The Lord's Prayer and its developing ending
Matthew and Luke preserve different forms of the Lord's Prayer, with Matthew's version longer than Luke's. Its later use in Christian worship added closing words, while its petitions retained deep connections with Jewish prayer. The longer form stands within Matthew's teaching on piety; Luke presents the prayer after the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray.
The prayer appears twice in the New Testament. A longer version, Matt 6:9-13, is located at the heart of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5:1-7:29), in the context of Jesus' instruction about piety appropriate for his followers (Matt 6:1-21). Many scholars believe Luke's shorter version was earlier, expanded by Matthew. Others consider Matthew's wording earlier, compressed by Luke. Another possibility is that the two versions represent different traditions handed down apart from each other.
Outside the New Testament the Lord's Prayer's earliest attestation is in the Didache (8.2), a late first-century manual of Christian instruction. It prescribes the prayer's recitation three times a day, in a form nearly identical to that in Matthew but with a closing ascription: "for yours is the power and the glory forever." Christian worship also uses fuller endings with the kingdom and references to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Some traditional Catholic liturgies omit the appended doxology, while most Protestants recite it. Roman Catholics traditionally call the prayer the Pater Noster, meaning Our Father in Latin.
Both versions of the Lord's Prayer contain two discernible parts. The first half (Matt 6:9-10/Luke 11:2) asks that God's holiness be maintained and God's sovereignty be extended. The address to God as "Father" and reference to God's "kingdom" correspond to Old Testament phraseology (for example, Deut 32:6, Ps 145:13, Isa 64:8). In the Bible one's name is no mere label but the repository of one's peculiar essence (Gen 2:19, Gen 32:28).
Jesus was remembered as having customarily addressed God as father (Matt 5:48, Mark 14:36, Luke 6:36, John 6:32). "The kingdom" was Jesus' preferred image for God's dynamic reign throughout eternity, already yet secretly erupting in human history (Matt 13:18-23, Mark 4:21-32 Luke 17:20-21). Matt 6:10 amplifies the prayer's previous petitions by asking that God's will, unrestricted in heaven, rectify all things on earth (compare with the Kaddish, an ancient Jewish hymn of praise). In the first century B.C.E., Horace's Letter to Augustus addresses the emperor as "god present." Although Jesus orchestrated no assault against the Roman Empire (Matt 22:21, Mark 12:17, Luke 20:25), his prayer insists that his disciples' final allegiance is to God, not Caesar.
Like the Amidah, the ancient and still-central prayer of the Jewish liturgy, the Lord's Prayer begins with God's exaltation and then turns to the community's needs. The petition for bread (Matt 6:11/Luke 11:3) could be a simple plea for sustenance (compare with Exod 16:4, Ps 132:15), an allusion to an end-time banquet (compare with Luke 14:15), or a conflation of both (2 Bar. 29:8). In both Matthew and Luke this bread is modified by an adjective unattested elsewhere in Greek literature; one could translate it as bread "for today," "for the following day," "for the future," or "necessary for existence."
This section's second petition (Matt 6:12/Luke 11:4) is for forgiveness of "debts" (Matthew) or "sins" (Luke). In ancient Aramaic, probably Jesus' native tongue, the term for financial liabilities serves as a metaphor for sins. The translation "trespasses," familiar in Anglican liturgy, originated with William Tyndale in 1526. The petition connects receiving forgiveness with extending it: those who can forgive will be forgiven, while someone unable to offer forgiveness cannot receive it.
The final petition (Matt 6:13/Luke 11:4) is a vote of no confidence in one's own strength to resist severe temptation, reminiscent of Paul's encouragement in 1Cor 10:13 and anticipating talmudic pleas that the Lord not bring the faithful "into the power of sin, the power of guilt, the power of temptation, and the power of anything shameful" (b. Berakhot 60b).
The Bible does not speak with one voice on whether God puts mortals to the test: such is the case with Abraham (Gen 22:1-14), the Israelites (Exod 15:25), and Job (Job 1:6-2:6), yet the Letter of James asserts, "God … himself tempts no one" (Jas 1:13). In the Gospels, Jesus urges his disciples to pray that they may not enter trials (Matt 26:36-46, Mark 14:32-42, Luke 22:39-46), even though he himself is subject to diabolical testing (Matt 4:1-11, Mark 1:13, Luke 4:1-13). The noun in the last clause of Matt 6:13 may be translated as either neuter ("evil") or masculine ("the evil one," Satan: compare with John 17:15). The second translation matches "the time of trial" in the preceding clause and fits the apocalyptic tenor of Jesus' teaching in general (Matt 10:34-36, Luke 12:49-53, Mark 13:5-13).
- Bible Odyssey, The Lord's Prayer — www.bibleodyssey.org