The Aramaic bible

 

The Aramaic Bible

Do you know that the original books of the bible (both the Old Testament and New Testament) were originally written in an Aramaic context. (Some said that the OT was written in Hebrew and Aramaic and the NT in Greek and Aramaic. In some of the latest Greek New Testament, the publishers are retaining some of the Aramaic words and phrases to make it as close to the original meaning as possible, because in every translation, the original intent and message somehow gets lost or diluted). 

Aramaic was the earlier language from where we get the Hebrew. (Like we get English from the Latin language). Jesus came during the time when ALL the people listening to Him were listening in Aramaic. (Mel Gibson in his movie "The Passion of Christ" used the Aramaic language to be as close to the original as possible).

 Jesus spoke Aramaic. The early prophets up to the time of Moses all spoke Aramaic, because it was the language of the whole Middle Eastern region (or some called it the Near Eastern region).

That is why, when we speak about understanding the bible within its context, we need to understand several keys i.e. context of culture, language, idioms, symbolism, mystical style, psychology, and literary amplification (adding more information to a sentence).

Until World War I, people living in that part of ancient Biblical lands which today is known as Kurdistan, in the basin of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, retained the simple nomadic life as in the days of the Patriarchs. The ancient culture of early Christians was unknown to the western world (particularly the contemporary Christian world), and the Aramaic (Syriac) language was thought to be dead. 

But in this so-called “Cradle of Civilization,” ancient Biblical customs and Semitic culture, cut off from the world, were actually still preserved. Scholars are finding it essential to understand the Near Eastern culture in order to understand the bible.

Question: How then can we understand the bible better?

Answer: The bible has to be understood from its original setting. By right, you need to have a good clear Aramaic translation of the bible. You really have to understand the idioms and the nature of the Near Eastern people. 

Deep down, the root of so many problems today is a misunderstanding of this point: 

The Bible was written TO Near Eastern people, so it contains their idiomatic terms of speech, psychology, culture, belief systems, customs, and manners. It wasn't written to us here in the Western world, but the Bible is still applicable FOR us. 

Unfortunately, because of this mistake, we've formed all our dogmas, doctrines, and theologies before understanding the Near Eastern religious attitudes and background, and we still do this today. (That's why you have more than 40,000 denominations with all their self-righteous interpretation of the bible - What a tragedy !!).