How Do You Piece Together the Lord’s Prayer?

How Do You Piece Together the Lord’s Prayer?
Matthew 6:5-13; Luke 11:1-6

As a good Christian, you know the Lord’s Prayer, yes?

“Our father, which art in heaven…”

You learned it from the Bible, yes? After all, that’s where the Lord’s Prayer comes from, yes?

Well, yes indeed, the Lord’s Prayer does come from the good ol’ Bible. We will show you where it is found in a bit.

But we suspect you probably learned this prayer not from the Bible per se, but from some other printed material such as Sunday School handouts, vacation Bible School slides, or in your church’s Book of Prayer, hymnal, Sunday bulletin, projected slide, or other such “official” reference document. And also from your mother or a Sunday School teacher.

Here are a few examples of this sort of not-from-the-actual-Bible thing. First, here is the “official” Lord’s Prayer as the 1737 Church of England expected its congregants to say it:

Next, from the 1905 collaboration between the two major Methodist denominations in the United States at the time:

From the Episcopal Church in the United States, in 1977, the congregant has two quasi-official choices. One is traditional, one is more hip:

As a child, you might have learned the Lord’s Prayer by a Bible School or Sunday School handout such as this:

You’d think that pulling the Lord’s Prayer out of the Bible would be easy. If Jesus did nothing else, and the gospel writers did nothing else, you’d think they would have given us a clean rendition of our Lord Jesus’s best, turn-to, every-day, all-purpose, learn-it-at-age-four and say-it-every-night-at-bedtime prayer.

But no.

It turns out that pulling this standard prayer in complete, standardized, denomination-approved form out of the Bible isn’t so easy.

It turns out that if we want to prepare and use a formal version of the Lord’s Prayer for denominational, corporate church, or personal use with some standardized wording and form, we cannot simply pluck THE passage straight from the Bible. We must first do some examination, review, compilation, piecing together, and head-scratching. This is because:

• of the usual translation choices of words, phrasing, punctuation, formatting, etc., but also, and especially:
• the two occurrences in the New Testament, coming from the mouth of Jesus (in Matthew and Luke) present substantially different versions, and
• the various Greek source manuscripts do not agree on lines and phrases included and left out.

Let us illustrate the differences in the Matthew and Luke presentations of Jesus’ how-to prayer instructions he gave to the disciples. Here are Matthew and Luke side-by-side, from the modern New International Version translation:

Note that Luke’s version is a bit briefer than that of Matthew. It leaves out some stuff. So if we are formulating an “official” Lord’s Prayer to use in our home or church or camp meeting, which bits to we use and how do we put it together?

That was from the New International Version translation. The NIV is popular, and the “house” translation used by many local churches. But now let’s see the same passages from the all-time most popular translation, the King James Version:

Not only does the Matthew version differ from the Luke version, the KJV Matthew version differs from the NIV Matthew version, and the KJV Luke version differs from the NIV Luke version. And these differences involve more than modernization of words and phrases, but the inclusion of small chunks of material in the KJV not in the NIV.

Next let’s focus on the Matthew version, and see samples of how three English translations handle the text:

Looking at these three samples, we see KJV translators include an extra line at the end, the ESV translators not include this line, and the NASB guys hedge their bets by including the line but placing it in brackets. This group of three reflects recent (19th and 20th century) scholarship which views the final line as being an addition by early church scribes and church officials, making its way into the Greek text in some manuscripts, and not others. In the 15th and 16th and early 17th century when the King James and other early English translations were created (or received, depending on how you understand this), the manuscript evidence and research did not support leaving this line out. In our times, this line is so established in the traditional practice of our church and prayers that the NASB translators left it in, while pointing out that they believe it doesn’t belong there in a Bible based on the earliest, most original and authentic Greek sources.

Sticking with Matthew, let’s see the 1599 Geneva Bible (which is similar to the 1611 KJV) and now KJV successor translations, the Revised Standard Version (1971) and New Revised Standard Version (1989):

By the 1940’s, when the RSV was first published, many Bible scholars, and those preparing the Revised (revision of the King James) Standard Version, had determined to their satisfaction that the trailing line of “for thine is the kingdom…” was not part of the original (or best) Greek texts. And so the RSV leaves it out. This was made possible because 20th (and 19th) century scholars had a larger number of physical manuscripts of portions of the New Testament than was available to scholars in 1300s thru the early 1600s when the first several English language Bibles were produced.

By the time 1989 rolled around, the translation team of the New Revised Standard Version found another substantive change, changing a generalized “evil” to the particular “evil one.” And they modernized the phrasing in verse 13.

13 And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. (NRSV)

All English translations of the New Testament come from the Greek manuscript evidence (with supporting helps and clues from early Latin and Aramaic translations, and the writings of early Christian “fathers”), so let’s look at some Greek publication versions of Matthew 6:9-13. See our sampling of five Greek offerings here, and do not be intimidated if you cannot read Greek, as it is readily apparent that the two samples on the left differ from each other, and also from the three samples on the right:

Like the English translations, Greek text publications reflect scholarly decisions regarding the growing (over the 18th and 19th centuries) collection of physical manuscript copies of pen and ink Greek documents and artifacts.

The three columns of Greek on the right side of the samples above show publications of what has for over 400 years been referred to as the textus receptus, or “received text.” The is the Greek language text said to be received from God, and therefore said to be the best original language text, and therefore THE God-given text best used for any movement from Greek to an English translation of the New Testament. The TR of the time was the foundation of the several early (1300s to 1611+) English language productions of the New Testament. The TR remains the preferred choice and go-to Greek language text for certain modern and current translators and publishers of English New Testaments, and it is well-defended by those scholars who favor it as the primary reference.

(This TR-first view is by extended by some, not all, into an area of Christian opinion referred to as “King James only,” where English translations other than the KJV are rejected for Christian worship and study. We at Bible Bits are not going to jump into that heated area, other than to say that we love the TR, love the KJV and also love any English translation produced by scholarly translators who take the God of Jews and Christians seriously, take the word of God seriously, and do their human best to produce a human-considered translation from which we can worship, learn, and use with piety. 🙂 )

In the mean time, the two columns of Greek on the left side of our display above are based on different scholarly decisions and a larger set of physical manuscript evidence. The first column shows what is commonly called the Nestle-Aland (NA), which is now up to version 28. The second shows the UBS (from the United Bible Societies, now published at version five. The NA is more properly named the Novum Testamentum Graece while the UBS is more properly named the Greek New Testament. Both publications are the handled by the Deutsche Bibel Gesellschaft, otherwise known as the German Bible Institute, which is also the publisher of the quasi-official and scholarly-standard Hebrew text of the Old Testament (called the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS)).

The two publications NA-28 and UBS-5 (with some exceptions, which we are seeing quite noticeably here) present an identical stream of the Greek text. They differ by the amount and type of scholarly helps and manuscript evidence notations packaged alongside the flow of Greek, and formatting and punctuation choices for that flow of Greek text. The two publications are assembled and updated every few years by separate teams of scholars.

The German Bible Institute website provides a nice overview illustration showing the differences between the printed and bound physical volumes of the NA and UBS. Here is our (kinda fuzzy) capture of that illustration:

We have neglected Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer, so let’s see our five Greek versions of Luke 11:1-4:

In the case of our Luke passage, the presentation of the text stream by current NA and UBS publications is (as expected) identical. But once again, the more recent scholarly decisions regarding manuscript evidence reveal themselves in differences (above) between NA/UBS Greek and the older and revered textus receptus Greek.

This comes out in the English as we sample a few translations here:

When a person or committee sits down to create an English translation of New Testament Greek, they typically choose either NA/UBS or the TR as their primary, default Greek text. And typically again, they make case-by-case decisions on deviations from their primary source and over to other Greek references and to the underlying manuscript evidence.

There is a thicket of manuscript activity of interest in our Lord’s Prayer passages. We can speculate that our Lord’s Prayer was very well-known in the early church, widely memorized, and widely standardized for corporate worship and prayer in the house churches and community churches of the day. Therefore — again speculating — the Greek and Aramaic written and spoken words of the original Lord’s Prayer version(s) (spoken by Jesus himself probably on several occasions) made their way out of the original, very first written manuscripts, then into standardized forms used again and again by persons and congregations, and then THESE made their way back into written forms as the New Testament was copied again and again.

We will illustrate this thicket of manuscript activity by showing that of Luke 11:4, a single verse. We show a screen shot from the wonderful New Testament Greek website at laparola.net, and verse four’s several manuscript variations. If you squint your eyes and look closely, you’ll see the New Testament Greek team show their choice of standard Greek text, and then show below several deviations in the Greek. For each of these deviations, they show the list of manuscripts (by letter and number naming conventions) which carry this deviation.

And with this, we at Bible Bits have pretty much exhausted our ability to competently explain the basics of New Testament translation from the NA, UBS, TR, and the underlying manuscript evidence.

And so, back to our Lord’s Prayer standardization topic.

The take-away we hope you’ll see is that Luke 11:4 has many variations in the Greek manuscript evidence. The same is true for all our Matthew’s and Luke’s Lord’s Prayer verses. And so these manuscript variations show up in the scholarly publications of standard Greek texts, and then into the English translations. Combined with Matthew and Luke not in word-for-word agreement to begin with, this makes it tricky to produce today a standard wording and form of our most important Lord’s Prayer.

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God’s blessings go to the various sources of real scholarship we used in pulling together this Bible Bit.

Our opening image of Christ praying to God and to his disciples is Jesus Praying on the Mount of Olives, by Duccio di Buoninsegna, Museo dell’Opera Metropolitana del Duomo, Siena, 1308.

The three textus receptus versions shown above are in the public domain.

The website textusreceptusbibles.com defends the TR and provides this list of English Bible translations based on the TR: 1526,1534 Tyndale New Testament; 1535 Coverdale Bible; 1537 Matthew Bible; 1539 Great Bible; 1560-1644 Geneva Bible; 1568 Bishops’ Bible; 1611,1769 King James Bible; 1764 Quaker Bible; 1833 Webster Bible; 1862 Young’s Literal Translation; 1876 Julia E. Smith Parker Translation; 1975 New King James Bible; 1985-1993 Jay P. Green’s Literal Translation; 2014 Modern English Version; 2016 The October Testament (New Testament); 2016 King James 2016 (New Testament).

Nestle-Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th Revised Edition, edited by Barbara and Kurt Aland, Johannes Karavidopoulos, Carlo M. Martini, and Bruce M. Metzger in cooperation with the Institute for New Testament Textual Research, Münster/Westphalia, © 2012 Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.

The Greek New Testament, Fourth Revised Edition, edited by Barbara Aland, Kurt Aland, Johannes Karavidopoulos, Carlo M. Martini, and Bruce M. Metzger in cooperation with the Institute for New Testament Textual Research, Münster/Westphalia, © 1993 Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.

New American Standard Bible (NASB) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation.

New International Version (NIV) Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission.

English Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.;

New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America.

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God’s blessings to you! We pray that you read the actual Bible for yourself, and ponder and pray about the variations you find in English translations and their Greek and Hebrew origins.

If you choose to weigh-in on this Bible Bit, please quote from scripture, refer to good commentary and scholarship, and in this case, stay away from TR vs NA/UBS battles and the King James Only topic. 🙂 Stick to our topic of the Lord’s Prayer and the tricky process of pulling together a standard version for corporate use. 🙂

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With apologies to Jesus, Matthew, and Luke, here is our Bible Bits version of the Lord’s Prayer:

Father in Heaven, holy and awesome are YOU and YOUR NAME.  Father let YOUR kingdom come.  Father let YOUR will be done, right here in this place, right here in [specifics: my house, street, neighborhood, city], right here on earth, just as your kingdom is now in heaven.
Thank Lord God, in the name of Jesus the Christ, for my DAILY supply of manna: food, shelter, health, and property. For some reason you give this to me.  I do not deserve it. But thank you. Please let me have another DAILY supply tomorrow.
Forgive me Lord God.  I am a sinner.  I sin.  I follow you and also fail to follow you.
Lord I have been hurt by others.  I forgive them.  I at least contemplate forgiving them.
Dear Lord keep me from the temptations which lead to sin and from those things which lead me away from you, and from those things which lead me to do the things I know not to do.  Lord let me resist temptation and sin.
Father forgive me.  I do not deserve it yet you do it.  Thank you.
God, father God, in the name of Lord Jesus:  ALL THIS [looking around], all the universe, all everything, is YOUR kingdom and YOUR power and YOUR glory. Eternally.
Let it be. Amen.