What can we learn about Jesus by knowing ARAMAIC?

ARAMAIC: language of Jesus!

The Aramaic Alphabet(ALEP-BEET)is shown above.R to L(like Hebrew)

What can we know about Jesus by

knowing at least a little ARAMAIC?

First, let's make it clear that Jesus SPOKE Aramaic much of the time (if not ALL of the time). He also spoke Greek (but poorly), and read and wrote Hebrew as a Qumran scholar. At least half of his disciples (the 12) also conversed in Aramaic as their PRIMARY LANGUAGE although ALL of them no doubt also were able to read, write, and speak Greek.

George Lamsa, a major interpreter of the ARAMAIC Bible into English has made a case for the NEW TESTAMENT being written in Aramaic....He has discovered that the IDIOM is "Aramaic" and many of the SAYINGS and Parables and Hidden "Jokes" of the NEW TESTAMENT depend on Aramaic to make sense. However, the Gospel "Pesher" depends on double meanings and mistranslations of Greek words to "put things over on us Gentiles", so in this respect George Lamsa was only partly right. It is quite likely the Gospel "editors" wrote their notes and original drafts in Aramaic, then translated into GREEK, adding the Gospel "Pesher" in this language.

On the LEFT is "JESUS" spelled in Aramaic and on the RIGHT a book on NEW TESTAMENT ORIGINS written by George Lamsa. Mat.27:46 "..Jesus cried..Eli, Eli, lama sabach'tha-ni? (Aramaic) that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

According to another of Lamsa's books "Idioms of the Bible Explained" Matthew could not have supplied the "translation" supplied above, for it does not correctly render the ARAMAIC meaning, which is ..."My God, My God, for this I was kept." Or to use more familiar Eastern terminology..."my destiny!"

The Church of the Middle Ages has brought kings to their knees, and indeed lost England to Protestantism based on another Aramaic mistranslation...Mat. 19:9 (as usually translated) "And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery." George Lamsa on page 98 of the above book shows "put away" is the Aramaic "shvikta", while divorced is another word "shrita". Jesus is NOT here making some profound new LAW against Christian divorce, but merely showing that a man who marrys another woman without granting his first wife a real divorce (very easy in Jewish laws of that time) was ethically responsible for his former bed-mate's supposed BIGAMY because she was still legally married to him.....Putting the ONUS here on the man, not the woman!

Another "mistake" that has cost women around the world plenty, may have been done purposely by the male translators of non-Aramaic Bibles through the Ages. On page 61 of Lamsa's "Idioms..." John 21:15 "Feed my lambs"=in Aramaic "Feed my young people, take care of them....John 21:16 "Feed my sheep"=in Aramaic "Feed the adults." ...John 21:17 (Lamsa) "Feed my ewes"=in Aramaic "Feed the young women."

The meaning is here so OBVIOUS that somewhere down the line of copyists, most of them celibate monks of the Middle Ages, they have dropped out "ewes" and made it "sheep" instead, spoiling a very apt saying of Jesus, and completely changing His instructions to Peter, allowing popes to this very day to ignore the rights of "young child-bearing women" or to put it symbolically..."EWES"!