An Aramaic translation of the Lord’s Prayer is published in “Prayers of the Cosmos. Reflections on the Original Meaning of Jesus’s Words,” (1990). Neil Douglas-Klotz, HarperOne, New York. How accurate was his translation of the Aramaic, and how valid is the record in Aramaic of Christ’s original prayer?

Unfortunately, the Aramaic language can be understood, in many cases, with somewhat different meanings, so this leads, inevitably, to somewhat differing translations into modern language. This is simply a cultural gap that cannot be bridged. People of the biblical era would know what is truly meant with greater certainty, the meaning communications in Aramaic were intended to convey. It is, in a sense, having street smarts, a kind of savvy, and also being in the flow of the era itself and all of the conditioning, such that people would be much more in tune to the words of another. But this translator has done a very creditable job to show that much has been lost from later versions of the Bible. This is not news to biblical scholars who greatly appreciate the problem. But there are strong biases, always, especially with things of importance, and also a great reluctance to depart from the most commonly accepted interpretations of biblical meaning. And that is because most worshipers would be confused in suddenly being told a reinterpretation or reworking of the Scriptures in ways resulting in a stark change in meaning. This would call into a question for them, whether anything in the Bible might be truthfully represented in terms of what they have been taught. So it opens a can of worms, so to speak. In addition, there is great reluctance to change tradition, so those who attempt to refine the Scriptures, starting from the Aramaic, are met with tremendous resistance, some of which is simply the competitiveness of scholars and educators, as is true in every field of endeavor. This is compounded by rigid thinking and aided by the ever-present oversight of the Extraterrestrial Alliance wanting to keep people dimmed down and dumbed down on all-important matters. Their influence is present, heavily, in the Scriptures because they influenced editing along the way. Whenever that shows up, still, in comparing ancient sources having somewhat differing accounts and wording, it is never attributed to a nefarious manipulation. And it simply leads to instilling doubt about the validity and accuracy of the Scriptures as a historical record, as being a simplistic rendering of best guesses and many retellings of oral accounts, and so on, with all of the potential pitfalls that represents.