oa Een verborgen Evangelie?

This article critically reviews the Dutch translation of the book of Neil Douglas-Klotz, The Hidden Gospel: Decoding the Spiritual Message of the Aramaic Jesus (1999). Douglas-Klotz with the help of the Peshitta searches for the Aramaic words of Jesus in order to find Jesus’ original spiritual message. Through a comparison of Matth. 7:17, the Lord’s Prayer, John 4:24 and their reconstructed original ‘Aramaic’ wordings it is demonstrated that Douglas-Klotz only shows his own spiritual thoughts with regard to the texts, but not the spirituality of Jesus. The suggested scientific basis for the hidden words of Jesus appears to be a rather pseudo-scientific one.