The Essays

Why listen beneath the Greek at all: what a verb-based root language does to concepts like spirit, kingdom, and repentance, and where the firm ground ends. Given as a talk; read it or listen.

Where English says “save,” the Aramaic says four different things: living, setting free, rescuing, healing. How 43 verses were recast, and what “the Life-Giver of the world” means.

Synagogue scrolls were Hebrew scrolls. Why the 88 Old Testament quotations render from the Hebrew source, and what happens when an evangelist’s point rests on the Greek version instead.

Yeshua spoke Western Aramaic, and most of the surviving witnesses are Eastern. How much of this rendering’s Aramaic is attested in Palestinian Aramaic, and what the count leaves out.

Do not judge, and judge rightly. Not peace but a sword, and my peace I give you. Why do you call me good, and I am the good shepherd. The Peshitta helps with two of them: it uses two different words in the peace sayings and one word for both goods, so the context decides. The essay reads his consistency as a physician’s rather than a legal code’s.