Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: The Lord's Prayer

Last week, we started a series on Kenneth E. Bailey's book, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes.

One of the first passages that really struck me in this book was the chapter on the language of the Lord's prayer. I remember learning long ago that the word He used for Father was "Abba", but I didn't realize just how deeply personal Jesus' language really was in this prayer. Not only that, but I didn't realize that Jesus switched languages there!

On page 95, Bailey says, "Jesus lived in a world where the public reading of the Bible was only in Hebrew, and prayers had to be offered in that language. When Jesus took the giant step of endorsing Aramaic as an acceptable language for prayer and worship [by using the Aramaic term 'Abba' for 'Father], he opened the door for the New Testament to be written in Greek (not Hebrew) and then translated into other languages."

I don't think the significance of this can be overstated... until this point, prayers were only spoken in Hebrew, which means a follower needed to speak Hebrew in order to talk with God. But by doing what He did, "the long-term result is a global church of more than 2 billion people, almost all of whom have the Bible available in their own language. Believers are thereby able to break into God's presence using the language of the heart. We are so accustomed to this heritage that we scarcely notice its beginning, which was Jesus' choice of Aramaic as the language of the Lord's Prayer. Jesus affirmed the translatability of the message when He began this prayer with the great word, 'Abba'" (pages 95-96).

Bailey goes on to state that in many countries in the Middle East, "Abba" was (and still is) the first word a child learns. This word "affirms both respect in addressing a superior and a profound personal relationship between the one who uses it and the one addressed" (page 98).

How cool! What about you? Did you know that Jesus changed languages there—and the significance of it? As Westerners, we often look at the Gutenberg press as the invention that opened the world for the Bible to be available to everyone. But it looks like it goes back farther than that... without Jesus' lingual switch here, would everyone have had to read and pray in Hebrew?