A prophet, in his own words

The Gospel of Peace of Jesus Christ is lyrical, beautiful and profound. It gently challenges the assumptions of conventional, politicised, established religious institutions about the life and teachings of Jesus. Illustration by C Y Gopinath using AI

Christmas will be here soon. It is a good time to ask a question that pops into my mind from time to time: Jesus did not speak English, so how come the Bible we read is in English and nearly every other language you can name?

In humility, my question is neither particularly clever nor even original. Scholars and theologians have long debated how Jesus' original Aramaic got translated into other languages - and how much of his meaning and intent might have been lost, misrepresented or even deliberately tweaked in the process.

In the Jerusalem of Jesus' time, Greek was as common as Aramaic, and many were bilingual, so it wouldn't be a surprise if his apostles took notes in Greek, which some claim was the original language of the New Testament.

Imagine my delight and surprise when I discovered, buried among my old files, a manuscript that claimed to be a direct translation from the so-called Essene text of Jesus' words in the original Aramaic that he spoke. Its title read - The Gospel of Peace of Jesus Christ by the disciple John

The Aramaic and Old Slavonic Texts compared and edited by Edmond Szekely. Translated by Edmond Szekely and Purcell Weaver

Szekely, who was immediately debunked and trashed by the ruling Christian orthodoxy, claimed to have found an Aramaic translation of The Essene Gospel of Peace and The Essene Book of Revelation. He had come upon them, he said, while studying at the Vatican Library in 1923 and in old Slavonic language in the Royal Library of the Habsburgs (now the National Library of Austria). The Slavonic version, according to him, was a literal translation of Jesus' spoken Aramaic.

The Vatican denied that the original manuscripts even existed or that Szekely had ever been admitted to the Vatican Archives. A critic called it "one of the strangest frauds we know of in the Biblical field", and accused Szekely of writing it himself. The documents he named have never been seen, either lost or hidden if not fictitious.

Book 1 of The Essene Gospel of Peace by Jesus Christ, the translation Szekely published in 1936, represented about an eighth of the complete Aramaic manuscripts he'd found. He claimed it was the true undoctored New Testament.

The Essenes struck me as a remarkable community, though there were no more than about 4,000 of them and they are not heard of again after 70 AD. Many of them practised celibacy and some observed the practice of being engaged for three years before marrying.

They abjured swearing oaths and sacrificing animals, practised vegetarianism and were required to control their tempers and serve as channels of peace, carrying weapons only for protection against robbers. They abhorred slavery and believed all humans were created equal.

John the Baptist, a Jewish preacher and cousin of Jesus, was believed to be Essene.

I took some hours and slowly read through it. It was lyrical, poetic, beautiful and profound. It gently challenged the assumptions of conventional, politicised, established religious institutions about the life and teachings of Jesus.

I am not particularly religious but something about the words of the very human Jesus in this controversial biblical text touches a deep chord in me. Jesus addressed topics I never knew he had - the role of women, gender, and the importance of our relationship with nature and the environment. Far from calling humans the "crown of creation" who could plunder the planet as they pleased, he preached reverence and humility before Mother Nature.

Whether the document is a fake or not, whether these are Jesus' words or not, they resonate with me. Here is a sampling from just Book 1.

Your Mother is in you, and you in her. She bore you; she gives you life. It was she who gave to you your body, and to her shall you one day give it back again. Happy are you when you come to know her and her kingdom. . .For the power of our Mother is above all.

No one can reach the Heavenly Father unless through the Earthly Mother. Even as no newborn babe can understand the teaching of his father till his mother has suckled him, bathed him, nursed him, put him to sleep and nurtured him.

Books 2 through 4 have also been published now and may be viewed or downloaded at https://www.essene.com/GospelOfPeace/. If that is too much work, write to me at my email and I'll gladly send you the partial text I have.

The part I love best is where Jesus says written scriptures are the work of men, not gods. "God wrote not laws in the pages of books," he said. "Seek not the law in your scriptures, for the law is life, whereas the scripture is dead. . . In everything that is life is the law written. You find it in the grass, in the trees, in the rivers, in the mountain, in the birds of heaven, in the fishes of the sea; but seek it chiefly in yourselves."

That is a Jesus that would make complete sense. Even to an atheist.

You can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopi@gmail.com

Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com

The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper