With the Church is not about right or wrong; Good! That allows bridge-building

I don’t know what’s “good” or “bad” in the Church, nor do I care. And I’m not exactly sure what you mean by “bridge-building”. You claim to be a messianic gentile, someone who believes in the NT, but at the same time who puts a lot of weight on jewish tradition and the OT law. In other words you strongly believe in Yahweh, some scholars refer to as the jewish "God", and you also believe are called to lead people into a personal relationship with Jesus, to convert others to Christianity, for them to be saved. Anyway this is my take from your messages so far. It’s not what I believe. And my issue with the Church is its teachings. Actually it’s more that, the Aramaic speaking Christians of the Middle East, the direct descendants of Jesus's own community, practice a version of the faith that looks nothing like Western Christianity of today. Many scholars who study historical linguistics have been sounding the alarm for decades. Yet the Western Church did nothing to correct this.

Sure, something is always lost in translation. And sometimes that loss is simply unavoidable. But part of it wasn't innocent at all. In fact IMO it was deliberate. And it’s not a fringe interpretation I’m referring to. This is what the Aramaic actually says. And Aramaic is what Jesus and all his disciples spoke. This is what the Aramaic Peshitta New Testament said before being translated into Greek. Many people don’t even know what Aramaic Peshitta is, and think the original NT was written in Greek, but scholars know better. And this is what scholars of ancient semitic languages have been trying to tell us. This is what the Eastern Christian traditions, the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the Amorites have reserved in their liturgies, meantime the Western church built an elaborate institution on mistranslations (and deliberate wrong translations).

I’ll give you a couple of examples. Since we have been discussing hell, let me start with that. Throughout the four Gospels included in the NT, Jesus warns about hell, or so we're told. The English translations use words like hell, eternal fire, and everlasting punishment. These translations have terrified billions of people into compliance, created entire denominations built on fear of the afterlife and justified unspeakable violence in the name of saving souls from eternal torment. But Jesus never used the word hell. The Aramaic word that appears in the earliest manuscripts is Gehenna. And Gehenna wasn't a spiritual concept at all. It was a physical location, the valley of Hinnom just outside Jerusalem. It was the city rubbish dump where fires burned continuously to consume waste. It was a place of decay, of transformation, of things being broken down and returned to their elements. When Jesus warned about Gehenna, he was using a vivid immediate metaphor that his audience would have instantly understood. He was talking about wasted lives. He was saying, “Don't throw your life away. Don't become rubbish.”. The Greek translators used Gehenna, maintaining the reference to this specific location. But by the time medieval translators got to it, disconnected from the geographic and cultural context, they transformed it into hell, a word borrowed from Norse mythology referring to hell, the realm of the dead. The mistranslation was complete. A metaphor about wasting your life became a doctrine about eternal conscious torment. And here’s my point, no word in Aramaic corresponds to the modern Christian concept of hell. None. The language Jesus spoke didn't have a framework for eternal punishment. It had consequences. Yes, it had natural results of destructive behavior, but the idea of a loving God maintaining an eternal torture facility, that's not in the Aramaic. That came later. You could say this was accidental, but I don’t believe so. I think it was deliberate and done by some very clever people.

The other example I’m going to give you is a very commonly used term in KJV “the Son of Man” which is ὅ ὑιὸς τοῦ ἀνθρόπου in Greek. The Aramaic "Bar Nasha" or "bar enash". Jesus frequently uses it to refer to himself. In English, it sounds like a claim to humanity, perhaps a humble counterpoint to “Son of God”. But in Aramaic, Jesus called himself Bar nasha. And that doesn’t mean son of man in the genealogical sense. It's an idiom that means the human being. Or more accurately, the human one, the representative of humanity, the fully realized human being, the prototype of what humanity can become. Jesus wasn't claiming to be uniquely divine in a way that separated him from the rest of humanity. He was claiming to be fully human in a way that revealed what all humans could become. He was the pattern, the template, the prototype. When he said the Bar nasha has authority to forgive sins, he wasn't claiming exclusive divine power. He was demonstrating human potential when fully aligned with the divine. This understanding transforms the entire gospel message. Every time Jesus said Bar nasha, he was pointing to human potential, not divine exclusivity. When he asked what do people say the Bar nasha is, he was asking what humanity could become, what the fully awakened human being looks like. The tragedy is that by mistranslating this phrase, Christianity created a Jesus who was fundamentally different from you and me rather than a Jesus who was fundamentally like you or me, only fully realized. One interpretation keeps you dependent and small. The other invites you into the same transformation he embodied. Was the mistranslation accidental, IMO it wasn’t.

With the Church is not about right or wrong; Good! That allows bridge-building

I don’t know what’s “good” or “bad” in the Church, nor do I care. And I’m not exactly sure what you mean by “bridge-building”. You claim to be a messianic gentile, someone who believes in the NT, but at the same time who puts a lot of weight on jewish tradition and the OT law. In other words you strongly believe in Yahweh, some scholars refer to as the jewish "God", and you also believe are called to lead people into a personal relationship with Jesus, to convert others to Christianity, for them to be saved. Anyway this is my take from your messages so far. It’s not what I believe. And my issue with the Church is its teachings. Actually it’s more that, the Aramaic speaking Christians of the Middle East, the direct descendants of Jesus's own community, practice a version of the faith that looks nothing like Western Christianity of today. Many scholars who study historical linguistics have been sounding the alarm for decades. Yet the Western Church did nothing to correct this.

Sure, something is always lost in translation. And sometimes that loss is simply unavoidable. But part of it wasn't innocent at all. In fact IMO it was deliberate. And it’s not a fringe interpretation I’m referring to. This is what the Aramaic actually says. And Aramaic is what Jesus and all his disciples spoke. This is what the Aramaic Peshitta New Testament said before being translated into Greek. Many people don’t even know what Aramaic Peshitta is, and think the original NT was written in Greek, but scholars know better. And this is what scholars of ancient semitic languages have been trying to tell us. This is what the Eastern Christian traditions, the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the Amorites have reserved in their liturgies, meantime the Western church built an elaborate institution on mistranslations (and deliberate wrong translations).

I’ll give you a couple of examples. Since we have been discussing hell, let me start with that. Throughout the four Gospels included in the NT, Jesus warns about hell, or so we're told. The English translations use words like hell, eternal fire, and everlasting punishment. These translations have terrified billions of people into compliance, created entire denominations built on fear of the afterlife and justified unspeakable violence in the name of saving souls from eternal torment. But Jesus never used the word hell. The Aramaic word that appears in the earliest manuscripts is Gehenna. And Gehenna wasn't a spiritual concept at all. It was a physical location, the valley of Hinnom just outside Jerusalem. It was the city rubbish dump where fires burned continuously to consume waste. It was a place of decay, of transformation, of things being broken down and returned to their elements. When Jesus warned about Gehenna, he was using a vivid immediate metaphor that his audience would have instantly understood. He was talking about wasted lives. He was saying, “Don't throw your life away. Don't become rubbish.”. The Greek translators used Gehenna, maintaining the reference to this specific location. But by the time medieval translators got to it, disconnected from the geographic and cultural context, they transformed it into hell, a word borrowed from Norse mythology referring to hell, the realm of the dead. The mistranslation was complete. A metaphor about wasting your life became a doctrine about eternal conscious torment. And here’s my point, no word in Aramaic corresponds to the modern Christian concept of hell. None. The language Jesus spoke didn't have a framework for eternal punishment. It had consequences. Yes, it had natural results of destructive behavior, but the idea of a loving God maintaining an eternal torture facility, that's not in the Aramaic. That came later. You could say this was accidental, but I don’t believe so. I think it was deliberate and done by some very clever people.

The other example I’m going to give you is a very commonly used term in KJV “the Son of Man” which is ὅ ὑιὸς τοῦ ἀνθρόπου in Greek. The Aramaic "Bar Nasha" or "bar enash". Jesus frequently uses it to refer to himself. In English, it sounds like a claim to humanity, perhaps a humble counterpoint to “Son of God”. But in Aramaic, Jesus called himself Bar nasha. And that doesn’t mean son of man in the genealogical sense. It's an idiom that means the human being. Or more accurately, the human one, the representative of humanity, the fully realized human being, the prototype of what humanity can become. Jesus wasn't claiming to be uniquely divine in a way that separated him from the rest of humanity. He was claiming to be fully human in a way that revealed what all humans could become. He was the pattern, the template, the prototype. When he said the Bar nasha has authority to forgive sins, he wasn't claiming exclusive divine power. He was demonstrating human potential when fully aligned with the divine. This understanding transforms the entire gospel message. Every time Jesus said Bar nasha, he was pointing to human potential, not divine exclusivity. When he asked what do people say the Bar nasha is, he was asking what humanity could become, what the fully awakened human being looks like. The tragedy is that by mistranslating this phrase, Christianity created a Jesus who was fundamentally different from you and me rather than a Jesus who was fundamentally like you or me, only fully realized. One interpretation keeps you dependent and small. The other invites you into the same transformation he embodied. Was the translation accidental, IMO it wasn’t.

With the Church is not about right or wrong; Good! That allows bridge-building

I don’t know what’s “good” or “bad” in the Church, nor do I care. And I’m not exactly sure what you mean by “bridge-building”. You claim to be a messianic gentile, someone who believes in the NT, but at the same time who puts a lot of weight on jewish tradition and the OT law. In other words you strongly believe in Yahweh, some scholars refer to as the jewish "God", and you also believe are called to lead people into a personal relationship with Jesus, to convert others to Christianity, for them to be saved. Anyway this is my take from your messages so far. It’s not what I believe. And my issue with the Church is its teachings. Actually it’s more that, the Aramaic speaking Christians of the Middle East, the direct descendants of Jesus's own community, practice a version of the faith that looks nothing like Western Christianity of today. Many scholars who study historical linguistics have been sounding the alarm for decades. Yet the Western Church did nothing to correct this.

Sure, something is always lost in translation. And sometimes that loss is simply unavoidable. But part of it wasn't innocent at all. In fact IMO it was deliberate. And it’s not a fringe interpretation I’m referring to. This is what the Aramaic actually says. And Aramaic is what Jesus and all his disciples spoke. This is what the Aramaic Peshitta New Testament said before being translated into Greek. Many people don’t even know what Aramaic Peshitta is, and think the original NT was written in Greek, but scholars know better. And this is what scholars of ancient semitic languages have been trying to tell us. This is what the Eastern Christian traditions, the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the Amorites have reserved in their liturgies, meantime the Western church built an elaborate institution on mistranslations (and deliberate wrong translations).

I’ll give you a couple of examples. Since we have been discussing hell, let me start with that. Throughout the four Gospels included in the NT, Jesus warns about hell, or so we're told. The English translations use words like hell, eternal fire, and everlasting punishment. These translations have terrified billions of people into compliance, created entire denominations built on fear of the afterlife and justified unspeakable violence in the name of saving souls from eternal torment. But Jesus never used the word hell. The Aramaic word that appears in the earliest manuscripts is Gehenna. And Gehenna wasn't a spiritual concept at all. It was a physical location, the valley of Hinnom just outside Jerusalem. It was the city rubbish dump where fires burned continuously to consume waste. It was a place of decay, of transformation, of things being broken down and returned to their elements. When Jesus warned about Gehenna, he was using a vivid immediate metaphor that his audience would have instantly understood. He was talking about wasted lives. He was saying, “Don't throw your life away. Don't become rubbish.”. The Greek translators used Gehenna, maintaining the reference to this specific location. But by the time medieval translators got to it, disconnected from the geographic and cultural context, they transformed it into hell, a word borrowed from Norse mythology referring to hell, the realm of the dead. The mistranslation was complete. A metaphor about wasting your life became a doctrine about eternal conscious torment. And here’s my point, no word in Aramaic corresponds to the modern Christian concept of hell. None. The language Jesus spoke didn't have a framework for eternal punishment. It had consequences. Yes, it had natural results of destructive behavior, but the idea of a loving God maintaining an eternal torture facility, that's not in the Aramaic. That came later. You could say this was accidental, but I don’t believe so. I think it was deliberate and done by some very clever people.

The other example I’m going to give you is a very commonly used term in KJV “the Son of Man” which is ὅ ὑιὸς τοῦ ἀνθρόπου in Greek. The Aramaic "Bar Nasha" or "bar enash". Jesus frequently uses it to refer to himself. In English, it sounds like a claim to humanity, perhaps a humble counterpoint to “Son of God”. But in Aramaic, Jesus called himself Bar nasha. And that doesn’t mean son of man in the genealogical sense. It's an idiom that means the human being. Or more accurately, the human one, the representative of humanity, the fully realized human being, the prototype of what humanity can become. Jesus wasn't claiming to be uniquely divine in a way that separated him from the rest of humanity. He was claiming to be fully human in a way that revealed what all humans could become. He was the pattern, the template, the prototype. When he said the Bar nasha has authority to forgive sins, he wasn't claiming exclusive divine power. He was demonstrating human potential when fully aligned with the divine. This understanding transforms the entire gospel message. Every time Jesus said Bar nasha, he was pointing to human potential, not divine exclusivity. When he asked what do people say the Bar nasha is, he was asking what humanity could become, that the fully awakened human being looks like. The tragedy is that by mistranslating this phrase, Christianity created a Jesus who was fundamentally different from you and me rather than a Jesus who was fundamentally like you or me, only fully realized. One interpretation keeps you dependent and small. The other invites you into the same transformation he embodied. Was the translation accidental, IMO it wasn’t.