Book Review: "The Lord's Prayer" by Spiros Zodhiates

I had heard of and read some about Spiros Zodhiates. I decided to buy one of his books as a sort of “introduction” to his writing. I had been trying to buy several books about the Gospels and thought this book would make a nice addition.

I was wrong.

The book is helpful in some ways, but much more a disappointment. If you are looking for a few quotes and some interesting illustrations, this book will be helpful. If you are looking for scholarly work, in my opinion, this book is not what you are after.

Of course, there is much false teaching, especially in the section dealing with the phrase “Thy Kingdom Come.” There is also much to be said about “original sin.” Sifting through these false teachings takes quite a lot of patience.

The book is basically a collection of articles (about the length of a blog or bulletin article) dealing with different aspects of each phrase from the Lord’s Prayer. There is some help with the original Greek language, but not anything that one could not find in a basic grammar or lexicon.

Overall, I was disappointed. All that being said, however, if you are wanting to preach a series on prayer and need some quotes and/or illustrations, you might find some of the material in this volume helpful. But one word of caution: don’t pay full price. The book simply isn’t worth $18. You can find it, as I did, on Christian Book Distributors for less than $10. Click here for more information.

If you are a new Christian, though, you will probably want to leave this book alone. Dr. Zodhiates is quite a good writer, and some of the false teaching might be difficult to uncover if one is not prepared.

I hope to read another book of Dr. Zodhiates’ one day soon, and, hopefully, this volume was just not his best, or one that I didn’t find too interesting.