Glenn David Bauscher's The Aramaic-English Interlinear New Testament

Before Reverend Bauscher released The Original Aramaic New Testament in Plain English, a translation from the Aramaic Western Peshitto, he had this, The Aramaic-English Interlinear New Testament. It doesn't use a normal Interlinear format, but places the Aramaic with the English between each word in parenthesis, here is an example from it (without the Aramaic obviously).

"(The Word)___(had been)___(existing)___(In the Origin)
(God)___(with)___(had been)__(existing)___(Word)___(& That)
(Word)___(That)___(was)___(Himself)__(& God)"- The Holy Gospel Preaching of John 1:1

The "___" represent places where the Aramaic appears, using the modern Hebrew font. Hebrew and Aramaic have the same alphabets and pronunciation, so it does not effect the pronunciation of the Aramaic. An issue with this is that Bauscher does not include the Masoretic vowel pointings (like Andrew Gabriel Roth used in his Aramaic-English New Testament), but this also accurately reflects the fact that Aramaic and Hebrew do not have vowels. The words are still relatively easy to pronounce without the vowel pointings though!

Bauscher sometimes transliterates Aramaic names for people and places. Jesus is Yeshua, but in this interlinear, Yochanan is still John. He also translates "Mar" (Aramaic for "Lord") and "MarYah" ("Lord Yahweh") correctly. "Mar" is translated as "Lord" and "MarYah" is translated as "THE LORD JEHOVAH". "Jehovah" is not as accurate of a pronunciation as "Yahweh", but that isn't the point of this review.

The AEINT is sometimes more accurate than the Plain English New Testament. Matthew 5:3 reads in the Plain English as "Blessed by the Spirit are the poor," but the Interlinear reads, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." The Interlinear is less interpretive than the Plain English (which is also pretty literal, but not as accurate). He still gets interpretive in some places, such as translating "Ena 'na" ("I am") as "I AM THE LIVING GOD" when used by Jesus or God. This is a correct interpretation, I believe, but I think Bauscher should have simply let the Scriptures speak for themselves. All in all, I highly recommend you purchase both Bauscher's New Testament translation and his Aramaic-English Interlinear. He certainly did a great job!

http://www.aramaicnt.com - Translator David Bauscher's website.

http://www.bible-geeks.com