Tag: english

I AM

Fact: when Jesus spoke to the crowds of people that gathered to listen to him, he the spoke in an ancient Semetic language called Aramaic. Another fact: the English language version of Jesus’ teachings that we have access to today were not translated from Aramaic, but instead translated from Greek after first being filtered through Greek philosophy and greek language.

Consequently, much of the modern English canonical gospels are a representation – and sometimes a downright manipulation – of the teachings of Jesus that best supported the Greek culture and worldview at the time.

That’s a hard one to swallow if you have been living your life according to every single Greek-to-English word of your NIV, KJV, NLT, ESV, or even AMP version of the Bible. Nevertheless, it’s important – and I think that every serious Christian, and every serious spiritual seeker should be well-informed about this.

Because here’s the thing: if you attempt to throw that translation process into reverse, and get as close as you can to the original meaning of the original words that Jesus spoke, you wind up getting confronted with some pretty significant challenges to the fundamental ideology of a lot of modern, western Christian thinking.

For example,

“In Aramaic, the word that is later translated as ‘I am’ is really ‘I-I.’ Aramaic doesn’t have a ‘being’ verb. You can’t actually say ‘I am’ in ancient Aramaic, nor can you do it in ancient Hebrew, as far as that goes. So really what Jesus is saying is, ‘I-I.’ [In other words:] The connection of the small self, which in Aramaic is called ‘nafsha’, is the self that is growing, evolving, learning through life. And the connection between that and the greater self, or what would be called the ‘only I’, ‘the only being’, ‘Alaha’, or ‘the One’, or ‘God’.”

– Neil Douglas Klotz, from his interview on Insights At The Edge via Sounds True.

I cannot tell you how many times some well-intentioned Christian person has reminded me that Jesus once said “I am the way, the truth, and the light”, as a way to justify their idea that belief in the person of Jesus is the only legitimate path to heaven.

It gives me no satisfaction whatsoever to spoil anyone’s worldview in a painful way, but is of great significance to me that the word(s) “I am” would not have been linguistically available to Jesus in the language in which he was teaching at the time. Furthermore, if what he actually said was something closer to the Aramaic word for “I-I”, this piece of Jesus’ message – and it’s theological implication – becomes quite transformed.

Curiously, in many other religious, psychological, and philosophical disciplines the idea of a relationship between a “small self” and a “greater Self” – as indicated by this Aramaic word “I-I” – is a common theme. This is more common in far Eastern spiritualities, where concepts of “Buddha nature“, “Atman and Brahman“, and “Tao” invite it’s practitioners to seek spiritual enlightenment by liberating oneself from a “small-self only” orientation towards oneself and the world, and uncover a connection to the [choose your favorite word for the divine, i.e. God, Source, the One, Only-I, etc.] within.

Western psychology also has a way of conceptualizing this phenomena. The notion of the “small self” would probably be best described as “ego”. Ego, in psychological terms, is understood as the part of ourselves we experience as limited by time and space, and contained within a physical form. Ego, or small self, is something I’m confident we can all identify with; it’s the part of ourselves that worries about whether people like us, if we will be able to pay the rent, whether we will be happy, or what might make us happier.

Additionally, there are transpersonal psychological theories that discuss the idea of a “greater Self”, and often point to this concept as a fundamental part of psycho-spiritual health. In Jungian psychology for example, there is this notion that self-realization is available only through the development of an ego-Self (as in, greater Self) axis, or the ability to get your ego and the divine part of your consciousness talking to each other on the regular.

So, here’s what the phrase “I-I” means to me: “The way, the truth, and the light” is accessible to everyone. There is no dogma that can dictate this path, and there is no governing body to decide how it must be done. There is just you-YOU. You, the vulnerable human being subject to all the vicissitudes of your daily experiences. And YOU, the you that’s got a direct line to God.

Perhaps Jesus was saying, “Look, if you can get these two aspects of yourself – the human and the divine – communing with one another”, well … that is the way, that is the truth, and that is the light of human existence.

 

Sin

I think the word “sin” is one of those words that has become so misused, misdirected, and misunderstood that it’s almost taken on a new colloquial meaning, quite different from it’s original conception. Most often, I have heard this word used like a weapon with which to wage a character-attack on oneself, someone else, or whole groups of people.  99 times out of 100, when I hear this word used by Christians, I cringe almost involuntarily. There’s just something I don’t like about how it sounds in most peoples’ mouths.

The most recent example of this occurred during a meeting with a minister on the eve of my daughter’s baptism ceremony. This man – a wonderful man, and a kind, generous, gracious host to our family during this event – wanted to make sure we understood what a baptism ceremony was, and what it was not. We had a lovely conversation about spiritual rituals in general, and I was very moved by the humility with which he approached his role in his church.

At one point in the conversation, he wanted to make sure that we understood that a baptism ceremony wasn’t some kind of “magic” transformation event, and that we would be leaving church that day with the same little baby we had brought with us. He said this warmly but seriously: “she will still cry, she will still be a sinner” –

I bristled.

He paused.

“It’s my understanding, sir, that the Hebrew word for ‘sin’ means to ‘miss the mark’. I don’t believe that my 7 month-old daughter can yet be aware that there is ‘mark’ for which to aim, and it doesn’t feel quite right to speak of her this way”, I said.

I knew this wasn’t a completely rational feeling, but I felt like he had insulted my tiny daughter’s reputation. Some fiercely protective instinct rose up from my belly, into my chest, and out of my throat a bit faster than my brain could mediate it. He was gracious, and while he offered a defense of the word use, I believe he also saw that I intended be unmoved about it, and gently backed away. If this had been a contest of character, he would have outperformed me in patience, gentleness, and self-control without the tiniest hint of pride or exasperation.

My point, however, remains a solid one. The Hebrew word most often translated as “sin” in English is the word chata’ah, which means to “miss the mark”, the way an archer might miss a target with his arrow. Chata’ah, or “sin”, is a mistake, an error, a big ole OOPS! To be committ a sin, you must be aiming for something and miss it.

I think that this word, and it’s associated imagery, is such a lovely, inviting, and compassionate way to understand the limits of our own humanity. We all know what it’s like to want to be – or behave – better than we are, and yet still keep making all kinds of little (or big) missteps along the way.

Perhaps that’s what this minister intended to suggest to us as he explained how the baptism ritual wouldn’t rid our daughter of her human limits. And frankly, I’m not sure I was listening well enough to have ascertained his precise meaning (well, would you look at that? That’s actually a perfect example of ‘sin’).  Nonetheless, if someone wants to call my daughter a ‘sinner’ – or one day explain to her precisely how she is one – I just want to be sure they understand exactly what they’re saying.

Good & Evil

The voice that first introduced me to the Aramaic language is a man named Neil Douglas-Klotz. I heard him interviewed a couple years ago by Tami Simon of Sounds True, and they discussed some things in that 57 minute conversation that would serve to completely change my relationship with the Judeo-Christian sacred texts, and ultimately send me on a deeply rewarding journey of re-discovering the teachings of Jesus.

Douglas-Klotz gave me a lens through which to begin to understand that the English language version of the Bible did not have to be the end of the conversation I could have with these ancient texts. Nor did I need to stop with the Greek language from which Western biblical scholars have chosen to translate our current English texts.

Apparently, the main conflict about translation is connected to which written text is the oldest – Greek, or Aramaic – even though it’s agreed upon that Jesus spoke Aramaic. The problem, somewhat unfortunately, is that there isn’t a Galilean (the geographic area in which Jesus lived and taught) Aramaic version of the gospels out there in “circulation”. There is a Syrian one, but this was written down at nearly the same time as the Greek translation, and thus the ambiguity.

Truthfully, however, nothing about this language conflict bothers me that much. In fact, I find it relieving in many ways. Without an indisputable original word-for-word account of Jesus’ teachings, you can make a strong case for suggesting that we remain open to the possibility that none of us can claim to know what he said or did ABSOLUTELY. And well… this just seems like a much more humble vantage point from which to approach something so mysterious.

Anyway, this distinction between Greek and Aramaic is what I want to talk about right now. This is so compelling to me because there is such a marvelous difference in the translations between one language and the other.

For example, Douglas-Klotz explains…

…the meaning of the word “good” in Aramaic really means “ripe.” That is, r-i-p-e, meaning “at the right time, at the right place.” It’s essentially a planting image and one that is drawn from nature.

Alternatively, the word for “evil” or sometimes “bad” that we see in the Greek-to-English version of Gospels, in Aramaic means “unripe”.

Of course, as Douglas-Klotz goes onto explain, this can make a huge amount of difference in how we understand certain phrases Jesus is accredited with saying, such as “every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit” (Matthew 7:17-18). If what he really said was “every ripe tree bears ripe fruit, but an unripe tree bears unripe fruit”. The spiritual implication in that statement is something a bit more abstract. It’s more like a zen koan; you walk away having the sense that what has been said is powerful, but still scratching your head about exactly how to live in accordance with this wisdom.

**More about Jesus and his multitude of zen koans to come soon…

 

‘Believe Like Me’

Did you know that when Jesus preached publicly he spoke in a language called Aramaic? To borrow an explanation from biblical scholar Neil Douglas-Klotz, “Most scholars now believe that by the time of Jesus, no one was really speaking the ancient Hebrew that would have been spoken, let’s say, by Moses or by King David. And everyone was speaking this lingua franca, or common spoken language, of the whole Middle East, which was Aramaic.”

Why is this important? It’s important because the modern English version of the Bible most of us have read or have had read to us is a translation from Greek. Greek and Aramaic are very different languages, and this is important if you care very much about the teachings of Jesus. It’s especially significant if you care about the literal interpretation of his teachings.

This distinction of translation winds up making a huge difference in some of the more widely repeated phrases of Jesus’.  I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been told that believing IN Jesus was the whole spiritual task of Christianity. And yet, TURNS OUT: he never even said “believe in me”. According to these earliest Aramaic texts, he said “Believe like me”, or in other words “believe as I believe”. According to Klotz, when the Bible was translated into Greek, which is what the Western churches ended up utilizing, they chose to translate “believe like me” into “believe in me”.

To me, that seems like a grievous error.

Centuries of people have been motivated by the single task of convincing people to believe IN Jesus, rather than introducing people to the person of Jesus, and then letting them discover what this man believed in… for themselves.

[Much more on some other important Aramaic words later…]