Lord's Prayer

The Lord's Prayer (Latin Oratio Dominica), sometimes also known amongst English speakers as the Paternoster or the Our Father, is probably the best-known prayer in Christianity. The prayer's use in Christianity is derived from two versions of it that 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, and its presence in both Luke and Matthew, has caused most scholars to suspect that it is another of the quotations from the Q document, especially due to the surrounding quotations and context in Luke's presentation of the prayer, which have much 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, which some scholars interpret as an instruction that the Lord's prayer is merely a general guideline of how to be humble, sincere, and respectful, though the opinion of the majority of scholars is 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 never describes them actually using this prayer, so it is uncertain how important it was originally viewed.

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 most well known in English speaking groups are

The 1662 translation, which became part of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer
The International Consultation on English Texts translation, an ecumenical translation
The Latin version, used by the Roman Catholic church and traditionally known as the paternoster

In the following quotation of these three versions, the square brackets indicate the doxology:

1662 Book of Common Prayer

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.]

International Consultation on English Texts

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 forever. Amen.]

Standard Latin form

Pater noster, qui es in coelis,

Sanctificetur nomen tuum.

Adveniat regnum tuum.

Fiat voluntas tua,

Sicut in coelo et in terra.

Panem nostrum quotidianum 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.

Amen.

Though uses the term debts, the 1662 version uses the term trespasses, while ecumenical versions often use the term sin. This deviation may be due to Jesus' subsequent brief explanation of parts of the prayer, where he instead uses trespasses, and even in the third century, Origen used the word trespasses (paraptômata) in the prayer. However, the Established Presbyterian Church of Scotland uses "debts" and "debtors" in the prayer, and despite the fact that the Latin form that was traditionally used in Roman Catholicism has debita (debts), most Protestant Evangelical churches consider the use of trespasses to have Catholic associations, instead preferring to use debts and debtors.

These versions also share a great deal of commonality with the two versions given in the Bible by Jesus himself:

(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.

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 object's 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— 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 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, and neither is it present in the earliest manuscripts of Matthew. The first known use of the doxology, as part of 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 generally remains in use liturgically. 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.

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.

Origin

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

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 Fortess, 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

External links

The Lord's Prayer
Catholic Encyclopedia Reference to the Lord's Prayer
The Lord's Prayer in Hebrew (with audio)
The Lord's Prayer in 1,334 languages
The Lord's Prayer in Aramaic including sound clip
Writings by the Church Fathers on the Lord's Prayer
Jewish Encyclopedia: The Lord's Prayer
Max Heindel: The Lord's Prayer (a unique esoteric Christian view)
What Does the Lord’s Prayer Mean to You? (Jehovah's Witnesses view)
The Kabbalistic Cross (Final doxology as part of the Golden Dawn ritual)
The Cathar Version of the Pater including a discussion of the word usually rendered in English as "daily" by modern mainstream Churches.

Christian prayer | Doctrines and teachings of Jesus | New Testament | Rosary | Jewish Christian topics