Lord's Prayer

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Representation of the Sermon on the Mount

For other uses, see Lord's Prayer (disambiguation).

The Lord's Prayer,^[1] known also as the Our Father or Pater noster, is probably the best-known prayer in Christianity. Two versions of it occur in the New Testament, one in the Gospel of Matthew as part of the discourse on ostentation, a section of the Sermon on the Mount, and the other in the Gospel of Luke. The prayer's absence from the Gospel of Mark (cf. the Prayer for forgiveness of 11:25-26), taken together with its presence in both Luke and Matthew, has caused many scholars who accept the Q hypothesis (as opposed to Proto-Matthean theory) to conclude that it is a quotation from the Q document, especially because of the context in Luke's presentation of the prayer, where many phrases show similarity to the Q-like Gospel of Thomas.

The context of the prayer in Matthew is as part of a discourse attacking people who pray simply for the purpose of being seen to pray. Matthew describes Jesus as instructing people to pray after the manner of this prayer. Taking into account the prayer's structure, flow of subject matter and emphases, many interpret the Lord's Prayer as a guideline on how to pray rather than something to be learned and repeated by rote. Some disagree, suggesting that the prayer was intended as a specific prayer to be used. The New Testament reports Jesus and the disciples praying on several occasions; but as it never describes them actually using this prayer, it is uncertain how important it was originally viewed as being.

1 Versions
2 Analysis
3 Use as a language comparison tool
4 Latin version
5 Relation to Jewish prayer
6 References
7 See also
8 References
9 External links

[edit] Versions

There are several different translations of the Lord's prayer. One of the first texts in English is the Northumbrian translation from around 650. The three best-known in English speaking groups are

The translation in the 1662 Anglican Book of Common Prayer (BCP)
The translation of the English Language Liturgical Consultation (ELLC), an ecumenical body
The Latin Version used in the Roman Catholic Church

In the texts of these three versions, given below, the square brackets indicate the doxology with which the prayer is often concluded, but which is not included in critical editions of the New Testament, such as that of the United Bible Societies, as not belonging to the original text of Matthew 6:9-13:

1662 BCP

Our Father, which art in heaven,

Hallowed be thy Name.

Thy kingdom come.

Thy will be done,

in earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses,

As we forgive them that trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation;

But deliver us from evil:

[For thine is the kingdom, The power, and the glory,

For ever and ever.] Amen.

ELLC

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come,

your will be done,

on earth as in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

Forgive us our sins

as we forgive those who sin against us.

Save us from the time of trial

and deliver us from evil.

[For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours

now and for ever.] Amen.

Latin form

Pater noster, qui es in caelis:

sanctificetur Nomen Tuum;

adveniat Regnum Tuum;

fiat voluntas Tua, sicut in caelo, et in terra.

Panem nostrum cotidianum da nobis hodie;

et dimitte nobis debita nostra,

Sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris;

et ne nos inducas in tentationem;

sed libera nos a Malo.

Greek original

Πάτερ ἡμῶν ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς·

ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου·

ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σου·

γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου, ὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς·

τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον·

καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰ ὀφειλήματα ἡμῶν,

ὡς καὶ ἡμεῖς ἀφίεμεν τοῖς ὀφειλέταις ἡμῶν·

καὶ μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν,

ἀλλὰ ῥῦσαι ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ.

[Ὅτι σοῦ ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία καὶ ἡ δύναμις καὶ ἡ δόξα εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας. ἀμήν]

Variants of the 1662 BCP version (first column) are also in use. In the 1928 edition of the Church of England Prayer Book, "which" was changed to "who", "in earth" to "on earth", and "them that" to "those who" and this version is widely known. The Eastern Orthodox Churches also use a modified version of this form of the Our Father in their English services. Some non-Christian groups, such as religious science sometimes use the prayer also, often with slightly modified wording, such as replacing the word “evil” with “error.”

Though Matthew 6:12 uses the term debts, the 1662 version of the Lord's Prayer uses the term trespasses, while ecumenical versions often use the term sins. The latter choice may be due to Luke 11:4, which uses the word sins, while the former may be due to Matthew 6:12 (immediately after the text of the prayer), where Jesus speaks of trespasses. As early as the third century, Origen used the word trespasses (παραπτώματα) in the prayer. Though the Latin form that was traditionally used in Western Europe has debita (debts), most English-speaking Christians (except Presbyterians and others of the Reformed tradition), use trespasses. The Established Presbyterian Church of Scotland follows the version found in Matthew 6 in the Authorized Version (known also as the King James Version), which in the prayer uses the words "debts" and "debtors".

Roman Catholics usually do not add the doxology "For Thine is the kingdom, power, and glory, forever and ever". However, this doxology is used in the Catholic Mass, separated from the Lord's Prayer by a prayer, spoken or sung by the priest, that elaborates on the final petition, "Deliver us from evil." In the 1975 ICEL translation, this prayer reads: "Deliver us, Lord, from every evil, and grant us peace in our day. In your mercy keep us free from sin and protect us from all anxiety as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ."

All these versions are based on the text in Matthew, rather than Luke, of the prayer given by Jesus:

Matthew 6:9-13 (KJV)

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

Luke 11:2-4 (KJV)

And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. Give us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.

[edit] Analysis

The opening pronoun of Matthew's version of the prayer - our - is plural, which is viewed by many as a strong indication that the prayer was intended for communal, rather than private, worship. Together, the first two words - Our Father - are a title used elsewhere in the New Testament, and other Jewish literature, to refer to God, and this is most likely the intent of the prayer.

Having opened, the prayer begins in the same manner as the Kaddish, hallowing the name of God, and then going on to express hope that God's will and kingdom will happen. In Judaism the name of God is of extreme importance, and honouring the name central to piety, since in that era names were not simply labels, but were seen as true reflections of objects' nature. Hence when the prayer seeks to hallow God's name, it was seen as equivalent to actually hallowing God. Hallowed is the passive voice and future tense, which to some makes it unclear how this hallowing is meant to occur; one interpretation is that this is a call for all believers to honour God's name, while for those who see the prayer as primarily eschatological, the prayer is an expression of desire for end times when God's name would, in the eyes of those carrying out the prayer, be universally honoured.

The request for God's kingdom to come is usually interpreted as a reference to the belief, common at the time, that a Messiah figure would bring about a Kingdom of God. Hence some scholars have argued that this prayer is pre-Christian and wasn't designed for specifically Christian interpretation, whereas many evangelicals see it as quite the opposite - a command to spread Christianity. The prayer follows with an expression of hope for God's will to be done. This expressing of hope can be interpreted in different ways; some see it as an addendum to assert a request for Earth to be under direct and manifest divine command; others see it as a call on people to submit to God and what they see as his teachings. In the Gospels, these requests have the added clarification in earth, as it is in heaven, an ambiguous phrase in Greek which can either be a simile (i.e. make earth like heaven), or a couple (i.e. both in heaven and earth), though simile is the most common interpretation.

The more personal ones that break from the preceding similarity to the Kaddish. The first concerns daily bread. What this means is slightly obscure, since the word that is normally translated as daily—ἐπιούσιος epiousios—is almost a hapax legomenon, occurring only in Luke and Matthew's versions of the Lord's prayer, and in an Egyptian accounting book, with no other surviving written citations. Though, daily bread appears to be a reference to the way in which God provided manna to the Isrealites each day while they were in the wilderness, as in Exodus 16:15-21, where they could not keep any manna overnight and had to depend on God to provide anew each morning. Etymologically epiousios seems to be related to the Greek word ousia, meaning substance, and so early heterodox writers connected this to Eucharistic transubstantiation. Modern scholars tend to reject this connection, since they presume that Eucharistic practise and the doctrine of transubstantiation both developed later than Matthew was written, and Protestants concur due to their rejection of belief in transubstantiation. Epiousios can also be understood as existence, i.e. bread that was fundamental to survival, since in the era, bread was the most important food for survival, though scholars of linguistics consider this rendering unlikely, as it would violate standard rules of word formation and Koine Greek had several far more common terms for the same idea. The usage epiousios has in the Egyptian papyrus is in the sense of for tomorrow, which is more clearly stated in the wording used by the Gospel of the Nazoraeans for the prayer, and hence the common translation was, and remains, daily, a translation conveniently close in meaning to the other two possibilities as well. Those Christians who read the Lord's prayer as eschatalogical view epiousios as referring to the second coming - reading for tomorrow (and bread) in a metaphorical sense, though most scholars disagree, particularly as Jesus is portrayed throughout Luke and Matthew as caring for everyday needs to his followers, particularly in the bread-related miracles that are recounted.

After the request for bread, Matthew and Luke diverge slightly. Matthew continues with a request for debts to be forgiven in the same manner as people forgive those who have debts against them. Luke, on the other hand, makes a similar request about sins being forgiven in the manner of debts being forgiven between people. According to literal translation of the Greek, the debts being mentioned are financial debts, but in Aramaic, the word for debt can also mean sin, and hence the difference between Luke and Matthew's wording could be explained by the prayer that they were writing about originally being Aramaic. It is generally accepted, in consequence, that the request is talking about the forgiveness of sin, rather than merely loans, and this is the traditional interpretation, although some groups read it literally as a condemnation of all forms of lending. Asking for forgiveness from God was a staple of Jewish prayers, and it was also considered proper for individuals to be forgiving of others, thus requiring the sentiment expressed in the prayer would have been a common one of the time.

The penultimate petition of the prayer - not to be lead by God into peirasmos - is quite divisive. Peirasmos can mean temptation, or just test of character, but the traditional reading is to see it as temptation. Since this would seem to imply that it is God that leads people to sin, individuals that are uncomfortable with the implication have a tendency to prefer to read it as test of character. There are generally two arguments for this reading, the first of which is that it may be an eschatological appeal against unfavourable last judgement, though nowhere in literature of the time, not even in the New Testament, is the term peirasmos connected to such an event. The other argument is that it acts as a plea against hard tests that the Bible elsewhere describes the devout as being put through, for example Job, though this would depart heavily from Jewish practice of the time when pleas were typically made, during prayer, to be put through such tests.

Translations and scholars are divided over whether the evil mentioned in the final petition refers to evil in general or the devil in particular, especially since the original Greek is quite vague. In earlier parts of the Sermon on the Mount, in which Matthew's version of the prayer appears, the term is used to refer to general evil, while later parts of Matthew refer to the devil when discussing similar issues, although the devil is never referred as the evil in any Aramaic sources. While John Calvin accepted the vagueness of the term's meaning, he considered there to be little real difference between the two interpretations, and so did not feel it was important.

The doxology of the prayer is not contained in Luke's version of it, nor is it present in the earliest manuscripts of Matthew. The first known use of the doxology (in a less lengthy form) as a conclusion for the Lord's Prayer is in the Didache, and there are at least ten different forms amongst the early manuscripts before it seems to have standardised. A popular theory is that the doxology was originally appended to the prayer during congregational worship, possibly based on 1 Chronicles 29:11, as it is was standard for Jewish prayers to have doxological endings. Consequently most scholars, and many modern translations, do not include the doxology, though it remains in use liturgically in Eastern Christianity and, generally, among Protestants. A minority, generally fundamentalists, posit that the doxology was so important that early editions neglected it due to its obviousness, though several other quite obvious things are mentioned in the Gospels.

[edit] Use as a language comparison tool

Since the publication of the Mithridates books, translations of the prayer have often been used for a quick comparison of languages, primarily because most earlier philologists were Christians, and very often priests. Due to missionary activity, one of the first texts to be translated between many languages has historically been the Bible, and so to early scholars the most readily available text in any particular language would most likely be a partial or total translation of the Bible. For example, the only extant text in Gothic, a language crucial in the history of Indo-European languages, is Codex Argenteus, the incomplete Bible translated by Wulfila.

This tradition has been opposed recently from both the angle of religious neutrality and of practicality: the forms used in the Lord's prayer (many commands) are not very representative of common discourse. Philologists and language enthusiasts have proposed other texts such as the Babel text (also part of the Bible) or the story of the North Wind and the Sun. In Soviet language sciences the complete works of Lenin were often used for comparison, as they were translated to most languages in the 20th century.

[edit] Latin version

The Latin version of this prayer has had cultural and historical importance for most regions where English is spoken. The text used in the liturgy (Mass, Liturgy of the Hours, etc.) differs slightly from that found in the Vulgate and probably pre-dates it.

The doxology associated with the Lord's Prayer is found in four Vetus Latina manuscripts, only two of which give it in its entirety. The other surviving manuscripts of the Vetus Latina Gospels do not have the doxology. The Vulgate translation also does not include it, thus agreeing with critical editions of the Greek text.

In the Latin Rite liturgies, this doxology is never attached to the Lord's Prayer. Its only use in the Roman Rite liturgy is in the Mass as revised after the Second Vatican Council. It is there placed not immediately after the Lord's Prayer, but instead after the priest's prayer, Libera nos, quaesumus ..., elaborating on the final petition, Libera nos a malo (Deliver us from evil).

[edit] Relation to Jewish prayer

Though the Lord's Prayer has some similarity with the Jewish Kaddish, it deviates from it in the later sections.

[edit] References

^ From Greek Ἡ Κυριακὴ Προσευχή (polytonic), Η Κυριακή Προσευχή (monotonic), transliterated as "Hē Kyriakē Proseuchē" or "I Kiriakí Prosevhí", and Latin Oratio Dominica

[edit] See also

The Lord's Prayer in different languages
Amen
Lord's Prayer in Eucharistic theology
Epiousios, for the meaning of the phrase usually rendered as "our daily bread"
Bus Driver's Prayer
Pierres de Lecq
Discourse on ostentation, a portion of the Sermon on the Mount
Prayer in the New Testament

[edit] References

Albright, W.F. and C.S. Mann. "Matthew." The Anchor Bible Series. New York: Doubleday & Company, 1971.
Augsburger, Myron. Matthew. Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1982.
Barclay, William. The Gospel of Matthew: Volume 1 Chapters 1-10. Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press, 1975.
Beare, Francis Wright. The Gospel According to Matthew. Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1981.
Filson, Floyd V. A Commentary on the Gospel According to St. Matthew. London: A. & C. Black, 1960.
Fowler, Harold. The Gospel of Matthew: Volume One. Joplin: College Press, 1968
France, R.T. The Gospel According to Matthew: an Introduction and Commentary. Leicester: Inter-Varsity, 1985.
Hendriksen, William. The Gospel of Matthew. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1976
Hill, David. The Gospel of Matthew. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981
"Lilies in the Field." A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature. David Lyle Jeffrey, general editor. Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 1992.
Lewis, Jack P. The Gospel According to Matthew. Austin, Texas: R.B. Sweet, 1976..
Luz, Ulrich. Matthew 1-7: A Commentary. trans. Wilhlem C. Linss. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1989.
Morris, Leon. The Gospel According to Matthew. Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 1992.
Schweizer, Eduard. The Good News According to Matthew. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1975