The Prayer of Jesus, or Lord's Prayer, is among Christianity's most beloved teachings, a daily devotion practiced by Christians everywhere. If we could travel back in time to the ancient Holy Land - and witness Jesus himself speaking and meditating upon these words - what would we learn? On Original Prayer, acclaimed teacher and author Dr. Neil Douglas-Klotz immerses us in the language and philosophy of Jesus' world to reveal a practice with the power to change forever the way we experience sacred scripture.

*The Lord's Prayer - Restored to Its Original Meaning and Language

Neil Douglas-Klotz begins by revealing the rich layers of meaning enfolded within the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic - the language that Jesus and his disciples actually spoke. For example, if Jesus said anything about “good” and “evil,” then he needed to use the Aramaic words _taba_ and _bisha_. These words really mean ripe and unripe. So the verse “deliver us from evil” actually means “free us from unripeness” or “from not being at the right time and place with the right actions.” Through his thoughtful Aramaic translations, Douglas-Klotz opens a window into the Lord's Prayer that allows us to hear and understand the teachings of Jesus as he authentically taught them two thousand years ago.

*A Way to Experience Scripture Directly, through the Body

On Original Prayer, Neil Douglas-Klotz guides us, verse by verse, into a series of 24 specific practices of “body prayer” - the original Middle-Eastern form of meditation that uses chant, breathing, and awareness to engage the entire body and spirit in contemplation of scripture. These are the same kinds of devotions used by the first Christians to delve into the Gospels - not as a scholarly exercise - but as a living and breathing experience of God. What we discover from these meditations is a very different Jesus: an inclusive and cosmological teacher who lived and taught a sacred unity between humanity, creation, and the divine. In the fertile spiritual landscape of the ancient Middle East, prayer, meditation, and scriptural study were practiced as a single contemplative path. Now, with Original Prayer, you have within your reach the definitive resource for experiencing this luminous practice, using one of the most enduring cornerstones of the Christian faith - The Lord's Prayer.

* What did Jesus actually say? How the language and people of the Holy Land inspired him

* The Peshitta - the Aramaic Gospels and their profound impact on biblical scholarship

* Body prayer - visualizations, intoning, chant, and awareness practices from the ancient Middle East

* Ripeness, timing, and the cycles of the Earth - the natural cosmology of Jesus' spiritual roots

* "Remembrance of Unity" - Ways to unite nature, the body, and Spirit through breathing practices

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