Peshitta Resources & English Translations

[Nazarene]

Shlama alaykhon,

I was just browsing through some of the threads and noticed some requests for an English translation of the Peshitta other than Lamsa's. I personally use the Peshitta NT myself (as does my congregation), and I do not consider Lamsa's translation either accurate or orthodox. But the good news is better translations are either available or in the works. Unfortunately the "Lamsa Bible" is still the only complete translation of the Peshitta (both OT & NT), but nevertheless here's a list of new translations and projects in the works:

The Peshitta: Aramaic/English Interlinear New Testament by Shamasha Paul D. Younan. Translated by an Assyrian who is a deacon in the ACE. Free pdf pages can be downloaded from his site: http://www.peshitta.org. Unfortunately he has only completed up to Acts 16.

P'shitta Tanakh: The Aramaic Jewish Bible in English by Ya'aqub Younan-Levine. An ongoing attempt to translate the Ambrosiana Codex into English by an ACE member who is of Assyrian and Jewish descent. He also runs a forum here, and a website here and here.

The Aramaic Bible & Disciple's New Testament by Victor Alexander. This is more of an idiomatic translation but on some occasions this Assyrian guy lets his personal interpretations through. The footnotes are useful though.

Aramaic Peshitta New Testament Translation by Janet M. Mageira. A modern English translation of the Western (SOC) Peshitta NT. Better than Murdock, Etheridge & Lamsa, this is a good option of SO Christians. She has also released a number of excellent Aramaic study materials.

And finally, if anyone's interested, a Nazarene translation (I use this one), and a Hebrew translation (my Synagogue leaders (Malpane) use this). If you have any Jewish friends who are considering conversion, consider getting them one of these.

I'm not aware of an English translation done by the SOC but I've heard that George Kiraz has created an interlinear for the Logos Bible Software. If anyone knows of a translation by the SOC please post the link.

And finally one of my favourite websites: http://www.dukhrana.com/. So many excellent Peshitta study tools, including the Khabouris Codex, George Kiraz's SEDRA (Syriac Electronic Data Retrieval Archive), dictionaries and extensive search capabilities for comparing the Peshitta (Western & Eastern) with all the Vulgate & the Greek NT texts, including the official Greek Orthodox Church text.

May MarYah Alaha bless your studies.

Push B'shlama,
Nazarene.

PS: If someone ever gets around to translating the Coptic, Armenian & Ge'ez Bibles into English that'll be really cool too.

[Leb Aryo]

Although, not any translations here, you could visit the BYU Syriac Studies library http://cpart.byu.edu/?page=99&sidebar.  They have a wealth of books that have been digitized for people to use.  They have many Peshitta helper books, that help explain terms and definitions like "Lexicon to The Syriac NT" and many others.  Books on grammar, and books written in other Syriac dialects such as "Christian Palestinian Aramaic" which would be a slightly closer dialect to old Aramaic as compared to Edessan Syriac and closer to the language of Christ.  You might want to pick up a bible written in this dialect if you can locate one.  Once, you see the slight differences between the two dialects it's very easy to read.

[Nazarene]

Wow that is quite a collection. Thank you.

Here's also the website for the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon: http://cal1.cn.huc.edu/

And Internet Archive has plenty of stuff as well: http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=Syriac%20AND%20mediatype%3Atexts.

BTW, would you by any chance know how I can get hold of an Arabic translation of the Peshitta? I've heard of the "Mosul Bible" done by the Chaldean Catholics but I'm unable to locate it. Still, I'm sure the SOC or Maronites have done their own translations.

[Leb Aryo]

Wow that is quite a collection. Thank you.

Here's also the website for the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon: http://cal1.cn.huc.edu/

And Internet Archive has plenty of stuff as well: http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=Syriac%20AND%20mediatype%3Atexts.

BTW, would you by any chance know how I can get hold of an Arabic translation of the Peshitta? I've heard of the "Mosul Bible" done by the Chaldean Catholics but I'm unable to locate it. Still, I'm sure the SOC or Maronites have done their own translations.

Yeah, Aramaic Lexicon is great but I find the actual lexicon part of it to be weak...  It's a great catalog though of all the Aramaic dialects.  They even have a pretty decent Syriac section.  I've downloaded some grammars from archive.org which were good.  My favorite, dialect right now, (besides my own Syriac) is Christian Palestinian Aramaic which died out probably in the 13th century.  This would have been the language of another Syriac church, the Melkite Greek Church, before Arabic supplanted it, and would have been along the lines of the Aramaic spoken in Malula in Syria; Western Aramaic which Christ would have spoken.  Galilean Aramaic (Dialect of Christ) of the time seems to have been very close to Eastern Aramaic (Syriac) though, probably because of the influence of "Samaritans" which were originally an East Aramaic speaking group, from Iraq.

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