Yeshua’s home dialect was Galilean, a Western variety of Palestinian Aramaic. So a reader of this site may fairly ask, how much of what I’m reading is attested in that dialect? The answer depends on what counts as a match. A word can match a dictionary headword exactly, or it can belong to the same root family as one, and this page keeps the two apart.
Each content word’s glossary card says where its evidence comes from. Exact headword matches and root-family matches are counted separately, and only an exact match gets the DJPA badge.
The DJPA used here is Sokoloff’s dictionary, parsed into 5,980 entries. It gives 625 accepted matches, 478 exact and 147 by root family. Of the ambiguous cases, 115 were accepted as exact, 8 as root-family, and 30 were left unmatched.
The 58.2 percent says the word is in the Palestinian Aramaic lexicon. The Aramaic form printed on the page is a separate matter. Only 7.4 percent of words in the interlinear have their own spelling in a Palestinian Aramaic text, marked with a green underline in the Aramaic row; the rest of that row comes from the Peshitta.
The number above counts only exact DJPA headwords, and only those get the DJPA badge. Aramaic words are built on roots, though, so the vocabulary can also be measured by asking how many words belong to a root family with Palestinian attestation somewhere in it.
of the 46,340 indexed content-word occurrences (28,068) belong to a root with at least one exact DJPA headword match. Counting root-family matches too, the figure is 32,281 occurrences, or 69.7%.
distinct Aramaic roots in the Gospels (36.9%) contain an exact DJPA headword match. With root-family matches added, the count is 583 of 1,218, or 47.9%.
Exact-headword coverage (58.2%) means the word itself matches a DJPA headword. Root coverage (60.6%) means the word belongs to a root that contains an exact match.
The 58.2% above rests on one dictionary. The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon (CAL) is a second. For each entry it records which dialects attest which sense, and its Gal tag marks CAL’s own Galilean corpus. CAL is used here by permission of its maintainer and is cited on every card that shows it.
CAL can file several unrelated words under one set of consonants. Under gyr it lists arrow, to convert, chalk, and the particle for. So a dialect tag counts here only when we can tell which of those entries is the word in our verse, and where we cannot, we claim nothing. By that test, 193 entries carry a Galilean tag. They cover 10,388 of the 46,340 indexed content-word occurrences, or 22.4%. It is a different group from the no-match words with Western attestation above (233 entries): it counts every word with the tag, including words that already have a DJPA match.
occurrences (65.7%) are on words that already had an exact DJPA headword match. There the two dictionaries agree, which is useful but adds no coverage.
carry CAL’s Galilean tag and have no exact DJPA match. That is 7.7% of the indexed content words.
CAL has one more label, and by occurrences it is the largest. When a word is used across the whole Aramaic family, CAL files it as Common Aramaic and lists no dialects. That holds for 359 of the 1,132 entries where we can tell which CAL word is ours. Because a word common to the whole family includes Galilean usage, a high-confidence Common Aramaic match counts here as Galilean and Western attestation of the word, though not of its pronunciation. A match is set aside only where Western Aramaic is shown to use a different word in the same sense. That check accepts 349 entries and excludes 1. Probable matches are left uncounted (9 entries).
Supporting citations are shown on the card and get no badge of their own. 569 of the 1,132 entries cite a Western text for the sense used here, covering 26,928 occurrences. Together, CAL’s explicit Western tags, Common Aramaic matches, and supporting citations cover 764 entries and 38,242 occurrences, or 82.5%. Of those, 433 entries and 24,791 occurrences already have an exact DJPA match. The other 331 entries and 13,451 occurrences are new and add 29.0% to the coverage.
None of this moves the DJPA number. CAL cannot supply a DJPA headword match, so 58.2% stands. Count a word when it has either an exact DJPA match or Western attestation in CAL, and 87.3% of indexed content-word occurrences are attested in Palestinian Aramaic. CAL’s Galilean evidence comes to 475 entries and 31,181 occurrences: 193 with CAL’s explicit Galilean tag and 349 accepted Common Aramaic matches, with 67 entries in both groups. Some supporting citations rest on Qumran alone (94 entries, 7,480 occurrences). Those are literary Judean Aramaic texts from the century before Yeshua and are not a record of Galilean speech; the card names the text so a reader can weigh it.
Christian Palestinian Aramaic (CPA) is a Western dialect, and its tags and citations count in the totals above under the same rules as the other Western texts. CPA is tagged on 239 of the 1,132 entries and cited on 279. Much of CAL’s CPA text is a translation of the Gospels, so it shows the words its translators chose, not Yeshua’s own.
The Aramaic row of the interlinear is the Peshitta, the Syriac Gospels. Syriac is an Eastern branch of Aramaic. The Peshitta was translated from a Greek text, so it is a witness to the Aramaic behind the Gospels and not the original. The English is translated from the Greek; in what is spoken the Peshitta shapes the wording, and the meanings lean on Galilean and other Western Aramaic wherever a word is found there.
Because Syriac and Galilean differ in vocabulary, and changing the spelling of a Syriac word does not make it Galilean. So the interlinear does not print converted Peshitta forms as Galilean: where no Galilean form is attested, its Aramaic row gives the Peshitta’s Syriac, and each content word’s glossary card names its sources. The Lord’s Prayer and Beatitudes pages work differently, and say so: the Peshitta sets their word order, each word is Galilean or other Western Aramaic where one is attested, and otherwise the Peshitta’s word in Galilean form.
In the interlinear, a green underline marks a word attested in a Palestinian Aramaic source; the rest is the Peshitta’s Syriac.
A script checks the site’s public pages against a list of overclaims the site does not make, such as those below. A review step flags any claim that says more than its cited evidence.
The counts above rest on two dictionaries, the DJPA and CAL. The interlinear also shows the other Aramaic texts of the Gospels the project holds: the Christian Palestinian Aramaic manuscripts (the early fragments and the Lewis–Gibson lectionary) and the two Old Syriac manuscripts, the Sinaiticus and the Curetonian.
A Gospel lectionary in Christian Palestinian Aramaic, the Western Aramaic dialect that is the closest surviving relative of Galilean. It was published by Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson and has long been in the public domain. Its lections cover 1,496 distinct verses of the Gospels (Matthew 473, Mark 117, Luke 416, John 490). The manuscript’s script, a distinctive variant of Syriac Estrangela, defeats ordinary OCR, so the pages are transcribed in two independent machine passes, and a line is accepted only where the two agree. As of 5 September 2026, 208 of 318 pages had been read and 117 were usable. Placing each line on its verse is the hard part. A first attempt misplaced the lines that follow each lection’s opening, and it was withdrawn. The lines are now matched to their verses and shown in the interlinear under 658 verses, after the older Christian Palestinian manuscripts the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon transcribes (by permission of Stephen A. Kaufman); together the CPA band reaches 1,493 verses. Christian Palestinian Aramaic counts as Western evidence, here and in CAL’s dialect tags; Galilean attestation is shown separately. Its text is a translation of the Gospels, so it shows the words its translators chose; it cannot establish Yeshua’s own wording.
CAL’s dialect tags appear in the glossary, where each word’s card names the Western or Palestinian dialects that attest it (Galilean, Jewish Palestinian, Palestinian Targum, Samaritan, Christian Palestinian). The 1,845 distinct Aramaic words in the Gospels were queried, and CAL has an entry for 1,791. Of the 1,344 glossary entries, we can tell which CAL word is ours for 1,132. For the other 212, no CAL entry could be matched to our word with confidence, so the card shows nothing from CAL. Of the 1,132, 829 name a dialect and 359 are filed as Common Aramaic. CAL labels and supports words.
The two Old Syriac manuscripts, the Sinaiticus and the Curetonian, are shown under 3,532 verses beside the Peshitta, from the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon’s transcription (by permission of Stephen A. Kaufman). In the scoring, 21,351 of their words across 3,513 verses agree with the Peshitta and count as a second Syriac witness; where they differ, the difference is recorded. Neither bears on the Galilean number, because Syriac is not Galilean.