
July 06, 2016
Jesus spoke Aramaic, but the Bible has been translated from Greek. Many mistaken translations of the Gospels have skewed the development of Christianity — and the course of history. It's time to let the Bible be retranslated to let its true message be known.
Biblical errors?
BERLIN — Jesus spoke Aramaic. It was his mother tongue and 2,000 years ago it was the main language throughout the Middle East. The New Testament, however, is translated from Greek into all the languages of the world. Aramaic expert and theologian Günther Schwarz (who died in 2009) was dissatisfied with the classical translation and studied Aramaic every day for 50 years in order to better understand Jesus in his native language. In doing so, he came to the realization that about half of all Jesus' words in the gospels were mistranslated or even deliberately falsified.
His shocking conclusion: “What Christians believe, Jesus did not teach! And what Jesus taught — the Christians do not know.” The theologian has written 20 books and around 100 scientific articles about Jesus and Aramaic. He sent his findings to all German-speaking bishops. Response: zero.
So, as a journalist, I want to use my Jesus books to educate people about Günther Schwarz's findings.
When I read a book by Günther Schwarz for the first time in 2010, I too was skeptical. But in the end, the subject gripped me so much that in two years, I read everything that the world-renowned Aramaic expert wrote about the original Jesus. And I found a new, fascinating and very contemporary image of Jesus. Nothing is as hard as letting go of a lifetime of practiced beliefs.
Are the Gospels really full of fake news? Does the best-seller of all best-sellers, the Bible, have to be rewritten? True enough, if the words are wrong, the entire message is wrong. Is this perhaps the real cause of the current dramatic wave of departures from the two major churches? There have been declining numbers of adherents to Catholicism and Protestantism over the last few decades, and the Federal Statistical Office has calculated that this will continue for both denominations.
Even Cardinal Reinhard Marx, when offering his resignation to the Pope, says his Catholic Church has reached a “dead end”. The real reason for fleeing the Church is spiritual and religious. Church and society have become more and more alienated. I wonder why? In fact, the churches that actually exist have dried up spiritually.
If the words are wrong, the entire message is wrong.
Exemplary of flight from the church is a statement given by the cabaret artist Carolin Kebekus, who has since left her church. She was asked, "Do you also know something funny in the Bible?" Her answer: "Yes, a virgin who gave birth to several children."
This riddle is easy to solve with the help of Aramaic. In Jesus' native language there is no word for "biological virgin" at all. In Aramaic, it simply means "young woman". Sounds simple, but it immediately becomes a problem when you consider that one of the leading and most popular Catholic theologians, Eugen Drewermann, had his teaching license revoked because he would not believe in the virginity of Jesus' mother. Similarly, Hans Küng was disbarred because he could not believe in the "infallibility" of the Pope.
The translation problem becomes more difficult in other passages in the Bible. In Matthew 10:34, one finds the terrible sentence, which is said to have come from Jesus: "For I came not to bring peace, but a sword." Is that what the pacifist of the Sermon on the Mount is supposed to have said? Jesus – a warmonger, really?
Translated from Aramaic, this line by Jesus means, "I have not come to spread harmony, but to settle disputes." This is much more fitting for the belligerent pacifist from Nazareth, but it is the opposite of what is written in Bibles around the world and with which church leaders have justified "Holy Wars" or "Just Wars" and blessed bombs – even the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Jesus, however, blessed the peacemakers and never the warmongers and sword ideologues.
Or the Lord's Prayer request "...and lead us not into temptation." Is the God of Jesus, the Father who loves us, a cynic and sadist who wants to lead us into temptation? In his native language, Jesus prayed like this: “And lead us in temptation." This is something quite different. In 2016, in a book on the Lord's Prayer, Pope Francis also suggested to all bishops that they change the traditional Lord's Prayer in favor of the Aramaic text. He could not believe in a God who wants to lead us into temptation, Pope Francis said.
The Italian, French, Portuguese and Brazilian bishops have changed their Lord's Prayer according to the Pope's proposal, but not the German bishops of both denominations. In the newspaper Bild am Sonntag, former bishop Margot Käßmann said, "We don't want to change tradition! If tradition is more important than Jesus in such a central question as the image of God in the Lord's Prayer, then the faithful rightly run away from the churches. Then the churches are really beyond saving."
As a young theology student, I often heard the phrase: "Ecclesia semper reformanda" — the church must always be renewed. But woe betide anyone who tries to do that.
Hundreds of people who read the “new” translation from Aramaic in my Jesus books write to me that “lifelong” burdens that priests or religious teachers had placed on them fell away. A 75-year-old Catholic clergyman informed me that he was on his way to becoming an atheist. But through the Aramaic Jesus, he could believe again.
Two more serious examples of fatal mistranslations. In Matthew 5:22, we read someone who says to his brother, "Godless fool, let him fall into the fires of hell." Just recently, a priest complained to me that he was "afraid of hell" because of such passages in the Bible and had not been able to sleep at night for a long time. Instead of proclaiming the good news of Jesus, the fear of hell is threatened.
So too is Mark 16:16. Here the official Bible says, "Whoever does not believe will be condemned." Jesus never condemned anyone. This is a church example of blackmail to baptism and the Christian faith. The tolerant, and freedom and love preaching Jesus said no such thing.
A particularly catastrophic example of corrupt translation concerns Judas. For centuries, theologians and church leaders have branded him a "traitor". What's more, they equated Judas with "the Jews" and " the murderers of God". Günther Schwarz has proven that anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism can be traced historically to this misconception.
The real story between Jesus and Judas, as it has come down to us in Aramaic: Judas was the only one of the twelve apostles who knew Jerusalem. So, Jesus sent him to the chief priests. In the German translation, the word for "betray" is based on the Greek word "paradidomai". But it can also be translated as "handed over". It is noticeable that in all passages where this word is associated with Judas in the four gospels (that is, 32 times) the German translation is "betray". But in many other places in the Bible (a total of 17 times), it is translated as "handed over".
Thus, Judas was deliberately branded a traitor. The "traitor" was the projection figure of all anti-Semites for 2,000 years — up to the Nazis, the Holocaust and Auschwitz. It is high time to retell this story. For the popular Israeli writer Amos Oz, who died in 2018, the story of Judas as the betrayer of Jesus is “the Chernobyl of anti-Semitism.”
Judas was equated with "the Jews" and " the murderers of God".
For 2,000 years, Judas has been slung with mud by Christians, just as Jesus the Jew was slung with mud by Jewish theologians 2,000 years ago. The "traitor" was in fact Jesus' best friend, whom he asked for a final friendly service. The real traitor was not Judas, but Peter, who denied Jesus "before the cock crowed three times" (Mark 14:72). Only today, with a correct and honest translation, does Judas get the recognition he deserves. Judas did not betray Jesus, although this is still so terribly wrong in all four Gospels. He handed him over in consultation with Jesus.
Walter Jens writes in his last novel: “Without Judas there is no cross. Without a cross there is no fulfillment of the plan of salvation. Without Judas there is no church. No narration without this narrator.” The Judas kiss was a friendship kiss. Without Judas there would be no Good Friday and probably no Easter either. And probably no Christianity.
The difference between Greek and Aramaic 2,000 years ago was similar to the difference between Arabic and German today.
If a Japanese Germanist wants to understand Goethe, he probably does not read his texts in Chinese, but in German. Therefore, my request to the Pope and the bishops is: let the Gospel finally be retranslated into the mother tongue of Jesus and officially rehabilitate Judas at the next council. And do the same for Mary Magdalene, who was not a whore, as it says in the Gospels, but Jesus' closest confidant and companion, as it says in other sources. Today's world needs a Jesus renaissance. Günther Schwarz has already done good and important preliminary work for this.
The church is not in good health. But Jesus is alive.
The author is a journalist and best-selling author. Most recently he published "The Most Extraordinary Love Ever — The True Story of Jesus, Mary Magdalene and Judas."
Jesus spoke Aramaic, but the Bible has been translated from Greek. Many mistaken translations of the Gospels have skewed the development of Christianity — and the course of history. It's time to let the Bible be retranslated to let its true message be known.
Despite opposition, authorities are proceeding with the eviction of residents of traditional houseboats docked along the Nile in Egypt's capital, as the government aims to "renovate" the area – and increase its economic value.
Having been forced to retreat and cede territory in Donbas, Kyiv has its eye on recapturing the key southern port city of Kherson.
Vladimir Putin has been upfront about his desire to rebuild Russia’s influence in the region. Former Soviet states are watching developments in Ukraine closely, with many trying to ensure futures free of interference by Moscow.
Central to the tragic absurdity of this war is the question of language. Vladimir Putin has repeated that protecting ethnic Russians and the Russian-speaking populations of Ukraine was a driving motivation for his invasion.
Yet one month on, a quick look at the map shows that many of the worst-hit cities are those where Russian is the predominant language: Kharkiv, Odesa, Kherson.
Then there is Mariupol, under siege and symbol of Putin’s cruelty. In the largest city on the Azov Sea, with a population of half a million people, Ukrainians make up slightly less than half of the city's population, and Mariupol's second-largest national ethnicity is Russians. As of 2001, when the last census was conducted, 89.5% of the city's population identified Russian as their mother tongue.
Between 2018 and 2019, I spent several months in Mariupol. It is a rugged but beautiful city dotted with Soviet-era architecture, featuring wide avenues and hillside parks, and an extensive industrial zone stretching along the shoreline. There was a vibrant youth culture and art scene, with students developing projects to turn their city into a regional cultural center with an international photography festival.
There were also many offices of international NGOs and human rights organizations, a consequence of the fact that Mariupol was the last major city before entering the occupied zone of Donbas. Many natives of the contested regions of Luhansk and Donetsk had moved there, taking jobs in restaurants and hospitals. I had fond memories of the welcoming from locals who were quicker to smile than in some other parts of Ukraine. All of this is gone.
Putin is bombing the very people he has claimed to want to rescue.
According to the latest data from the local authorities, 80% of the port city has been destroyed by Russian bombs, artillery fire and missile attacks, with particularly egregious targeting of civilians, including a maternity hospital, a theater where more than 1,000 people had taken shelter and a school where some 400 others were hiding.
The official civilian death toll of Mariupol is estimated at more than 3,000. There are no language or ethnic-based statistics of the victims, but it’s likely the majority were Russian speakers.
So let’s be clear, Putin is bombing the very people he has claimed to want to rescue.
Putin’s Public Enemy No. 1, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is a mother-tongue Russian speaker who’d made a successful acting and comedy career in Russian-language broadcasting, having extensively toured Russian cities for years.
Rescuers carry a person injured during a shelling by Russian troops of Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine.
Yes, the official language of Ukraine is Ukrainian, and a 2019 law aimed to ensure that it is used in public discourse, but no one has ever sought to abolish the Russian language in everyday life. In none of the cities that are now being bombed by the Russian army to supposedly liberate them has the Russian language been suppressed or have the Russian-speaking population been discriminated against.
Sociologist Mikhail Mishchenko explains that studies have found that the vast majority of Ukrainians don’t consider language a political issue. For reasons of history, culture and the similarities of the two languages, Ukraine is effectively a bilingual nation.
"The overwhelming majority of the population speaks both languages, Russian and Ukrainian,” Mishchenko explains. “Those who say they understand Russian poorly and have difficulty communicating in it are just over 4% percent. Approximately the same number of people say the same about Ukrainian.”
In general, there is no problem of communication and understanding. Often there will be conversations where one person speaks Ukrainian, and the other responds in Russian. Geographically, the Russian language is more dominant in the eastern and central parts of Ukraine, and Ukrainian in the west.
Like most central Ukrainians I am perfectly bilingual: for me, Ukrainian and Russian are both native languages that I have used since childhood in Kyiv. My generation grew up on Russian rock, post-Soviet cinema, and translations of foreign literature into Russian. I communicate in Russian with my sister, and with my mother and daughter in Ukrainian. I write professionally in three languages: Ukrainian, Russian and English, and can also speak Polish, French, and a bit Japanese. My mother taught me that the more languages I know the more human I am.
At the same time, I am not Russian — nor British or Polish. I am Ukrainian. Ours is a nation with a long history and culture of its own, which has always included a multi-ethnic population: Russians, Belarusians, Moldovans, Crimean Tatars, Bulgarians, Romanians, Hungarians, Poles, Jews, Greeks. We all, they all, have found our place on Ukrainian soil. We speak different languages, pray in different churches, we have different traditions, clothes, and cuisine.
My mother taught me that the more languages I know the more human I am.
Like in other countries, these differences have been the source of conflict in our past. But it is who we are and will always be, and real progress has been made over the past three decades to embrace our multitudes. Our Jewish, Russian-speaking president is the most visible proof of that — and is in fact part of what our soldiers are fighting for.
Many in Moscow were convinced that Russian troops would be welcomed in Ukraine as liberating heroes by Russian speakers. Instead, young soldiers are forced to shoot at people who scream in their native language.
Starving people ina street of Kharkiv in 1933, during the famine
Diocesan Archive of Vienna (Diözesanarchiv Wien)/BA Innitzer
Putin has tried to rally the troops by warning that in Ukraine a “genocide” of ethnic Russians is being carried out by a government that must be “de-nazified.”
These are, of course, words with specific definitions that carry the full weight of history. The Ukrainian people know what genocide is not from books. In my hometown of Kyiv, German soldiers massacred Jews en masse. My grandfather survived the Buchenwald concentration camp, liberated by the U.S. army. My great-grandmother, who died at the age of 95, survived the 1932-33 famine when the Red Army carried out the genocide of the Ukrainian middle class, and her sister disappeared in the camps of Siberia, convicted for defying rationing to try to feed her children during the famine.
On Tuesday, came a notable report of one of the latest civilian deaths in the besieged Russian-speaking city of Kharkiv: a 96-year-old had been killed when shelling hit his apartment building. The victim’s name was Boris Romanchenko; he had survived Buchenwald and two other Nazi concentration camps during World War II. As President Zelensky noted: Hitler didn’t manage to kill him, but Putin did.
Genocide has returned to Ukraine, from Kharkiv to Kherson to Mariupol, as Vladimir Putin had warned. But it is his own genocide against the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine.