“Surprises in the Lords Prayer” Oh my, yes!

Our dear friend Jim-A-Mighty would label this a “dilettante alert.” Ms. Diana deRegneir admits to an ad hoc learning of religious matters, including the Lord’s Prayer. You too will be “surprised” by what she has found in “the Lords [sic] Prayer.” (I suppose I could stop there, but no, let’s go on.)

However, when I heard the prayer in its original Aramaic I was bitten by curiosity. So here’s what I learned.

The Lord’s Prayer is the accepted universal prayer for all Christians. In the latter part of the second century, Matthew interpreted the instructional passage spoken by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:9-13). The Sermon on the Mount is derived largely from the teachings of the Essenes, a Jewish sect in Palestine of which Jesus may have belonged. Thus, the prayer bears a striking resemblance to “The Kadish” found in the Talmud.

Matthew’s translation which most of us were taught in childhood is also admitted by scholars to be inaccurate. The problem of mistranslation arose in part because Matthew was translating into Latin from Greek rather than from Aramaic.

*sigh* It doesn’t get any better folks. I have no energy to deal with this and you all know better, so how about we all just give a wry chuckle, shake our heads, and go have an afternoon cup of tea?  If you really must, you can read it all via American Chronicle | Some Surprises in the Lords Prayer.