Happy February, and on the eve of a big snowfall I am back, to discuss more on how to translate Bar Penkaye - or not. I recently ran across Emmanuel Joseph Mar-Emmanuel's thesis (pdf). This... makes several of my recent poasts, redundant.
Dr Mar-Emmanuel - I hope he's got his doctorate by now - may even be a native East Syriac speaker. He promises that he's going to edit the whole fifteen-volume work, or at least the fourteen memre which Mingana and Brock hadn't edited already. We've heard these promises since Baumstark (1901) and L'Orient syrien 8 (1963); so, we shall see. What is clear is that Mar-Emmanuel-as-PhD-candidate has read all fifteen volumes. He puts in many reasoned definitions for the jargon in the Rish Melle, and translates sizable sections, usually the more difficult sections.
Mar-Emmanuel sometimes agrees with me. He translates puḥre (plural of "banquet", which I had as "festivals") as from Akkadian puḫru, a nicely Babylonian / Nimrodian touch absent from the Bible although I know not if any Iraqi remembered its origin. For one more-recent example here: Lulyane. M-E explains this enigma in a paragraph. I like to think I'd argued the point with more force, but hey. Other times our man certainly seems to know what he's talking about more than I do, which will take up additional posts here.
I should reposition these blogposts to sweeping up behind Mar-Emmanuel, like I'd redone "The Keys To The Garden Are Swords" to follow Tron Honto.
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