George Lamsa-His version of the Bible
from truthunity.net
George Lamsa was born within Semitic culture—Syria, Iraq, Armenia, Kurdistan and Iran. He wound up being a Bible teacher for Unity in the 1960s because Unity is uniquely free and unlimited—free of limitations in the capacity to experience the rich inner life of Jesus who lived 2,000 years ago.
To understand his story, we have to start with the early Christian expansion out of Jerusalem to Antioch, a city north of Israel. From the letters of Paul and the Book of Acts we have all learned that the church then spread westward into modern day Turkey and then to Greece. What we haven’t learned is what happened to the missionaries who went eastward, to the cities and regions of George Lamsa’s homeland, that are so much in today’s news.
Two things happened to what became known as “The Church of the East,” the church of George Lamsa. First, eastward expansion placed them outside or nearly outside of the boundary of the Roman empire, making them free from that suppression. Secondly, eastward expansion kept them in the Semitic culture, unlike the western churches which found themselves in a Greek culture.
Being in a Semitic culture, the Church of the East had no need to adapt its teachings and theology to accommodate the Greek mind. They were able to practice the teachings of Jesus from the perspective of Jesus’ own culture. Being free from Roman suppression, they were a hospitable home for early Christians, one of whom was, according to tradition, Thaddeus of Edessa, one of the seventy disciples.
The church from which George Lamsa came, the church of the east, has been called the “Nestorian Church” because it broke from orthodoxy over the doctrines put forth in the 3rd Ecumenical council, held in 431 CE which condemned Nestorius. Nestorians struggled with those who diminished the human nature of Jesus.
Christianity has tended in practice to be associated with three cultures: the Semitic, the Greek, and the Latin. When Paul turned west from Antioch, he entered into Greek culture. As the church expanded west to Rome and north from Rome through Europe, Christianity entered into Latin culture, the predominant culture of the Roman Catholic and the Protestant churches.
New Thought people are not orthodox, meaning we do not adhere to the strict dogmas promulgated by the Ecumenical councils. Our beliefs differ greatly, but we share a willingness to declare ourselves Christian while much of Christianity rejects our fellowship.
George Lamsa was an Assyrian Semite, whose native language was a close dialect of the language spoken by Jesus. He devoted his life to conveying that the spiritual teachings of Jesus were idiomatic. And Lamsa believed that the only way to truly understand those unique idioms was through the lens of a Semitic eye.
The metaphysical churches of New Thought have always been open to the consciousness of other cultures and the language they use. George Lamsa found a home in Unity and New Thought because of our willingness to lay aside our beliefs about Jesus so that we could enter into the experience of Jesus. He greatly influenced New Thought. His version of the Bible has important differences from the King James Version and later versions.
The “Lamsa Bible” has been translated from ancient eastern manuscripts called the Pishitta Text. Pishitta means straight, simple, sincere, true, and original. This text was the authorized Bible of the Church of the East. In our current Christian Bible, translations were based on the Greek Septuagint of the Old Testament and on the Latin Bible of Jerome. In the Lamsa Bible the modern reader has the potential for comparing passages of the Aramaic language which had been used since the earliest times.
The Aramaic language was a language of empire extending from the borders of Persia to those of Europe and down the Nile of Egypt. In those days it was spoken and written by the Jewish people at least equally with Hebrew. It is said that Jesus spoke in Aramaic.
George Lamsa is an Assyrian and a student of ancient biblical texts. This background together with his knowledge of the Aramaic has enabled him to recover much of the original meaning that has been lost in later translations of the Scriptures.
Many of the Aramaic words were not properly understood by the Greek and the Latin translators. Aramaic is a rich and expressive language of the Semitic Group but has a small vocabulary when compared with the Greek and the Latin. A limitation of available words made necessary the use of the same words in different contexts.
For example: The Pishitta text of Genesis 30:8 says, “And Rachel said, I have besought the Lord and pleaded with my sister.” The King James version says, “And Rachel said with great wrestlings, I have wrestled with my sister...”
Another example: The Pishitta text of Matthew 19:24 says, “Again I say to you, it is easier for a rope to go through the eye of a needle...” The King James version says, “And again I say unto you it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle…” This difference can be easily explained as an example of spinning fibers to make a rope. At that time, camel hair was commonly available to make a rope used to manage camels. The King James version has left out “camel hair rope.”
The Eye of the Needle means a very narrow security opening, perhaps only 18 inches wide and 30 inches tall, left open at night after the closing of the main gates. Also possibly, a small opening in a larger gate. None have been identified and the idea may only be metaphorical.
These differences are explained with many more examples in a first section of the Aramaic Peshitta Translation.
10/22/23