This is about Aramaic itself, what's the big deal? Why pay attention to this language and what is the potential of Aramaic for our own understanding and experience of what Yeshua taught?
To start off, it's important to recognize that all language, even Aramaic, and Hebrew for that matter, is in itself merely a finger pointing at the moon. These are not magic words, we're not casting spells, and independent of Ruha working inside of us, independent of direct experience, the power of any words and concepts is very limited. They can't in themselves change us unless there is something working within us, unless there is experience and recognition.
However, it's true in my experience and in the experience of many others that Aramaic can be a wonderful finger and a fresh finger pointing at the moon, a helpful fresh lens with which to understand and experience what Yeshua was pointing us toward in His teachings.
Meaning personally, I believe that Yeshua was the greatest teacher that our species has ever had. I believe that His teachings were perfect and of God in a way that is singular in the history of the world. But from this starting point, it's very interesting to me what He actually taught, how He Himself understood His message and how it was heard by His real audience as He was teaching it, as His breath, His name, His atmosphere, His vibration was moving through them and awakening something within them that was fundamentally transformational, something which many of them died for in the end and a fire which lit upon the earth, which burned and spread with a power that arguably no other message has ever fully embodied to the same extent.
Aramaic is a verb-based root language descended from Proto-Semitic in the same language family as Hebrew. And for those of us who are native English speakers that don't speak any verb-based root language as a native tongue, we may underestimate just how different the experience of these teachings can be through that conceptual structure.
In English, we have separate words and categories as well as Greek and propositional logic with distinct groupings and contradictions and an abstract feel of concepts out there that interact with each other in, once again, an abstract realm somewhat distant from our own bodies and certainly not interconnected and in relation to each other, typically, in how they're felt and understood. And the words are separate in the sense that you don't typically weave one word within another word within another word to express ideas. They tend to be one in front of the other, a noun that does a verb on another noun with an adjective describing it.
Verb-based root languages, on the other hand, are different in the sense that there's a root which is typically three consonants and then the various noun properties are woven into the root. So for example, you may have the root MLK and you might weave in certain vowels to get the word MALKUTA, which is king's reign or sovereign reign, and other letters you may weave into the same root to get the word MALKA or a sovereign or a king. And these concepts are governed not by the noun but actually by the flow and motion and activity into which whatever substance or substrate is absorbed into. There's a much different feel of how the world flows and moves through this lens.
The epistemology of Aramaic from that is felt and experienced through video of motions and interactions of an interconnected reality that is not abstract in the intellectual ether, nearly as much as it is flows and motions and movements that are moving within nature and our senses as well as throughout our body in an interconnected way. And the distinctions that arise in Greek and English between the spiritual and the physical that can seem sometimes in our language as mutually exclusive or separate are not separate within Aramaic.
For example, spirit in English can feel like a concept, even an abstract concept sometimes where Ruha has a feeling that spirit is never separate from our own breath, from the source of our flowing life in every moment and from the wind that connects the very breath within our lungs flowing through and giving us life from nature, breathing with and among the plants and entering in the lungs of all other beings, this divine life source flowing never separate in the spiritual and physical realms, animating reality.
And so, how firm is the foundation? How much are we standing on solid ground learning and teaching of Aramaic versus speculation or loose ground where we might be led astray? And the answer is nuanced, but personally, in my own path, I find it very helpful to stand on the firmest possible ground and to avoid overextending into what is more historically speculative or not as firmly grounded in what serious scholars have objectively discerned from the evidence.
And so, to start, it is completely reliable to say that most or all, and likely all, of the red letters within the Gospels that Yeshua Himself spoke were originally spoken and heard in the Aramaic language, not in Greek. It is possible that Yeshua Himself did speak some Greek as a carpenter who was not far from some trade routes that would have exposed Him to Greek speakers, and in fact, at least one of His disciples, Matthew, would have been highly proficient in Greek, so it's possible that there was active translation being provided contemporaneously with certain of His messages. But the region that He spoke within, the vast majority of people spoke and understood Aramaic. Aramaic was Yeshua's native tongue, and He did teach in Aramaic historically.
However, all four of the Gospels were originally composed and written down in Greek, and so were inspired translations of Yeshua's teachings that were originally given in Aramaic. There are some scholars that contend that Aramaic was the original composition of these Gospels, and some, such as George Lamsa, even of the whole New Testament. But an honest view of the evidence contradicts this, especially in many of the idioms that are captured within certain Gospels that realistically wouldn't have shown up in an underlying Aramaic substrate. As well as the logical composition and structures of the narratives found in those Gospels, there would be some telltale signs if these were translations from original Aramaic writings.
So verbal teachings, spoken word, the instructions and insights that Yeshua delivered were in Aramaic. The Gospels, however, were composed in Greek. So where does that put us if we want to stand on the firmest possible ground in our understanding and following of what Yeshua taught us?
The strongest reconciliation of this, in my point of view, is to find only what is clear, certain unambiguous of the Aramaic, and treat that as truly primary while allowing all the rest of the contents of the Gospels, such as the depictions of events of Jesus' life, such as the order and structure and composition of the teachings, and even all of the words where we're not certain of what the original Aramaic word was, because for some of them, there's a few words that actually could have worked for that same concept.
So for example, the word for "love" could have been "huba" or "rame," and it's likely that he used one word in certain contexts and another word in other contexts. Same with the word for "good," it could have been "taba" or "shapira," depending on context. And so we may learn and meditate on all of these words, but we shouldn't ascribe complete certainty that in any specific instance, it was definitely one word or another.
Another example would be in John 15, where Yeshua says, "I have called you friends." It's possible that the original Aramaic word for "friend" was one that implied more of this type of a flavor or more of that type of a flavor, and we can't be completely positive which was the specific Aramaic word that he used. And so in these cases, we do know the specific word that was recorded in the Greek in the Gospel of John, and so that is the firmest ground upon which we can stand.
However, what is completely clear and unambiguous is, first, the epistemology of the Aramaic language that undergirded all of Yeshua's teachings, that is largely tied to the verb-based root-language nature and the interconnected embodied sense of Aramaic, where the spiritual and the physical are not separate, and where adjectives arise as motions rather than as characteristics, as temporary and dynamic states, rather than permanent indelible qualities. This is essential to understanding Yeshua's teachings. We cannot do without this and harmonize what in Greek or English can appear like contradictions.
So for one example, when Yeshua teaches a good man out of the good storehouse in his heart produces good fruit, an evil man out of the evil storehouse of his heart produces evil fruit, in English, that can feel like he's assigning a permanent quality. In English or Greek that speaks like photographs, you can reasonably understand that without the Aramaic as he's actually labeling a good man or a bad man as permanently good or bad. But in fact, he was talking about verbs, he was talking in verbs, he was talking in videos, he was talking in motions, and so we are all a gooding man at some points, and we are all an eviling man at some points. We all fall into darkness and return to the light, and the reality of our spiritual walk is not one of, "Hey, I was all bad and then I was all good permanently and never experienced any hardship again."
If we try to understand his teachings through this black and white permanent characteristic, all this or all that labeling and categories, it will have a hard time integrating into the real world which moves and dances in an unfolding reality that is outside of our control and that resists simplified black and white categorization and permanent qualities that are absolutist.
The other thing that we can be confident in and stand on, once again, firmer ground than mere use of the Greek in our study and contemplations of the teachings of Yeshua are many of the core concepts of his teachings. And so the distinction here is when we know the Greek in which the gospels were written in the specific words in the Greek.
So for example, for the word kingdom, in the Greek we know that we see the word basileia. But what's wonderful is that for basileia, there is only one word that Yeshua could have used in his original Aramaic. There's only one concept in Aramaic that maps onto this Greek concept. It's not that there were six different ones that could have been used interchangeably. And I think in English we can be used to having a large selection of synonyms for many concepts where if I'm saying kingdom, I could also say country or I could say, "Oh man, my synonyms are failing me in this moment." There's a lot of synonyms in English, just leave it at that. Whereas in the Aramaic, there's only one word that you can go back to. There aren't seven synonyms of basileia that we can see for malkuta.
And so scholars are not divided as to which was the original word for this. And happily, while once again this doesn't apply to many concepts, and certainly many of the everyday, more typical concepts that you can use to describe this or that, such as filler words or tertiary words within parables, you can't be overly certain as to what was specifically the composition of this or that, even if we have the Peshitta.
But for the words that do the heavy lifting, for the concepts that Yeshua was introducing and giving us a fresh map on reality for happily, many of these and the majority of these only have one option when we go back. And so scholars are not divided on what was the original word that Yeshua used for basileia. It was malkuta, and just to go through the list, or A list for consideration, the words that only have one Aramaic option include Father, God, Kingdom, Spirit, Heaven, Earth, Light, Darkness, Heart, Life, Son of Man, Hell or Gehenna, Peace, Name, Sin, Eternal, Word, Bread, Water, Will, Judgment, Way, Body, Blood, Forgive, Repentance, Faith, Prayer, Blessed, Poor, Meek, Servant, Seed, and Fruit.
And when you think about that, what those concepts convey, how foundational these concepts are to our understanding of Yeshua's teachings, we can see that, whoa! We actually do have the original map available to us. And so if we have the opportunity to learn with confidence on solid ground what was the word for Spirit? What was the word for Kingdom? We can recognize that this might bring us closer. This might be an even more original lens through which we can see what Yeshua was showing us.
And why would we want a clearer lens? What is the potential of Yeshua's map, of the world through His eyes and how He understood it and how His listeners understood what He was saying? Personally, I believe that Aramaic can provide not the only bridge, but a wonderful bridge from knowing of God to knowing God directly to experiencing the divine in our own view, in our own life.
So does devotion feel natural and attracting, or does it feel like a chore, like we're doing God a favor? Do we actually feel and experience Ruha, breathe us, move us, guide us, and connect us as the source interflowing within all beings, or is Spirit an abstract concept that intellectually we might have a belief that it exists within Christians in a way that it doesn't exist within other people, but yet we can't really notice that big of a difference in how this shows up in a typical Christian's behavior or actions or power in their life or clarity.
Do we gloss over or ignore contradictions that we see within the Greek and the English that deep down we know we can't truly reconcile and integrate, such as the surface level, contradiction between the categories of Greek of mercy and forgiveness versus justice that seem at odds, or are we able to sense intuitively a Gestalt harmony and integration to the system of view and experience that Yeshua introduces for us?
And finally, most importantly of all, perhaps, do we enter Malkuta, Yeshua taught that Malkuta, the kingdom is within you, Yeshua taught that the kingdom is at hand, Yeshua taught that there are many among you who absolutely will not see death until they have seen the kingdom of God in its fullness. Malkuta refers to the sovereign reign of God. Malkuta refers to a level of reality that is at hand in our lives, that is real, that is transformational, that brings salvation and eternal life. In reality, not merely after we die, not merely far away, far in the future, abstract, conceptual, an image, does Ruha breathe us and move us and guide us prior to words? Do we directly connect with, do we flow with, the love and creation and life force of God?
This is what Yeshua was introducing to the world. He was not teaching about beliefs and facts and propositions and ideas and concepts. He was pointing us toward a relationship with God that can transform us from the inside, that moves and flows dynamically beyond any black and white concepts that exist within and throughout our own bodies and our own humanities, not merely out there, far away, something to learn about and state propositions of to agree with a certain list of ideas. This is about reality.
And His teachings can also do a wonderful job at stripping away so many of our own conditioning, so much of our own culture that invisibly to us has become woven into our understanding of this, that we view so often His teachings through a lens where on the inside, mechanically, our understanding is governed by this prior framework that we have dictated upon it or that has been dictated to us by the culture of Christianity that we were raised within or that we were trained within or that we were taught within.
And sometimes these structures of course can also be helpful fingers pointing at the moon. There is no denying that. This is not all good or all bad or any of this. And of course Aramaic in itself can become a conditioned structure if we hold it out of balance or in the wrong way. And so let's not get overly black and white about these things.
But for example, when you hear the word repent, what does that feel like? To me, it feels like someone's casting shame on somebody else. It feels like judgment on somebody else, which is a complete contradiction of the message of Jesus. The absolute opposite of what He taught us to do is to cast shame on others or to merely bask in shame that we feel cast upon ourselves. This is not of Jesus. Repent in Aramaic, tyabuta, points us to an experience within our own bodies to turn around, to turn with our whole being. It can invite us to turn the light upon itself, to gaze upon the divine that is already here and fully available that we are never separate from.
And so just a quick note on the history of Aramaic. The original Jesus movement was primarily an oral tradition and it spread like wildfire while the Greek was a slow smoldering ember that thankfully, gratefully gave us this clear, solid tradition of Scripture. So it can be true to claim that the original Christianity was an Aramaic Christianity. And while it is also true that the Greek has given us an unbelievably beautiful gift and foundation and its own traditions and philosophical rigor that it can tie into that has also had incredible utility in our capacity to understand and experience the divine. Aramaic was the language of Yeshua. And so for me, for many others, our deepest connection, meditation and resonance of His words and His voice can be found here.
And so I encourage us all to remember that all of these words are merely a finger pointing at the moon. Let's not settle for any intellectual knowledge and understanding that doesn't go beyond the surface level. Let us remember that the true language of God is silence. And all of us can find ourselves there, can find Him there, can experience and commune with the One in our own being, immediately available as a fresh, new view of being born anew in reality. Let us hold all language with an open palm, allowing it and inviting it to move us, to breathe us, and to guide us as understood, felt, and mediated by the Word and by the light.