Christmas n Gifts n Such

So how did your gift giving go this year?  Usually, I have presents for all in the family, pastors and close friends - as an average I spend about $3,000 and make quite a few as well.  But, not this year!  As my unemployed state continues to eat away at my resources that number has been greatly trimmed, by about 90%.  If the gift had to be mailed - you got a card.  If the gift was for non-family - you got jam, sweets or a painting by me.  For family it had to be small items I was able to pick up during the year.  So, in all, about $300 total.

Of course, everyone understood, except for son whom threw a tempter tantrum and sat in his room in the dark for about 9 hours.  Nothing like an "adult" throwing a temper tantrum to really make your day.  Nothing like Gaelic Girl making excuses for him to really piss me off big time.  She will make every excuse in the book for him to account for his poor behavior - but God help any of my daughters if they run afoul the GG!

My best gift had to be a copy of the Syriac Pishetta, which has been carefully restored from what we now have of the ancient texts, Latin additions removed, etc.  Very interesting work and also from the standpoint that what I have been writing on for next year's blogs and covered in detail - so I was not only to find that I was 99% in my understanding on the subject but also a few more chewy pieces I had not thought on before.  God's timing I guess.  You can expect the first week of the New Year blogs to really be offensive to almost everyone now!
:^)

This work, Aramaic English New Testament is not released yet, but will shortly be available:
Netzari Press
ISBN 978-1-934916-70-4 (1-934916-70-6)

I have never seen an ISBN with additional numbers in parenthesis before, so not real sure what it means.

I would give this work an A+ for being interesting and making you think in order to figure out the differences between the Aramaic and the Greek texts we are so familiar with.  About half of the work is explanations of differences between the Greek and Aramaic.  Some of the comparisons are humorous and others thoughtful, as you realize the struggle the Greek translators went through to take a pictorial language and make it fit a Greek logic sequence.

Will your faith be affected by reading this work and incorporating it into you faith?  Not really, if it does then you are either turning into a legalistic defeated believer or someone like Peter - torn between Judaism and Christianity (I believe Paul called him a hypocrite.....).  It might however help you walk that fine line between living your faith and being compromised out of it by this western culture which has watered down our belief set.

So, I need to get a move on.  Cousin destroyed his computer over the holiday and get to try and figure out what it was he did.....