Who Made the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon?

The CAL is the fruit of the work of many scholars and researchers. The project was suggested by the late Prof. Del Hillers (Johns Hopkins University) in the early 1980?s, who asked Joseph Fitzmyer S.J. (Catholic Univ.) and Stephen A. Kaufman (Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion) to join him in the work. Father Fitzmyer contributed his vast bibliographic information, while Dr. Kaufman planned the computerization aspect of the project. Prof. M. Sokoloff (Bar Ilan University) served as an associate editor and contributed many of the primary electronic materials for the Jewish Aramaic text corpus as well as some of the fundamental algorithmic ideas.

Funding for the better part of two decades from the National Endowment for the Humanities and friends of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion enabled the project to employ several researchers over the years. Those who have served in this capacity include—in roughly chronological order—

? Stephen Bennett

? Naicong Li

? Edward Cook

? Deidre Dempsey

? Jerome Lund

? Annalisa Azzoni

Senior research assistants included

? Steven Boyd

? Eldon Clem

? Elleanora Cusini

? David Everson

? Tarsee Li

? Adam McCullom

? And dozens of other student assistants who made and continue to make valuable contributions.

Nor could the project have advanced without the support and major contributions—academic and otherwise—of outside scholars, some of whom spent substantial time at the project centers:

? Julia Foster

? Matthew (Moshe) Morgenstern

? Christa M?ller-Kessler

? Bezalel Porten (with the invaluable assistance of Ada Yardeni)

? The staffs and contributors of the Peshitta Institute (Leiden) and the Netherlands Targum projects (Kampen, Groningen)

Electronic texts—both major and minor—were also supplied by the following scholars, among others:

? Derek Beattie (TgRuth)

? Z. Ben-Hayyim†? (Tebat Marqe, Asatir)

? Jorunn J. Buckley (Diwan Malkuta)

Bruce Chilton (Targum Isaiah))

? E. Clarke? (TgPsJon)

? Menaḥem Cohen (Targums Onkelos and Jonathan)

? W. Randall Garr (Hatran)

? Jonas Greenfield? (Nabataean)

? George Kiraz (NT Peshitta)

? Robert Kitchen (LG)

? Alexey Lyavdansky (Syriac charms)

? Andreas Ellwardt (TDN)

? Rbai Rafid Alsabti (precious Mandaic manuscripts)

class=st>Brian Mubaraki (Mandaic)

? Robert Owens (Aphrahat)

? Andrea Schmidt (GregOr)

? Abraham Tal (Samaritan Targum and Liturgy)

George Kiraz of Gorgias Press has also been gracious enough to provide the Project with the Syriac texts of their many recent and invaluable publications. Details of each publication may be found by hovering over the text abbreviation in the lexical citations. Access to the complete text may not always be available, however.

Lastly we must express our gratitude to Lars Lindgren, of dukhrana.com for allowing us to link to his displays of digitized older Syriac dictionaries, to Steve Caruso for his valuable programming assistance, and to the dozens of scholars, researchers, and assistants who helped all of the above-named researchers in their work.