Mystical Poetry and the Middle Eastern Mind:
Experiments in Multi-leveled Poetic Translation

A Short Course

In 1990, Dr Neil Douglas-Klotz pioneered a poetic approach to interpreting and understanding the words attributed to Jesus in the Gospels from his native Aramaic language. Drawing upon the centuries-old Jewish tradition of midrash (interpretive translation), Douglas-Klotz used a traditional Syriac-Aramaic version of the Gospels to show how a non-Western listener might have heard the words of a Semitic prophet in a multi-leveled way. His first book, Prayers of the Cosmos, became an international bestseller and led to subsequent works continuing the exploration, which have raised many questions for Biblical and Quranic scholars about their own methodologies.  During this evening mini-course, he discuss the use of multi-leveled poetic verse to translate and interpret ancient Semitic languages in a way that fits the worldview and ways of knowing inherent in these cultures. He relates his work to the movement of ethno-poetics, beginning in the 1970s and talks about his personal background and preparation for the work.  He reads from and discusses a number of his translations from the Aramaic of the words attributed to Jesus, from translations of mythic poetry from the Hebrew bible and from verses of the Quran, including selections from the books Desert Wisdom, Prayers of the Cosmos, The Hidden Gospel, Genesis Meditations and Blessings of the Cosmos. This short course was offered on March 3, 2008 as part of the 5th Edinburgh International Festival of Middle Eastern Spirituality and Peace.

Download part one of this mini-course (30 min) free here in Mp3 format.

The complete 90 minute course is available in the online store.

Cosmology and Ecology: Looking Back, Looking Ahead

An informal conversation with Bruce Chilton, Neil Douglas-Klotz, Jim Garrison and Mark Hathaway at Wisdom University's 5-day colloquium near Toronto, Canada, on May 6, 2010.

This conversation was part of an informal evening with students at Wisdom University's 5-day class series near Toronto (see www.wisdomuniversity.org). The first 30 minutes includes contributions (in order) from Bruce Chilton (author of Rabbi Jesus and many other books), Neil Douglas-Klotz, Wisdom University President Jim Garrison and Mark Hathway, co-author (with Leonardo Boff) of The Tao of Liberation.

Download the podcast of the first 30 minutes here.