The Hidden Gospel (Illuminating the Spiritual Message of the Aramaic Jesus)

“This book is a gift to all those wanting to enter into the spirit of the historical Jesus and the mystic Christ. By honoring the people of Jesus’s land and their poetic language, it brings a needed balance to the historical Jesus movement.” —Matthew Fox, author of Original Blessing

The Hidden Gospel is in plain sight. We find it in Jesus’s familiar sayings translated from Aramaic, the Middle Eastern language he actually spoke. Neil Douglas-Klotz’s lucid commentary guides us in applying Jesus’s ancient wisdom to our lives today.

The Hidden Gospel explores the sometimes simple yet radical differences that reveal the spirituality behind the sayings of Jesus from an Aramaic viewpoint. The differences stem from the nature of Middle Eastern languages themselves as well as the worldview behind them—that is, the ways in which they divide and make sense of reality. Each chapter includes meditative exercises and body prayers so that we may directly experience the life-changing spiritual practice of Jesus’s original mystical tradition. The book also invites you to participate in the wisdom revealed by this approach as a direct, personal experience so you can experience the historical Aramaic Jesus for yourself.

Now we may be able to learn what Jesus really meant to teach. What emerges is a hopeful, nurturing, and very contemporary spiritual message.

This new edition, based on over twenty-five years of continued scholarship, includes updates throughout. A new foreword, preface, and appendix. It also includes a self-study interpretive glossary so you can create your own translations and interpretations.

“This gem of a book reminds us that Jesus’s message is about our personal relationship with the divine and with one another. It carries a message of connection, compassion, and wholeness—one that we can all greatly benefit from today.” —from the foreword by Suzanne Giesemann, author of The Awakened Way