I am moved by your beautiful writing and sharing of original meaning. Would you be willing to post it as just the Aramaic prayer? I would love to share this with my family. Either way, I thank you deeply for your willingness to share. As a woman brought up in a patriarchal Christian tradition, where the feminine is essentially evil and has no direct contact to “God in heaven”, except through the approval of the masculine……it’s been quite a journey! Now recognition of what Jesus probably meant has been seen and “your words” are beautiful. I Am. 🙏🏻🌹
I loved this! It clarified many things for me and gave new purpose to the deep grief I have been struggling with. I need to allow it instead of fighting ut. Thank you.
Beautiful Beatitudes. Your explanation of Aramaic being about relationship filled me with the tenderness with which Jesus must have taught. Now in my ninth decade I could personally relate to your map of expanded consciousness and re-membering who we are.
This is quietly beautiful - the way you’ve opened this up. Not as a list to live up to, but as a landscape to walk through. That shift from “blessed” to something like ripening or unfolding. It feels almost like watching a fruit soften in the sun, becoming what it already carried within. I kept thinking how often we’re taught to reach outward for approval or reward, when what’s being described here is an inward clearing, a kind of gentle making-space. And in that space, something alive, something already present, begins to be felt. Not earned. Not granted. Just… revealed.
What touched me most is how relational it all feels. The grief that opens rather than diminishes, the rootedness that allows us to bend without breaking, the womb-like mercy that doesn’t calculate. There’s a tenderness running through this map that feels very close to what many traditions hint at when they speak of the Divine as both intimate and responsive. Almost as if the more honestly we inhabit these states, the more we find ourselves in quiet reciprocity with something loving at the core of things. Not a distant heaven waiting at the end, but a presence that meets us, breath for breath, as we become a little more real.
Nabu, your writing is stunning and took me completely by surprise as I had not seen your work before. I now look forward to being able to spend time reading it slower and soak it all in. Thank you. Blessings. Jeanne (I should have proofread first 🤷♂️)
Once again so much is lost in translation, obviously the truly critical aspects that go to the core of human reality. Thanks for this crucial and important lens through which to see these words.
I’ve been thinking a lot more about the beatitudes since hearing from @jamiewinship on it. This really enhanced how to apply and live the beatitudes. I love your simple approach to Aramaic…
I am really grateful for your translations and interpretations. I would very much like to converse with you. I am a feminist Jewish liturgist, playwright and poet. I am about to publish a full translation (to female or egalitarian) the reform Shabbat services. I create embodied rituals. I love what you are doing and am reading each word with pleasure and recognition, I am at lk11@aol.com.
It’s an interesting lens, but it overstates its certainty. Discernment shows the move: it takes one scholarly interpretation of Aramaic and presents it as the original meaning, while sidelining the broader textual tradition, including the Greek sources the Gospels were actually written in. That’s not recovery, it’s selection.
There’s value in seeing the Beatitudes as describing inner states, but collapsing them into only a “consciousness map” dismisses the ethical, communal, and theological dimensions that have always been part of the text. When one layer is elevated and the rest are treated as distortion, you’re not clarifying the message, you’re narrowing it.
There’s something genuinely compelling in reading the Beatitudes as states rather than rewards. It restores a kind of immediacy that often gets lost in moral interpretations.
At the same time, I wonder if framing this as a recovery of the “original meaning” might go a step further than the sources can actually support. The Greek makarios already carries a depth closer to lived alignment than simple blessing, and Aramaic reconstructions, while rich, tend to open possibilities rather than settle them.
What interests me most here is not whether one translation replaces another, but the tension the text seems to hold… between something that can be inhabited and something that is given, between state and encounter. That tension feels essential. Once it becomes a fully mapped progression, something of the original instability; the part that resists being systematized, might be at risk of disappearing.
Still, this reading definitely opens a different way of engaging the text, and that in itself is valuable.
Biggest problem with this - There is no preserved Aramaic text of the Beatitudes - all we have is Greek - any attempt to recreate the Beatitudes or any New Testament text into the original Aramaic loses any claim “this is what Jesus actually meant.” At best, the author can say: “Here’s a possible interpretive angle.”
Instead, the author claims certainty where only speculation is possible.
If Jesus had meant what the author claims, His audience wouldn’t have understood Him.
First-century Jews in Galilee were not operating with:
* “consciousness states”
* “alignment with reality beneath appearances”
* “divine feminine creative principles”
* “non-dual awareness”
They were operating with:
* covenant
* Torah
* righteousness (δικαιοσύνη / צדקה)
* mercy
* repentance
* the coming reign of God
The Beatitudes land perfectly in that world:
* the poor in spirit → the humble who depend on God
* those who mourn → those grieving sin, exile, suffering
* the meek → those who trust God rather than seize power
* hunger for righteousness → longing for God’s justice to be set right
You don’t need to “decode” anything for them to make sense.
They already made sense—to the people who heard them.
Bottom-line:
* we don’t have that Aramaic text
* the Greek is early and authoritative
* the earliest Christians understood it in line with the Greek
* no early source preserves the supposed “lost meaning”
Flourishing! That makes so much more sense than a reward handed out if we do a good enough job. We people love our systems where one can be above another.
absolutely recommend it. it is scholarly in the sense that Douglas-Klotz works directly from Aramaic manuscripts and his linguistic credentials are genuine. but it reads nothing like an academic text. it is devotional, poetic, and genuinely revelatory, the kind of book that changes how you pray not just how you think about prayer. the Aramaic Lord’s Prayer alone is worth the entire book. read it slowly. one line at a time.
I am moved by your beautiful writing and sharing of original meaning. Would you be willing to post it as just the Aramaic prayer? I would love to share this with my family. Either way, I thank you deeply for your willingness to share. As a woman brought up in a patriarchal Christian tradition, where the feminine is essentially evil and has no direct contact to “God in heaven”, except through the approval of the masculine……it’s been quite a journey! Now recognition of what Jesus probably meant has been seen and “your words” are beautiful. I Am. 🙏🏻🌹
I loved this! It clarified many things for me and gave new purpose to the deep grief I have been struggling with. I need to allow it instead of fighting ut. Thank you.
Beautiful Beatitudes. Your explanation of Aramaic being about relationship filled me with the tenderness with which Jesus must have taught. Now in my ninth decade I could personally relate to your map of expanded consciousness and re-membering who we are.
This is quietly beautiful - the way you’ve opened this up. Not as a list to live up to, but as a landscape to walk through. That shift from “blessed” to something like ripening or unfolding. It feels almost like watching a fruit soften in the sun, becoming what it already carried within. I kept thinking how often we’re taught to reach outward for approval or reward, when what’s being described here is an inward clearing, a kind of gentle making-space. And in that space, something alive, something already present, begins to be felt. Not earned. Not granted. Just… revealed.
What touched me most is how relational it all feels. The grief that opens rather than diminishes, the rootedness that allows us to bend without breaking, the womb-like mercy that doesn’t calculate. There’s a tenderness running through this map that feels very close to what many traditions hint at when they speak of the Divine as both intimate and responsive. Almost as if the more honestly we inhabit these states, the more we find ourselves in quiet reciprocity with something loving at the core of things. Not a distant heaven waiting at the end, but a presence that meets us, breath for breath, as we become a little more real.
Beautiful writing
Thank you Amy
You are such an amazing writer. Thank you and sending you love. Have a gorgeous weekend 🤍🌹😘🕉️✨🤍💐
Nabu, your writing is stunning and took me completely by surprise as I had not seen your work before. I now look forward to being able to spend time reading it slower and soak it all in. Thank you. Blessings. Jeanne (I should have proofread first 🤷♂️)
Once again so much is lost in translation, obviously the truly critical aspects that go to the core of human reality. Thanks for this crucial and important lens through which to see these words.
I’ve been thinking a lot more about the beatitudes since hearing from @jamiewinship on it. This really enhanced how to apply and live the beatitudes. I love your simple approach to Aramaic…
This is amazing , I have previously struggled with some of these . Your insight cracks this wide open . Thank you so much 🙏
I am really grateful for your translations and interpretations. I would very much like to converse with you. I am a feminist Jewish liturgist, playwright and poet. I am about to publish a full translation (to female or egalitarian) the reform Shabbat services. I create embodied rituals. I love what you are doing and am reading each word with pleasure and recognition, I am at lk11@aol.com.
It’s an interesting lens, but it overstates its certainty. Discernment shows the move: it takes one scholarly interpretation of Aramaic and presents it as the original meaning, while sidelining the broader textual tradition, including the Greek sources the Gospels were actually written in. That’s not recovery, it’s selection.
There’s value in seeing the Beatitudes as describing inner states, but collapsing them into only a “consciousness map” dismisses the ethical, communal, and theological dimensions that have always been part of the text. When one layer is elevated and the rest are treated as distortion, you’re not clarifying the message, you’re narrowing it.
There’s something genuinely compelling in reading the Beatitudes as states rather than rewards. It restores a kind of immediacy that often gets lost in moral interpretations.
At the same time, I wonder if framing this as a recovery of the “original meaning” might go a step further than the sources can actually support. The Greek makarios already carries a depth closer to lived alignment than simple blessing, and Aramaic reconstructions, while rich, tend to open possibilities rather than settle them.
What interests me most here is not whether one translation replaces another, but the tension the text seems to hold… between something that can be inhabited and something that is given, between state and encounter. That tension feels essential. Once it becomes a fully mapped progression, something of the original instability; the part that resists being systematized, might be at risk of disappearing.
Still, this reading definitely opens a different way of engaging the text, and that in itself is valuable.
Wow. Thank you. I agree.
This is excellent
Thank you
Biggest problem with this - There is no preserved Aramaic text of the Beatitudes - all we have is Greek - any attempt to recreate the Beatitudes or any New Testament text into the original Aramaic loses any claim “this is what Jesus actually meant.” At best, the author can say: “Here’s a possible interpretive angle.”
Instead, the author claims certainty where only speculation is possible.
If Jesus had meant what the author claims, His audience wouldn’t have understood Him.
First-century Jews in Galilee were not operating with:
* “consciousness states”
* “alignment with reality beneath appearances”
* “divine feminine creative principles”
* “non-dual awareness”
They were operating with:
* covenant
* Torah
* righteousness (δικαιοσύνη / צדקה)
* mercy
* repentance
* the coming reign of God
The Beatitudes land perfectly in that world:
* the poor in spirit → the humble who depend on God
* those who mourn → those grieving sin, exile, suffering
* the meek → those who trust God rather than seize power
* hunger for righteousness → longing for God’s justice to be set right
You don’t need to “decode” anything for them to make sense.
They already made sense—to the people who heard them.
Bottom-line:
* we don’t have that Aramaic text
* the Greek is early and authoritative
* the earliest Christians understood it in line with the Greek
* no early source preserves the supposed “lost meaning”
So the “recovery” is not historical.
It’s retrofit.
Flourishing! That makes so much more sense than a reward handed out if we do a good enough job. We people love our systems where one can be above another.
Would you recommend the book, "the prayers of the cosmos"? And if so is it more than just a "scholarly" work? Would you call it revelatory?
absolutely recommend it. it is scholarly in the sense that Douglas-Klotz works directly from Aramaic manuscripts and his linguistic credentials are genuine. but it reads nothing like an academic text. it is devotional, poetic, and genuinely revelatory, the kind of book that changes how you pray not just how you think about prayer. the Aramaic Lord’s Prayer alone is worth the entire book. read it slowly. one line at a time.
Thank you kindly, thankful to have discovered you here on ss. You have a gift to make the deeper things more easily knowable.