Table of Contents
Neil Douglas-Klotz tells Next Level Soul that a Sufi hint set his work. A chant for Jesus, if it used sacred sound, should use Aramaic, the language he takes to be Jesus’s own. He reports what many Sufis tell him. What Muhammad brought was a spirituality later organized as Islam, and the Quran still has a chapter on Mary and the birth. Aramaic, in his teaching, refuses a split of mind, body, soul, and spirit. Breath and spirit are one word. The body is already sacred. One marker covers both within and among. The divine name is the reality surrounding everyone, which he connects with Allah. A line usually rendered as belief in Jesus, he argues, asks the hearer to trust in the same manner, not to collect doctrines. Aramaic speaking Christians, he says, were for centuries the largest Christian community. Different groups remembered different deeds, and Constantine could not govern on hundreds of Jesuses. Thomas and other books outside the four are alternate memories. Older Semitic speech puts the past in front of us.
Key points
- A Sufi remark sent Klotz to chant in Aramaic, which he presents as Jesus’s own language, and that search became his scholarly life.
- He reports that many Sufis describe an early spirituality later organized into Islam, and he notes a Quran chapter on Mary and the birth.
- Aramaic, in his teaching, does not split body from spirit, uses one marker for within and among, and names God as the reality all around.
- He argues that the familiar phrase about believing in Jesus flattens a line that asks people to trust in the same manner.
- Constantine, he says, could not govern on hundreds of memories, so a narrower set of stories won, while other books kept alternate ones.
- Love, for him, includes a birthing warmth Jesus calls racham, and ancestors remain available as inspiration rather than as God.
Short quotes
Later, it became known as Sufism, and then a bunch of people went and made it into a religion called Islam.
Neil Douglas-Klotz, Aramaic readings of Jesus
He reports a Sufi telling in which an early path was later organized as the religion of Islam. Watch at 9:46
Body is spiritual in our sense, and everything is supposed to resonate with this bigger reality, which is called Allah, which is all around us.
Neil Douglas-Klotz, Aramaic readings of Jesus
In his Aramaic reading, flesh is already sacred, and the divine name is the reality surrounding everyone. Watch at 14:44
That's in this translation of a simple preposition he says, translating more literally, believe like me.
Neil Douglas-Klotz, Aramaic readings of Jesus
A small preposition, he argues, asks the hearer to trust in the same way rather than to adopt a creed. Watch at 24:33
The past is, you could say, ahead of us and it's moving, and the future is behind us and it's moving.
Neil Douglas-Klotz, Aramaic readings of Jesus
Older Semitic speech, he says, pictures the past in front of us and the future at our backs. Watch at 40:44
I just call them alternate stories of people who remembered what Jesus said and did.
Neil Douglas-Klotz, Aramaic readings of Jesus
Books left out of the canon are, for him, other memories of what Jesus did and said. Watch at 1:11:08
Love is is both an unconditional radiation that comes through involuntarily from me, like a birthing energy that Jesus calls racham.
Neil Douglas-Klotz, Aramaic readings of Jesus
Love, in his definition, includes a birthing warmth that Jesus names with an Aramaic word. Watch at 1:16:25
Video by Next Level Soul Podcast. Watch on YouTube.