Home · The Lord's Prayer · In Aramaic
Awoon d'bashmaya
The prayer in the language Jesus spoke every day, with the Syriac text, its transliteration and what each verse says.
Awoon d'bashmaya, nethqadash shmakh, tethe malkuthakh, nehwe tzevyanakh, aykana d'bashmaya af b'ar'a. Hav lan lachma d'sunqanan yaomana. Washbok lan khaubayn, aykana daf khnan shbakn l'khayabayn. Wela tahlan l'nesyuna, ela patzan min bisha. Metol dilakhe malkutha, w'hayla, w'teshbukhta l'ahlam almin. Amen.
Jesus spoke Galilean Aramaic. It was not a choice: it was the language of the house, the workshop and the road in first-century Galilee. Hebrew belonged to the synagogue and Greek to trade and officials, but a mother in Nazareth taught her son to pray in Aramaic.
The Gospels were written in Greek, and that is where the Lord's Prayer we know was preserved. Aramaic surfaces anyway in a few places, as when Jesus calls God Abba in Gethsemane (Mark 14:36). That Abba is the word this prayer opens with.
The Peshitta is the Bible in Syriac, the literary form of Aramaic that took shape in Edessa. It is still used today by the Syriac Churches of East and West, and in it the Lord's Prayer reads as transcribed above: Awoon d'bashmaya.
An honest caveat: the Peshitta is not a recording of what Jesus said that afternoon. It is a later Syriac text, most likely translated from the Greek. What it offers is not archaeology but kinship — the same language family, the same roots he used, and a sound far closer to his voice than any modern translation.
Shmaya, which we translate "heaven", does not name a place overhead: it names what spreads out, the whole extent of what is. And khauba, which we translate "trespass" or "debt", is literally what is owed — an accounting word. To forgive, in Aramaic, is to cancel an account.
It begins "Awoon d'bashmaya, nethqadash shmakh, tethe malkuthakh, nehwe tzevyanakh, aykana d'bashmaya af b'ar'a", meaning "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven".
Yes. Galilean Aramaic was his mother tongue and the everyday language of first-century Galilee. The Gospels were written in Greek but preserve Aramaic words of his, such as the Abba he addresses the Father with in Gethsemane.
Not quite. The surviving Aramaic text is the Syriac Peshitta, later than the Gospels and most likely translated from Greek. It is not a recording of what Jesus said, but it is the same language family and the same roots he used.
"Our Father". It comes from the root abba, the familiar, close way of saying father in Aramaic — the same word the Gospels put in the mouth of Jesus in Mark 14:36.
Paternoster prays it in Aramaic in a solemn, unhurried voice so you can follow it word by word.
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