A reader sent the following inquiry: 

When will your new testament be ready? I would like to view some samples such as John 1:1-2. You have produced a beautiful OT.

Thank you for the compliment on the Old Testament!

I'm expecting to finish the New Testament in time for publication at year end. But I don't have samples of specific verses available yet. Here's why. "Regular" translators work verse by verse. The "translinear" methodology dictates that a specific word is worked throughout the New Testament at the same time. Thus, although I'm approximately 80% complete on the first round of word substitution, no verse is complete yet. All the verses will be complete on roughly the same day. So I am as anxious as you are to see what emerges.  (A fun fact---I had to work "blind" for over 3 years on the Old Testament before the complete word substitution was visible as readable verses!)

For the Old Testament, I needed to do several rounds of refining the word choices. I feel confident that the New Testament process will be much quicker because most of the hard work of finding the correct word choice has been done.

A second reader sent the following inquiry: 

I have purchased the ARTB - Old Testament and, as a biblical scholar, am truly pleased. What is the status of the ARTB - New Testament; will it be taken from the Greek or the Aramic? Are there any plans to work on some of the other books that were not included in our present cannon - i.e., Books of Enoch, Wisdom of Solomon, etc.?

I started the Greek New Testament several years ago.  But I put a “pause” on the Greek and am now tackling the Aramaic for a couple of reasons:

1)  My personal curiosity got the better of me!  I wanted to see what the complete Hebrew/Aramaic vocabulary would look like when placed in the New Testament.  Would it be interesting?  A significant aid to understanding? 

2)  I am very aware that the Aramaic Peshitta is likely derived from the Greek.  So, it is a legitimate question whether its the right thing to do it from the Aramaic.  I want to review the end product of the translinear Aramaic New Testament before I make that conclusion.   

3)  The very important lesson I learned doing the Old Testament is that the final output looks very different if you start from the New Testament first, and push back to the Old Testament (which the majority of translations have done). If you go from NT to OT, you CANNOT do a translinear version because the vocabulary in the New Testament is so much smaller than the Old Testament.  You get caught with the wrong words and you end up with the problem of needing to reuse English words.

Thus, it means if I want to do a translinear Greek NT, I must go back and do the entire Septuagint/Widsom Books/New Testament at one crack.  That’s a multi-year project, which I do plan on doing—because I’m also interested in the Wisdom books.  But I decided to finish the Aramaic NT first for all the reasons above. My sense is that it truly will be an eye-opener and will resolve the gap between words in the New Testament (like baptism, apostles, church/synagogue, preach, evangelism) that don’t occur at all in the Old Testament.  It’s on track to be published by year end.