Dr. Michael Sokoloff, Jerusalem, Israel, is an emeritus professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages who taught at Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. His scholarly work centers on the Aramaic literary dialects of the first millenium CE written by both Jews and Christians. He has published five Aramaic dictionaries of dialects from this period, the most relevant for the present work being A Syriac Lexicon, Eisenbrauns and Gorgias Press, 2009; 2nd printing 2012.