04 May 2006

The Lord's prayer midrash

I feel somewhat vindicated by this site. Having traced the person who appears to be behind the supposed translation of the Aramaic Lord's prayer [Dr. Neil Douglas-Klotz] which I blogged about before [twice, not including commenting on the stats and a recent link update], I find his understanding of what he did to be closer to what I said it looked like than how it is being presented by many people on the web and beyond.
He says:
Each word in Aramaic can be interpreted several different ways. This is particularly true of the words of a mystic or prophet. In the Jewish tradition, this of multiple interpretation, in which translation becomes a spiritual practice, is called midrash . In my books, I have offered five or six possible interpretive translations of the Aramaic Lord's Prayer and other sayings of Jesus.

Which I think comes down to claiming that he is offering a Midrash of the prayer -which is what I said. We should, further, note that he is interested in Sufism, and so it is no surprise that his misdrash [amplified paraphrase] encodes ideas that have more to do with the philosophia perennis than much else.

I think I may have a go at learning it in Aramaic. Just got to narrow down which version of Aramaic: Syriac or Galileean ...
[en] Abwun, The Prayer of Jesus in Aramaic
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