Vernon Easterhare Declares: 7/l/05

Hello after days and weeks in quietude! Yet things have been astir in my hermit's hovel here, hot as the inside of a black flivver waiting outside of a Kentucky bingo hall for "luck" to happen in dog-day Agugust afternoon gaming.

What novelties move the torpid air here? Why, the grace of God from the F. family of Jeff Street, the 'sweat equity' and the 'prayer equity' of Jeff Street Christian-siblings like S.L. and D.C., and the sweet help of Lady God, Better Fresh Air than any gambling joint's cheaps fortunes can offer.

So now I have a COMPAQ MV 520; what do I intend to do with it? Well, I shall tell you the DEEP DARK HOLY GRAIL SECRET OF MY ADULT LIFE: to live knowing (in the O.T. sense of 'experiencing') as closely as possible the REAL words of Jesus in his own language-NOT as pat as you might think this might be from studying Sunday School lessons. Jesus was not KNOWN to write, and at any rate it is thought that his tongue was Aramaic--a language kin to Arabic, close-as-a-hug to Hebrew, and a consonantal shift or so from Syriac, the dialect around Edessa, Syria. The New Testament IS written in Koine Greek, and a Syriac translation which enjoyed great prestige in the Orient and is quite interesting philologically, BUT THE GIST IS THAT THE ARAMAIC (OR HEBRAIZED ARAMAIC) MUST BE INTERPOLATED WITH THE GREATEST CIRCUMSPECTION FROM THE KOINE USING THE (USUAL) ASSUMPTION THAT THE LANGUAGE OF JESUS WAS SEMITIC, NOT INDO-EUROPEAN (READ HERE, "GREEK").

As a technical linguistic process, this interpolation is called "reconstruction," the process of working reconstruction is called similarly, "the reconstructive method." I HAVE TAKEN MUCH OF YOUR TIME, GOOD READER, EXPLAINING THE BACKDROP TO MY NEED FOR A COMPUTER AND INTERNET; NOW I SHALL DIP RIGHT INTO THE OCEAN OF MY VOYAGE FOR YOU!

I have excellent grammars and lexicons and concordances-- for a pauper-- with which to study Paletinian Jewish Aramaic of the lst-century (that which pertains to Jesus); but Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati has a datbase (HTTP://CAL1.cn.huc.edu) under the aegis of the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon Project: this WHAMO! resource has exhaustive Aramaic-English, English-Aramaic 'dictionaries,' complete texts of the Targums (Jewish Aramaic versions of the Bible), and ways to build 'concordances' using transliterated Semitic script into our Roman alpahabet, as well as 'links' and a welter of other information. This CHARISMA of a PC will mean that I can devote hour and hours and hours to my HOLY GRAIL AND LIVE THE WORD!