Yeshua’s home dialect was Galilean: a Western strain of Palestinian Aramaic. So a fair question about this whole site is: how much of what I’m reading is attested in that dialect? The answer requires keeping exact-headword evidence separate from root-family evidence. This page exists because the project would rather show both numbers plainly than blend them into a larger claim.
Every content word in the interlinear carries a provenance for its Palestinian-Aramaic row. An exact-headword join and a root-family join answer different questions, so the counts remain separate. Root-family evidence never receives an exact DJPA badge.
The full 5,980-entry Sokoloff DJPA parse is woven in. It produces 598 accepted corpus joins: 497 exact-headword and 101 root-family. Every candidate went through a two-model screen with orchestrator adjudication; the ambiguous candidates were settled one by one, 117 promoted to exact, 7 to root-family, and 29 left unjoined. Existing per-entry provenance remains unchanged.
61.6 percent of content-word occurrences join an exact DJPA dictionary headword (the word is attested in the Palestinian Aramaic lexicon). A stricter 2.3 percent of interlinear tokens carry a distinct attested Galilean word-form shown in the green row; the rest of the Aramaic form you see is the Peshitta, labeled as reconstruction.
The strict number above counts exact DJPA headwords, the only counting that may wear the DJPA badge. Aramaic itself, though, is built from roots, and a fairer picture of how Palestinian the vocabulary is comes from asking: how many words belong to a root family with Palestinian attestation somewhere in it?
of the 27,163 indexed content-word occurrences sit in a root represented by at least one exact-headword DJPA join (17,275 occurrences). Including roots represented by either join class: 18,377 occurrences, or 67.7%.
distinct Aramaic roots in the corpus contain an exact-headword DJPA join (38.0%). Including roots reached through root-family joins: 542 of 1,215, or 44.6%.
The two numbers answer different questions. Exact-headword coverage (61.6%) says this corpus entry joins directly to a DJPA headword. Root coverage (63.6%) says this word belongs to a root that contains an exact join. Adding root-family joins broadens the lexical picture, but never turns family evidence into exact proof.
The Lewis-Gibson 1899 Palestinian lectionary is being transcribed page by page under a two-pass agreement gate; 183 pages have passed so far, and disputed or unreadable material stays excluded. Its lines are now placed by verse with a Greek- and Peshitta-anchored aligner and shown on the interlinear under 626 verses as a display-only Western witness; they do not yet enter these counts.
The 61.6% above rests on one dictionary. The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon answers the same question from another: for each lemma it records which dialects attest which sense, and its Gal tag marks CAL’s own Galilean corpus. Used here by permission of CAL’s maintainer and cited on every card that shows it.
The number is small. A CAL consonantal skeleton files several unrelated words (gyr is arrow, to convert, chalk, and the particle for), so a dialect tag only counts here when we can establish which of those entries is the word in our verse. Where we cannot, nothing is claimed. That test leaves 70 entries carrying a Galilean tag, covering 907 of the 27,163 indexed content-word occurrences: 3.3%.
occurrences, nearly four in every five, sit on words that already held an exact DJPA headword join. On these, two dictionaries agree. That is worth having, and it adds no coverage.
carry CAL’s Galilean tag with no exact DJPA join: 0.7% of the indexed content words. That is the whole of the increment.
CAL has one more label, and it is the largest. Where a word runs across the whole family, CAL files it as Common Aramaic and prints no dialect list at all: 163 of the 604 resolved entries. A high-confidence Common Aramaic match counts as Galilean and Western lexical attestation because the family-wide word includes Galilean; the exception screen removes only a demonstrated same-sense case where Western Aramaic prefers another lemma, and no pronunciation is claimed. The screen accepts 161 entries, excludes one, and leaves one probable match uncounted.
Supporting citations remain visible rather than opening a second badge class. 329 of the 604 resolved entries cite a Western text for the sense in use, covering 11,453 occurrences. CAL’s explicit Western tags, Common Aramaic matches, and supporting citations merge to 380 entries and 12,267 occurrences, or 45.2%. Of those, 250 entries and 9,472 occurrences already hold an exact DJPA join; the remaining 130 entries and 2,795 occurrences add 10.3% of new ground.
So the DJPA number does not move: CAL cannot make a DJPA headword join, and 61.6% stands. Counting an exact DJPA join or merged CAL Western lexical attestation puts 71.9% of indexed content-word occurrences on a Palestinian lexical footing. The Galilean lane contains 229 entries and 10,282 occurrences: 70 carry CAL’s explicit Galilean tag and 161 carry accepted Common Aramaic identity, with two entries in both groups. Some supporting citations rest on Qumran alone (54 entries, 2,118 occurrences), literary Judean Aramaic of the century before rather than Galilean speech; the card names the text, so a reader can weigh it.
One tag is deliberately not counted. CPA (Christian Palestinian Aramaic) is a Western dialect, and it is excluded because a CPA attestation is circular. CAL’s CPA texts are themselves a translation of the Gospels, so a CPA hit on a Gospel word is evidence about the CPA translators, not about Galilean speech, and “Western attested” would be heard as “attested in the dialect he spoke.” CPA is tagged on 129 of the 604 resolved entries and cited on 160; both are recorded on the card and left out of the claim.
The Aramaic backbone of this site is the Peshitta: the Syriac gospels, consulted for every token. Syriac is an Eastern branch of Aramaic, and the Peshitta is a translation of an underlying Greek text: it is a witness to the Aramaic substrate, not the original, and this project does not treat it as one.
Because Syriac and Galilean differ lexically: different words, not just different spellings. A spelling conversion would not establish Galilean vocabulary, so converted Peshitta forms stay labeled reconstruction, not attestation. The machinery to reconstruct already exists, and each content word remains traceable through the labeled cascade.
Every reconstructed form is marked as reconstruction in the interlinear’s styling and provenance. Reconstructed forms are grey; exact lexical attestations are green.
Rendered output is checked against an explicit list of forbidden overclaims. A review check flags any claim that says more than its cited evidence.
The exact-headword count measures the witnesses woven in so far. The two largest remaining witnesses are the dialect-tag layer of the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon, counted above, and the Palestinian lectionary itself, which enters the interlinear as a display band and not yet as a number.
A Gospel lectionary in Christian Palestinian Aramaic (the Western Aramaic dialect that is the closest surviving relative of Galilean), published by Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson and long in the public domain. Its lections cover 1,496 distinct verses of this corpus (Matthew 473, Mark 117, Luke 416, John 490). The manuscript’s script (a distinctive Estrangela variant) defeats conventional OCR, so it is being transcribed in-house, each page read by two independent vision passes and accepted only where the two agree; 183 pages have passed that gate so far. Placing each line on its exact verse is the hard step: a first, naive distribution misassigned readings past each lection’s opening and was withdrawn. Its lines are now placed by verse with a Greek- and Peshitta-anchored aligner and shown on the interlinear under 626 verses as a display-only Western witness; they do not yet enter these counts. Whatever it shows, it is a Western translation witness: it does not establish Yeshua’s wording, and it does not change a word choice or a tier.
The 5,980-entry parse is woven. Its 598 joined entries (497 exact-headword, 101 root-family) are the numbers at the top of this page.
The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon’s per-lemma dialect tagging is woven into the glossary: each word’s card names the Western or Palestinian dialects that attest it (Galilean, Jewish Palestinian, Palestinian Targum, Samaritan). All 1,845 corpus words were queried, one lemma at a time and each cited; CAL files an entry for 1,756. On the 1,305 glossary entries we can say which homograph is ours for 604; the other 701 file several unrelated words under the same consonants and show a reader nothing. Of the 604, 345 name a dialect, 163 are filed as Common Aramaic, 70 carry an explicit Galilean tag, and 161 Common Aramaic matches pass the exception screen. The merged Western lane contains 380 entries; the merged Galilean lane contains 229. It labels and corroborates each word; it does not govern the word choice or open a second tier.
A separate, deferred acquisition, the Kiraz Comparative Edition of the Syriac Gospels (Sinaiticus, Curetonian, Peshitta, Harklean, hand-aligned), would give the project a second independent Syriac witness. That would sharpen the witness column, not the Galilean one: Syriac is not Galilean, and no edition of it changes that. An independent alignment of the Old Syriac Sinaiticus is built and scored in the consensus (1,497 token rows across 772 verses), and the interlinear shows the Sinaiticus reading as a witness beside the Peshitta; it corroborates and does not move a tier.