Jesus didn’t speak English

On several of my trips back and forth on I-35, I have listened to a podcast interview on “Sounds True” by Tami Simon—she was speaking with Dr. Neal Douglas-Klotz of the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland. He is a teacher and writer specializing in Sufism and Christian thought and belief. Much of his focus has been on the use in Jesus time of the ancient pre-Arabic language, Aramaic.The podcast is called, “The Aramaic Jesus”. It is an hour long and is quite enlightening.

Aramaic as a language originated in the ancient civilization known as Aram. In Genesis 11, the city of Haran, where Abraham and his father Terah settled after leaving Ur of the Chaldees, while en route to Canaan, was located in Paddan Aram, that part of Aram Naharaim that lay along the Euphrates. After Isaac was born and of an appropriate age to marry, Abraham sent his head-servant back to this place to find a wife for him.  The steward found Rebekah, who satisfied and exceeded the requirements set forth by Abraham. Aramaic is an ancient tongue, and is still spoken in parts of Syria.

Some of the most significant discoveries Dr. Douglas-Klotz has made is in regard to how the original Aramaic helps us understand potentially what Jesus was really trying to say versus how people in contemporary situations might be interpreting those same verses. 

Many of his observations appear to me as being quite important…or at least enlightening.

I have used much of the transcripted dialogue from the podcast in this post in order to properly transmit the message.

Klotz has discovered some very important issues and points which he wrote about in his second book, Hidden Gospel.

For instance, this is quite interesting: to quote Klotz: “the meaning of the word “good” in Aramaic really means “ripe”, meaning “at the right time, at the right place.” It's essentially a planting image and one that is drawn from nature.

Klotz continues: “Conversely, you could say, the word for “evil” as it's translated as evil in the Gospels, really means unripe. It's the Aramaic bisha where as “ripe” is the Aramaic tuve, which is similar to the modern-day Hebrew, tove. Just knowing that makes a huge difference when you look at works that have come to “theological” implications of, “Well, this is good belief and this is bad belief.” Or, “This is categorically, as Jesus says in the Gospels: a good tree bears good fruit. An evil tree bears evil fruit.” He’s really saying that “a ripe tree bears ripe fruit and an unripe tree bears unripe fruit.”

Klotz says that what Jesus was communicating was that we should “look at nature if you want to know how to live life, how to come back into tune with what he would call “sacred unity.” If you want to live life in a right way, in a ripe way, look at nature around you, it will guide you.”

So there are several things that I would consider to be keys that have to do with Aramaic words themselves.

Klotz then gets quite profound. He explains that there are several things which make a huge difference. This has to do with small things, like prepositions.

Klotz continues: “Jesus primarily talks about not believing in him”. He doesn't say, “Believe in me.” He says, “Believe like me. Believe as I do.” It's just a matter of translating the prepositions differently. You know, when [the Bible] went into a Greek version, which is what the Western churches ended up using, they chose to translate “believe like me” into “believe in me.” And that makes a huge amount of difference.

So there are small things that Klotz found also made a great deal of difference, that some of the later interpretations of the words of Jesus—and then their formulations as theology and as different sorts of theological organizations, churches and so forth.

He explained also some of the key words and how the translation changes our understanding of what Jesus might have been trying to communicate.

He explains: “Well, one of the bigger picture items—in Aramaic and any ancient Semitic language is that we need to let go of the division of reality into mind, body, soul, and spirit. This really comes to us from platonic Greek philosophy. And this division into heaven and earth—you could say transcendent imminent: mind, body, soul, spirit. All of these divisions don't apply in ancient Semitic languages. They had an entirely different world view or way of looking at the psychology of the self and its relationship to nature, its relationship to the universe.”

This begins to make sense when Klotz mentions individual words—for instance, the word that Jesus uses that is often translated as “spirit” really means “breath.”

He elaborates: “Spirit is sometimes seen in some theologies as something that is not of this world. That is, you could say, not having anything to do with nature or with what is sometimes considered to be a fallen reality. Whereas, Jesus couldn't have thought that way and neither could have the ancient Hebrew or ancient Jewish prophets because they believe that, according to Genesis, if we read Genesis literally, the holy one sort of creates the whole universe, breathes into it. So it's all part of what Matt Fox calls the “original blessing. Breath, my breath, the breath that we share, that we're sharing in this interview over these many miles, connects with the breath or the breathing, the wind, the air that is all over the planet, and this itself returns to a larger breath.”

This would be Jesus’ way of telling the story. And this larger breath, this breath of the whole universe, this breath that the Holy One is breathing, they would call this the “holy breath”. And this was later translated as “holy spirit.” Which, again, brings up the image of something disembodied, something not of this world, disconnected.

Who wrote about the The Spirit descending on Jesus after he came out of the Jordan from his baptism? It was a Gospel writer, a commentator. Those are not the words of Jesus.

Klotz explains that the Spirit is a big-picture image that percolates down through many, many Aramaic words and their literal translation, which simply was strained out through Greek philosophy, strained out through Greek language into a way of looking that Jesus and the ancient prophets could never have imagined. He mentions that they couldn't have even imagined some of the concepts that later came into Western theology.

Makes me wonder if my Western viewpoint about the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth is accurate, or is it simply ‘unripe’?