The OpenGNT edition text: licence unverified, held; only Levinsohn’s separately licensed quotation index is used.

The Old Testament quotations render from the Hebrew source. Amalgamated Hebrew OT with morphology, from Tyndale House.

The Greek OT for quotation comparison; the Byzantine text supplies the Greek of verses the critical text omits, and these are flagged.

The Galilean dictionary: the project’s primary witness for Palestinian Aramaic attestation, cited throughout the glossary.

The Christian Palestinian Aramaic dictionary, indexed from the print: 224 pages, 3,604 entries with their Latin glosses and scripture citations. It anchors Christian Palestinian Aramaic forms beside the Galilean dictionary, and a glossary card shows its entry where the headword and a cited Gospel verse both match.

The dialect map of the whole language. The 1,845 distinct Aramaic words in the Gospels were queried, particles included, not only the words that earn a glossary card. CAL files a lexicon entry for 1,791 of them; the rest are mostly proper names, Greek loanwords, compounds, and a few words it files under another headword. Where an entry exists and we can tell which of CAL’s same-spelled words is ours, it supplies the vocalized form, the part of speech, the root, and the numbered senses with the dialects that attest each one. Its Gal (Galilean) tag is the attestation this project is otherwise short of, and it stands beside Sokoloff’s DJPA as a second reading of largely the same Palestinian texts. Its CPA (Christian Palestinian Aramaic) tag counts as Western; it comes after the Galilean tags, so a card shows which words are attested in Galilean proper and which in Christian Palestinian Aramaic alone. A confident match to a word common to the whole Aramaic family counts as Galilean and Western attestation, since the family includes Galilean, unless Western Aramaic is shown to prefer another word for the same sense. No pronunciation is claimed. What it corroborates, and what it adds, is counted in the Galilean essay.

The classical Syriac and Targumic dictionaries, consulted by hand for semantic range. The text layer of the Payne Smith scan lost its Syriac headwords, so it is not indexed. Both volumes of Jastrow are in hand; a targeted index of the entries the Galilean dictionary does not cover (Palestinian-Targum citations) has not been built yet.

The interlinear word card shows the Greek word’s semantic-domain code and label (1,335 glossary words carry one). The copyrighted sense-glosses themselves are not reproduced.

Supporting Greek and Hebrew lexica. Strong’s glosses still supply the English under some Greek words in the interlinear; they are replaced where a better gloss has been written.

Retroversion claims and the poetic structure of the sayings.

The classic treatment of the Aramaic behind the sayings tradition.

The grammar of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, indexed from the print: 20,301 Hebrew-script forms, 6,734 of them with Dalman’s own vowel pointing. Where a Galilean form’s vowels are shown in the apparatus, a pointed form printed here (or in Sokoloff’s dictionary) is the anchor, and the display says whether the vowels are printed or reconstructed.

Modern reconstruction scholarship for Mark and the double tradition.

An independent reconstruction of the spoken words in the Gospels in Galilean Aramaic, written in Latin letters; so far Matthew 1 and Mark 1–2. Compared, not followed. His Galilean Lord’s Prayer is linked from the prayer page.

Documented habits of Syriac translators that must not be mistaken for the Aramaic beneath the Greek. Where Williams warns, the claim is held back from a higher tier.

The control corpus of dated Palestinian Aramaic (2nd c. BC–2nd c. AD) against which Galilean claims are checked.

The Galilean register itself: which forms, spellings, and constructions are Western rather than Babylonian or Syriac. Read as a dialect check on the reconstruction, not as a source of readings; 206 of its points are recorded.

Torrey read the Gospels as translations of Aramaic originals and explained hard Greek as mistranslation. That is a minority position and it is weighed as one. His 425 claims, 381 of them keyed to a verse, are recorded and scored at the lowest scholar weight. Where his transliterations are unreadable in the scan, the claim is held for review.

Grammar authority for aspect and tense decisions, indexed by section so that a decision can cite him by § (382 sections, 50 of them on the verb’s tenses, participles and periphrasis); and the map of Aramaic’s dialects and history.

Public-domain English translations.

Locating the scriptures inside the scripture: which Gospel words quote which Hebrew verses. The quotation list is cross-checked against the standard loci citati apparatus (NA28/UBS5); no edition text is reproduced from it.