The Aramaic Prayer of Jesus?

by SWALKER 6 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  SWALKER

  I received this in an e-mail and thought I'd put it out there for comments:

  What do you all make of all this? A wonderous thing.

  The language Christ and the people around him spoke and wrote was Aramaic - a Semitic language related to Hebrew and Arabic but without a modern form as both of those languages now have. What Christians of all persuasions have used as scripture for two millenia were translations from Greek for the most part and then translations made of translations. None were from Aramaic until the last few years. These recent new translations directly based on the Aramaic plus the incredible discoveries since the WWII of the ancient scrolls unearthed in jars in Egypt and Israel create a radical new vision of the message - a message that was radical in its own time and is still so in ours. In Aramaic, God is a birther, sin means "falling short," and it is our unity with each other that we are most like God.

  THE ARAMAIC PRAYER OF JESUS
  The Lord's Prayer as translated from the Aramaic by Neil Douglas-Klotz

  O, Birther of the Cosmos, focus your light within us -- make it useful
  Create your reign of unity now
  Your one desire then acts with ours,
  As in all light,
  So in all forms,
  Grant us what we need each day in bread and insight:
  Loose the cords of mistakes binding us,
  As we release the strands we hold of other's guilt.
  Don't let surface things delude us,
  But free us from what holds us back.
  From you is born all ruling will,
  The power and the life to do,
  The song that beautifies all,
  From age to age it renews.
  I affirm this with my whole being
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  Hellrider

  Beatiful, even nicer than the Bible-version. But is is for certain that this is the Lords prayer? Could it be another prayer that is just similar?

  directly based on the Aramaic plus the incredible discoveries since the WWII of the ancient scrolls unearthed in jars in Egypt and Israel create a radical new vision of the message

  Which ancient scrolls are these? Do you have any resources/info on this? I read everything I come across on these things...
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  Narkissos

  The Aramaic version of the Lord's Prayer ('abun debashmayâ) is quite well known, especially from the Syriac Peshitta'.

  The originality of the "translation" above owes much to the New-Age-like imagination of the "translator" than to the text itself.

  One detail struck me though when I studied the Syriac text: without the Greek variation in number for the word "heaven(s)" an inclusive structure appears better:

  Our Father in heaven,
  -- hallowed be your name.
  your kingdom come.
  your will be done
  -- as is in heaven, also on earth.

  In this reading not only God's "will," but his "name" and "kingdom" are brought down from heaven to earth. This is quite possible in Greek too but a little less clear (which does not mean that the Aramaic is original btw).
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  Leolaia

  Yeah, this is BS....sorry to say...
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  greendawn

  That translation is very liberal and involves much from the translator's imagination. I think Aramaic is still spoken today by a small group of people in Syria.
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  Forscher

  Aramaic is still spoken by a few in Syria and Iraq. The Iraqi group is growing smaller each year because they are Christian and are being run out of Iraq by radical Muslims. I agree that the Lord's prayer that we have in Greek is a translation as greek wasn't the primary language spoken in Israel. We do know from various manuscripts found in the area that both Aramaic and a highly aramatized Hebrew were spoken in the Irael of the first and early second century. I am not going to be dogmatic about which language Jesus taught the Lord's prayer in since I think he used whatever language best suited the audience he was targeting.
  Remember that Israel was a crossroads in the middle east. A certain level of proficiency in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin was probably normal for most trades men, such as the carpenter from Nazareth. I don't doubt that most kids grew up in that time hearing most, if not all of those languages spoken on the streets, and you know how easy it is for the little ones to become polyglotts. Down in the Carribean, it is not all that unusual to find street urchins proficient in as many as four languages. So I think it only reasonable that Jesus was capable of using whichever language would be best understood by the most in whatever group he spoke to.
  Since the Greek and the Peshitta are remarkably close in their content, I think the version we have to be more reliable than the one posted first on this thread.
  Forscher
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  Narkissos

  There is an important Syriac (also called Chaldean) community in Iran too (I visited one Syriac church in Tehran when I was there). They were also in Turkey before the Armenian genocide (I once had an Armenian friend of half-Syriac descent, she still remembered praying the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic when she was a little girl).

  Btw there is no doubt that the Lord's Prayer is of Semitic origin -- it is very similar to the rabbinical Qaddish:

  Heightened and hallowed be his great namein the world he created according to his will.And may he establish his kingdom in your life and in your days
  and in the life of all the house of Israel,
  very soon and in the coming season.
  --And you say: Amen!Blessed, praised and glorified, raised, lifted up and revered, exalted and lauded be the name of him who is Holy, blessed be He!
  Although he is high above all blessings, hymns, praised and solace
  uttered in (this) world.
  --And you say: Amen!May our prayers and the supplications of all Israel
  be accepted by our Father, who is in heaven (abuhon di bishemmaya).
  --And you say: Amen!May there be abundant peace from Heaven
  and life for us and all Israel.
  --And you say: Amen!May he who makes peace in the heights make peace for us and all Israel!
  --And you say: Amen!

  Whether the Christian version really originates with Jesus is another matter.