CAL seems to be back online

I just noticed that the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon, which was offline for approximately six weeks due to a ‘hacker’, is now back on-line.

What exactly would a hacker want with an online Aramaic lexicon? Apparently to save a trip to Half-Price Books:

We apologize for the unavailability of our system during the six weeks between early May and mid-June, 2011. The CAL server was struck by a hacker from an ISP in London, UK precisely on the day that Dr. Kaufman left the country, apparently simply because he or she wanted a complete copy of our online version of Sokoloff’s DJPA and wanted to save the $100 for the second edition and received instead an early draft of the first edition, while totally comprimising the system

What’s the deal?

A few days ago, Chip Hardy (DailyHebrew) linked to an article by NT Wright discussing the KJV and the protestant theological basis behind translation of the Bible into vernaculars along with the issues that arise. In that article, Wright oddly states, “Jesus’ first followers were in any case already almost certainly bilingual. Their mother tongue was Aramaic (a language which developed from the classical Hebrew of the scriptures, a few hundred years earlier)” (emphasis mine).

What?

This was followed yesterday by an article on NPR concerning Karen Stern of Brooklyn College and Jewish Aramaic tomb graffiti (circulated by Jack Sasson circulated via Agade). The article begins as follows:

Aramaic is the lingua franca of the ancient Middle East, the
linguistic root of modern day Hebrew and Arabic. (Emphasis Mine)

“Once you understand Aramaic,” says Karen Stern, “you can read
anything. You can read Hebrew, you can read Phoenician. I always call
it the little black dress of Semitic languages.”

Again, I say, “What?”

Apparently, Classical Hebrew developed into Aramaic which then morphed back into Modern Hebrew and Arabic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

English-to-Akkadian Dictionary

CDL has published a new English-Akkadian dictionary incorporating the CAD, CDA (Black et al), and the newer Assyrian-English-Assyrian dictionary edited by Parpola and Whiting.

Jim Davila quips “This will be handy for your Akkadian composition course.”

We actually have an old hand prepared English index to the CAD in our library. It was very useful for figuring out what word a scholar was reading in their English translation if there was damage or a break.

Also if you were tired and just worked backwards from the English to prepare your Akkadian text. Not that I ever did that.