Devotional: Psalm 16:8

Good Morning Yamon Ki Yesepar and Nevim Arith Hayomim:
John 3:3: “Jesus answered and said unto him, verily, verily I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
As a small child in Christian Service Brigade I memorized this passage of Scripture to earn my merit badge and ever since that time I never understood this passage.  I have read this passage in the Greek and could not reach any conclusion. I have discussed this with Jewish rabbis and gained insight, but still I felt there was nothing conclusive to hang my hat upon.  I always suspected there was something much deeper going on in this exchange between Jesus and Nicodemus.  Now fifty years later I decided to give this passage one more crack and read it in the Aramaic Bible and see if I could get any deeper insight.
As I read this in the Peshitta (Standard Aramaic Bible), I became fixated on the word Mitheelad which is rendered as born and comes from the root word Yalad and the word dresh which is the word for again in Aramaic.  There has been a ton of research on the Old Galilean dialect of Western Aramaic  done by Catholic and British scholars in the last 15 years and new light has been shed on this ancient language which was spoken by Jesus.   For one thing we know now that the dialect spoken by Nicodemus would have been the Chaldean Aramaic spoken by the Jews of Judea.  There is a subtle difference that scholars point out.  In this case when Jesus said mitheelad min dresh (born again) Nicodemus would have taken the expression literally but Jesus using the Old Galilean would have not been speaking of a physical birth but a spiritual birth.   Hence Nicodemus response in asking how one can be born when he is old.
What I find troubling about this, is why would Jesus make such an error.  I can understand my liberal friends saying: “Oh, poor Jesus he forgot about the difference in dialect and pulled an embarrassing error in front of the great Pharisaical leader.”  I, however, believe Jesus was divine and such an error was fully intentional on His part.  For my part I cannot help but point out the similarities between the Aramaic word yalad  (born) and the Hebrew word yalda (child) both which have identical consonants.  Not only that both Aramaic and Hebrew have the word “dresh” only in Aramaic it means “again” or “from above” but in Hebrew it means “to search and seek out.”
Now let me point out that this is original research which I am doing for my doctoral dissertation and any such original research must always be taken with a grain of salt and subjected to much scrutiny  before it is accepted as reliable.  Yes, I am saying I am not reliable here.
Be that as it may, I am at a great disadvantage as I have not yet found a source studying the Old Galilean Western Aramaic that would fall into our Evangelical conservative camp.  In others the only resources on the Old Galilean I have been able to locate have no problem with saying Jesus was not divine and as such would be subject to error.  I am one of those  crazy people who actually believe Jesus was both human and God at the same time and thus unable to commit error.
So the only way I can interpret this exchange and have Jesus coming out divine is to say He intentionally used the subtle difference in dialect to cause the confusion on the part of  Nicodemus so He could pull off a very clever play on words and tell this old, respected, learned Pharisee in a very loving and gentle way that he spent his life barking up the wrong tree.
Although communication between the two dialects  is possible; just as it would be with us in the United States and someone from, say, New Zealand.  I say New Zealand because I once had a student from New Zealand who was telling about a famous preacher in his country and he said: “Aye, we’re mates.”  I remember my immediate thoughts, “I didn’t know they both served in the Navy.”  Then as I continued thinking of the word mates as used in our culture, I had a horrible thought, which I quickly dismissed.   All my student meant was that they were best buds.
Jesus would have been very much aware of the difference in dialect, but he threw out the words Mitheelad min dresh to throw old Nicodemus off balance, because, as learned scholars, both would have been fluent in the Classical Hebrew and there would have been no misunderstanding when Jesus said: “You are master in Israel and you don’t know these things?”  In other words Jesus was telling him that as a master of Israel, he was fluent in Classical Hebrew and he was to think on this in Hebrew.   Mitheelad min dresh in Aramaic means born again or born from above, but in Hebrew it means: “Search and seek like a child.
I reviewed my research on the Pharisees and Sadducees before this study and found that the Pharisees believed Oral tradition was as authoritative as the Torah where the Sadducees believed only the Torah was authoritative.  In other words the Pharisees revered the teachings of their fathers.  The doctrines of man substituted the teachings of Scripture for the Pharisees and Jesus was telling Nicodemus, aside from the fact he had to be born again as we understand born again, that he also had to become like a child and divest himself of a lifetime of study of the teachings of man and begin to search for God like a child, simple, pure and harmless and not filled with the complexity of man’s reasoning, intellectual conclusions and rationale.  Only then could he truly become mitheelad min dresh (born again).
Well, I am personally comfortable with this further insight into John 3, except for the fact that there is a lesson in this for me personally and I think I may have to revert to the mind of a child me to comprehend it.