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As many know, the Bibles used in Christian churches are usually translations of translations of translations. Wouldn't it be interesting if some scholar went back to some of the oldest manuscripts and translated them directly into English?
A scholar named Neil Douglas-Klotz did this around 15 years ago. He studied Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, as well as Hebrew and other ancient languages. His source for the Lord's prayer was a version of the Syriac Aramaic manuscript of the Gospels, also known as the Peshitta Version, which is considered by the church of the East as the oldest and most authoritarian version of the Bible. Some scholars say it could be as old as the second century AD. Neil Douglas-Klotz used this and other scholarly texts to do his work; to find out more, including an exhaustive interpretation of each word and line of the prayer,and the different interpretations of each line, see "Prayers of the Cosmos".
The Lord's Prayer
O Birther! Father-Mother of the Cosmos,
Focus your light within us-make it useful
Create your reign of unity now--
Your one desire then acts with ours, as in all light, so in all forms.
Grant what we need each day in bread and insight.
Loose the cords of mistakes binding us, as we release the strands we hold of others' guilt.
Don't let surface things delude us.
But free us from what holds us back.
From you is born all ruling will, the power and the life to do, the song that beautifies all, from age to age it renews.
Truly--power to these statements--may they be the ground from which all my actions grow; Amen.
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