Monday, January 27, 2014

Eloi: Plural name for God recognized in ancient Aramaic

On the cross Jesus is to have reported to have said in his native ancient Aramaic, "Eloi! Eloi! Lamasabacthani" Through about 20 translations into the King James I think it says, "My God My God Why hast thou forsaken me?"

But, this is a mistranslation because of how many different languages it was sent through to English.

First of all "Eloi" is a plural noun for God whereas then the ancient way of saying this would be "Gods" and not "God" like we do today.

Second, what he actually said in a direct translation from Aramaic to English meant literally, "My Gods! My Gods! How thou hast Glorified me!" So, it is amazing what he really said instead of "My God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken me!"

To a person that was not Jesus it might be logical that he would say on the cross that he had been forsaken. But, none of you or I were Jesus who was more exceptional a man than you or I. So, to him if he had supernatural ability to make water into wine and could multiply food likely he could also be precognitive and to actually know that today in 2014 that there would be over 1 billion Christians on earth today. So, because of this saying literally, "My Gods! My Gods! How thou hast glorified me!" would actually make more sense for a person enlightened to that point of full realization. In places like India and Tibet where documentation of multiple people with abilities like this for thousands of years this makes more sense in that cultural context of spirituality and religiosity combined than it might in the context of the middle east where people might view all this in a slightly different context and becomes even less understood in European more materialistic points of view as it moved to the U.S. and North and South America over the last 500 years.

So, maybe it might make more sense if he is actually saying "My Gods! My Gods!" that he was thinking in an almost Zeus or Odin Context of there being multiple Creators of the Galaxy or Universe (depending upon what cultural context he was saying this in).

But, if in popular culture it was common to people he knew to say, "My Gods" (as his family) then he might have been referring to a pantheon of Gods since he was near to Greece at that time and scholars would have known in Israel about Zeus and the other Gods. So, likely saying still at this cultural point in time "Gods" or "Eloi" would make much more sense then than it would to us here in 2014 here on Earth.

Even when I grew up in the 1950s my parents believed in their religion of the Elohim which is a westernization of the "Eloi" of Aramaic times 2000 years ago. What I was taught was that there were  7 Elohim that created the Solar System and likely the Milky Way Galaxy. So, when I heard a scholar who was able to translate Aramaic directly into English without going through 5 or 10 languages and heard what Jesus actually said on the cross it made a lot of sense to a 10 year old boy listening to an Aramaic to English Scholar actually from the middle East speak at a Gathering in Los Angeles around 1958.

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