On Matthew 6:11 through 6:13

Welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ, your modern passage into the life and ministry of the historical Jesus.  If this is your first time here, start over from the beginning by following this hyperlink.

We will waste little time on exposition today.  Suffice it to say that we are in the midst of the Lord's Prayer, a specifically worded prayer that Jesus teaches his followers during his famed Sermon on the Mount.  Today, we will read the last three verses of that prayer, take note of a particular Greek phrasing behind these verses, define and discuss the "doxology" of the Lord's Prayer, and draw some simple conclusions about the prayer as a whole.  Let's get started, as per usual, by looking at the text and then looking at some Greek words.

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Matthew 6:11 through 6:13

11 Give us today our daily bread; 

12 and forgive us our debts,
as we forgive our debtors; 

13 and do not subject us to the final test,
but deliver us from the evil one.

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Some Greek Words

Today we have quite a doozy of a translation issue on our hands with the phrase "daily bread."  Since the Greek origin of "daily bread" is uncharacteristically difficult to understand, we will forgo any study of the other Greek words that underpin today's reading and focus entirely on this particular phrase.  Take my word that the rest of the Greek here is relatively unambiguous.

"What's ambiguous about 'daily bread'?" you'll immediately ask.  And I appreciate the inquisitive attitude.

The ambiguity here lies in the word "daily."  In the oldest Greek manuscripts of the Gospel of Matthew, the scribes recorded the term "epiousios" here in Matt 6:11 as the adjective for "bread."  Throughout history, "epiousios" has most often been interpreted as meaning "daily," but that interpretation is not as straight-forward as one might think.  Because of the possibility of alternative translation, the term "epiousios" warrants our special attention today.

As it turns out, "epiousios" is completely unique to the Gospel; it is not extant in any other ancient Greek text.  While it has traditionally been translated as "daily," translators have struggled with this interpretation since very early Christianity.  The struggle becomes apparent when we realize that, in the New Testament, every other time that the word "daily" is used, it has been translated from a more common Greek word: "hemeran." Hemeran comes from the Greek "hēmérā," meaning "day" or "time," and is very precisely translated to English as "daily."  Bible scholars are right, then, to pay keen attention to the fact that in both Matthew and Luke's versions of the Lord's Prayer, the evangelists used this unique "epiousios" word, rather than the word "hemeran."

As I suggested, there is debate among linguists to this day as to what "epiousios" really means, and how the word came to be.  Tradition has translated it as "daily" by breaking it down into two Greek parts: "epi" and "ousia," where "epi" is taken to mean "for," and "ousia" is is taken to mean "being."  "For being."  A logical leap is then made from "for being" to "for the day being," where the traditional interpreter assumes that "the day" is implicit in this phrase.  So the traditional interpreter reads "for the day being," as in "for this day" or "daily."

Other translators, however, including the creator of the Latin Vulgate, St. Jerome, have alternatively translated "epiousios" as "supersubstantial."  This translation depends on translating "epi" as "over" or "before," and "ousia" as "essence" or "substance."  This alternative translation is certainly no more dubious than the previous.

In Matt 6:11, all the uncertainty lies in this word "epiousios."  The word we have translated as "bread" is "arton," and this is a straight one-to-one translation; the word definitely refers to a nourishing baked good.  So, we are left wondering: what kind of "bread" was Jesus talking about here?  Was it, as tradition has indicated, "daily bread," meaning, simply, the calories needed to sustain one's life for a day?  Or was it "supersubstantial" bread?  It is impossible to say with certainty, but I lean toward believing that "supersubstantial" comes closer to the mark, simply because the Gospel's author went out of his way here to use a unique term, as opposed to "hemeran," which he had used to clear effect elsewhere.

If "supersubstantial" is closer to the phrasing Jesus might have used, what could he have meant by this?  Questions abound, but I think it's easy to look at these words and imagine that Jesus here referred to a kind of "spiritual" bread; a kind of nourishment for the mind, heart, and psyche.  Perhaps "supersubstantial bread" was the grace of a quiet soul, happy in its faith in God or in goodness generally.  Perhaps "supersubstantial bread" was the capacity to weather the trials and pains of life without being subject to internal misery.  Or, perhaps "supersubstantial bread" refers to a metaphysical substance of some kind; a sort of mana.  We can really only guess, since we have no other use of the word to compare it to.

Of course, as is always the case, since we have no record of the words of Christ in their original Aramaic, we would be derelict of our duty if we said we can know with 100% certainty what Jesus said and thought in any particular case.  Because of the fog of history, we can truly only know Jesus generally, not specifically.  That said, the difference between "daily" and "supersubstantial" here are not enough to markedly change what we understand about Jesus' moral vision.  But the difference is worth noting, and, seeing it now, I think that the Lord's Prayer has slightly more meaning to me.

On to other questions.

Where's the "For Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory" Part?

When I was growing up, I learned the Lord's Prayer as follows:

Our father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name;
Thy kingdom come;
Thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven. 

Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those
who trespass against us;
And lead us not into temptation
But deliver us from evil. Amen.

I maybe said this prayer a trillion times in my childhood.  That's hyperbolic... but I said it a lot.  Among other prayers, this prayer is etched into my mind as if it had been there when I was born.  The words flow together like an unstoppable river once I've started the prayer; it would be impossible not to carry it to its fruition.  Certain prayers, to those of us who were raised Catholic, feel warm and familiar like our own flesh.  This is one of them. 

Imagine my shock, then, when I first found myself at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, somewhere around age twenty, and was bowled over upon hearing a slightly different version of the the Lord's Prayer.  (This different version is said in unison by meeting attendees at the end of most AA meetings.)  "Shock" is truly the correct word, here.  It was like a train crashing in my mind.  The prayer was going fine until we got towards the end and everyone around me started saying a bunch of unfamiliar, ugly sounding words at the moment when I said "amen."

Many of you already know what I'm talking about.  The extra words, with which I was as yet unacquainted, were "for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever," and by them I was totally taken aback.

Today, to the surprise of my younger self, I would say that most people I've known outside of the Catholic Church seem to say the Lord's Prayer with these additional "for thine..." words.  Interestingly, though, as you can see above, these words do not exist in the New American Bible, and, in fact, do not appear in the oldest Greek manuscripts of the New Testament.  The Catholic-child part of my brain quietly inquires: "why is everyone saying this prayer wrong?"  This is myopic of my Catholic-child mind; there is no objective "right" or "wrong" to such things, of course.  But the question remains: where did this extra verbiage come from?

To get to the bottom of this, we need to get familiar with the term "doxology."  A "doxology" is a "liturgical formula of praise to God," or, in other words, a short, regimented string of words of praise for God.  "For thine is the kingdom..." is one of the better known doxologies in the world today.  Another is the Latin "gloria in excelsis Deo," which means "glory to God in the highest."  A third relatively well known doxology is a protestant hymn that reads as follows:

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow; 

Praise Him, all creatures here below; 

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host; 

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

Doxologies have been common aspects of Christian liturgies since very early on in Christian history.  Doxologies derived from an ancient Jewish practice wherein the Jewish hymn of praise known as the "Kaddish" was used to conclude various segments of synagogue worship.

Sadly, there is no extant evidence of the exact origin of the "for thine..." doxology.  All we can know for sure is that it was used in the eastern half of the Roman Empire as early as the First-Century.  The dating of this doxology is based in part on its presence in a text known as the "Didache," which we have had occasion to mention before.  Recall that the Didache was a Christian treatise that many scholars today believe was written in the late First-Century. 

The Didache, which survives in its entirety, says the following in a section titled "Concerning Prayer:"

Do not pray as the hypocrites either, but pray as the Lord commanded in His Gospel: 

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven; give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one; for thine is the power and the glory unto ages of ages.  

Pray this way three times each day.

So how did this doxology make it into various translations of the Bible itself, then?  Well, most scholars find it nearly certain that some version of the "for thine..." verbiage must have been added to some very ancient Christian liturgy by some creative church elder, and that this liturgical use spread among other Christian communities until it became so common that scribes and translators began including it in their copies of the Gospels.  An alternative minority view states that the doxology had been there all along, and that translations of the Gospel without the doxology are the deviations.  Indeed, there are some very old Gospel manuscripts that include the phrasing, leading some scholars to this day to argue that "for thine..." is as true to the words of Christ as anything else in the Gospel.

Did Jesus utter the doxology of the Lord's Prayer?  Again, 100% certainty eludes us.

Either way, my mind is still jarred whenever I hear someone say "for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever," instead of just "amen."  It always will be, and, for that selfish reason, I'm glad the New American Bible doesn't include this foreign-sounding verbiage.

And that's what we know about that.

Conclusions About the Lord's Prayer

Jesus has now been very specific with his followers about how to pray.  He had told them in what spirit they ought to pray, and he has offered them the Lord's Prayer as a rote prayer mechanism.  When they needed something from God, or simply desired communion with him, they were to repeat the Lord's Prayer privately.

As I pointed out before, the clear theme of the Lord's Prayer is humility.  The entire prayer subordinates the one praying to forces above him or herself.  The prayer subordinates the will of the one praying to the will of God.  There is no act more humble, perhaps, than the submission of one's will.  

In teaching his followers this prayer, I believe that Jesus continues to do what he has been doing since the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount: he is re-ordering the universe in which his followers exist.  He is asking his followers to give up whatever terrestrial height or status that they have achieved (or think that they have achieved, or desire to achieve) in order to make themselves humble and low before God and humanity.

"Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors."  If the Christian desires forgiveness, he or she must be willing to give it.

"Your kingdom come.  Your will be done."  If the Christian desires to glimpse the Kingdom of God, he or she must forgo their own will.

Beautiful abject humility.  I love this prayer.  I hope to never stop learning from it.

That's all we have for today.  Join us next time for more in-depth Gospel work.  Until then, happy studies.  Please share this writing.

Love 

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To read what came prior to this, click here.

On Matthew 6:9 through 6:10

Hello all, and welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ, an exhaustive Gospel study.  If you're new here, check this out from the beginning by following this link.

I'd be remiss if I forgot to wish you all a happy Easter.  Easter is by far my favorite holiday of the year.  I guess I like it best because it doesn't seem to have been commercialized as much as any of the others.  There's less of an advertising frenzy leading to buying frenzies for Easter than there are for Valentine's Day, Halloween, and, certainly, Christmas.  As much as I'd like to, we're not going to spend any time discussing Easter here today, because that's not the part of the Gospel that we're on.  But we will get to it, four times, I promise.

Recall that we're still in the midst of Jesus' "Sermon on the Mount," near the beginning of the Gospel According to Matthew.  Jesus has been teaching about humble almsgiving, humble execution of righteous deeds, and humble prayer.  Last time we met, he got specific about the way he wanted his followers to pray when he instructed them to "not babble like the pagans," which prompted us to take a closer look at the prayers of pagans in general, and of the Greeks and the Romans specifically.  Today, as promised, we are going to take a look at the nature of ancient Jewish prayer traditions in order to gain fuller context for "prayer" as Jesus would have thought of it.  As we've said one hundred times before, Jesus was a First-Century Jew before anything else, and everything he said or did is only understandable, from a historical viewpoint, through the lens of First-Century Judaism.  Hopefully, by the end of today, we'll have a reasonable basic grasp on Jewish prayer in Palestine at the time of Christ.

As usual, we've no time to delay.  Let's get started with today's study. 

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Matthew 6:9 through 6:10

9 “This is how you are to pray:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name, 

10 your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.

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As is our custom, before we get to our broader topic today, we need to go over some Greek vocabulary.

Some Greek Vocabulary

Some of these words are review for us.  We just recently learned about the Greek origin of the word "pray," the discussion of which can be found here, and we've been over, perhaps more than once, the Greek word behind "Father," that is, "pater."  "Heaven" is also a term we've been over before, but perhaps not for some time.  As a refresher, we found that the word "heaven" is being translated from the original Greek word "ouranos," and that: 

"To the Greeks, "ouranos" meant "the vaulted sky," "the home of the gods above the vaulted sky," "the universe in general," or anything shaped like the sky, i.e. a vaulted ceiling or a tent.  This is a Greek term that originated to describe a Greek universe, in which many pagan Gods existed.  Due to ambiguities within the multiplicity of first-century Jewish belief systems, it is difficult to say exactly what Jesus means here by the term "ouranos."

New terms of interest today are "hallowed," "name," "kingdom," and "earth."

The original Greek word in the ancient manuscripts which has been translated for us as "hallowed" was "hagiasthētō," an adjective which comes from the verb "hagízō," which meant "to make sacred, especially by burning a sacrifice."  "Hagízō" derives from the Greek adjective "hágios," which meant "devoted to the gods," "sacred," "holy," "pious," or "pure."  "Hágios," in turn, probably came from a much more ancient Proto-Indo-European word, hypothesized to be "Hyeh₂ǵ."  (Yes, there's a little "2" in there.  That's because the Proto-Indo-European language is so ancient that we don't know what kind of alphabet, if any, was used to represent it.  Language scholars use a complex kind of hypothetical alphabet, which includes some numbered letters, to represent the hypothetical phonetic sounds of this ancient language.)  "Hyeh₂ǵ" is hypothesized to have meant "to sacrifice," "to worship," "sacred," or "holy."

We arrive at the term "name" from the Koine Greek "onoma," which can mean both "name," "fame," or "reputation."  This word is also thought to originate from a much older Proto-Indo-European term, "h₁nómn̥," which would have meant basically the same thing.

"Kingdom" comes from the ancient Greek "basileia," alternatively meaning "a dominion," "a hereditary monarchy," "the office of king," or "being ruled by a king."  This is all rooted in the Greek word "basileús" which meant "chief," "master," "king," or "lord."  We should note that this word refers to earthly governments, not celestial expanses.

The last word we will look at briefly is "earth," which was originally written in the Gospel manuscripts as the Greek word "gês."  "Gês" is the singular version of the Greek "gê," which means "land," "earth," "country," or "soil."

With these Greek terms under our belt, let's move on to briefly process the meaning of today's verses, before we start our contextual study of Jewish prayer.

What Does Jesus Mean?

On the face of it, Jesus' meaning is perhaps obvious here; he wants his people to pray by saying the words he is prescribing, probably verbatim.  But we should ask ourselves "is this merely a formulaic incantation?  Or is there some meaning in the prayer itself?"  Of course, the answer is that the prayer itself is full of meaning.

The first lines of the Lord's Prayer as we see them today are a continuation of Jesus' riffing on the concept of humility.  We will continue to find humility to be one of Jesus' favorite philosophical topics.  I dare to theorize that humility was Jesus' favorite human characteristic.  That theory is borne out today in the Lord's Prayer, wherein Jesus instructs the prayer to A) admit that there is a holy and superior force above him or herself in this universe, B) ask that holy and superior force to reign over him or herself as "king," and C) ask that holy and superior force to unilaterally enact its will over him or herself and the world at-large.

In the context of pagan prayer, which we learned about last week, this "Lord's Prayer" is quite unique.  It would have been rare, or perhaps entirely unheard of, for a pagan to pray simply for the dominion and will of a god.  The pagan gods weren't necessarily to be trusted in this way.  Pagans prayed for specific earthly things, and their prayers usually accompanied a sacrifice (read: bribe) to the god to whom they prayed.  Pagan prayer was not a humble "surrender" the way the Lord's Prayer is here in its first few lines, but, rather, a mechanism of control over one's life.  Thus, the "Lord's Prayer," as it starts out today, is the exact opposite of a pagan prayer.

As we continue to discuss the Lord's Prayer over the next couple of installments of our study, we will continue to focus on this concept of "humility" that we see shining through the text.  For today, suffice it to say that Jesus is telling his followers: "you're not in control of this universe.  To attempt to be in control of it is folly.  You should loose the reins; tie yourself to the mast."  A beautiful and extremely powerful sentiment that yields large dividends in real life.

Ok, let's move on to our contextual study.

Prayer Customs of the Ancient Jews

The Old Testament contains around three-hundred instances of the words "prayer," "pray," "praying," "prays," or "prayed," yet it is difficult to say with certainty how the average ancient Jew performed prayer in their own personal life, if at all.  The vast majority of occurrences of "prayer" in the Old Testament are specific instances in which some character is calling out to God in lamentation, in supplication, or in thanks.  The prayers almost always occur spontaneously, and are almost always completely situational. 

Nowhere in the Old Testament are there "prescribed daily prayers" the way there are in modern forms of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and other faiths.  To be sure, nowhere in the 613 mitzvot, or "commandments of the Jewish God," is there an explicit and specific mandate to "pray" at all. 

We can compare the lack of a commandment to pray in the ancient Jewish religion to the lack of commandments to pray in the ancient pagan traditions.  Recall that ancient Jewish tradition has far more in common with ancient paganism than it does with modern religious traditions.  Up until the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 AD, the Jewish spiritual life, especially in Palestine, centered around the ongoing sacrificial rites occurring in the Temple.  In the same way, pagan spiritual life always centered around temple sacrifices. 

For pagans, as long as regular sacrifices to the gods were performed at various temples and shrines, the gods would favor them, and all would be well for them.  So, too, for the ancient Jews; as long as the daily sacrifices were being performed correctly in Jerusalem, the Jews believed, the Jewish people were within the bounds of their covenant with God, and all would be well for them.  The individual, and thus individual prayer, was peripheral at best in ancient Jewish worship, which was primarily a communal affair.

Generally, we can say that the kinds of prayers that the Jews of Jesus' time, as individuals, would have been accustomed to uttering, if any, were the same kind of prayers that you will find throughout the Old Testament.  These prayers would have been conversational, situational, and spontaneous.  "Thank you God, for X."  "Please, God, grant us Y."  "Relieve us, God, from Z."  There's not a lot else that can be said for certain about personal prayer among the Jews at that time.

One might wonder: "don't Orthodox Jews today pray three times each day?  Is that tradition not ancient?"

In a word, the answer is "no."  As we've discussed before, and will continue to discuss, the traditions of the Jews changed drastically around the time of Jesus, as a result of the aforementioned destruction of the Second Temple and the subsequent scattering of the diaspora*.  In an article published at myjewishlearning.com, a reasonably reputable source of information on Jewish tradition, the author writes:

"Regular communal Jewish prayer began as a substitute for the sacrificial cult in the ancient Temple in Jerusalem."

So, again, like so much else that we see in the "Rabbinic" or "modern" form of Judaism, modern traditions of prayer evolved "in place of" the old tradition of ritual sacrifice at the Temple of the Lord in Jerusalem.

The same article continues on:

"The formative period of Jewish prayer was that of the Tannaim, the sages whose oral traditions of law and legend are gathered in the Mishnah (edited c. 200 C.E.) and some early collections of midrash. From their traditions, later committed to writing, we learn that the generation of rabbis active at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple (70 C.E.) gave Jewish prayer its structure and, in outline form at least, its contents."

In the same way that much of the Old Testament was not written down until the Babylonian exile, when Jewish people suddenly became concerned that there could be a break in the centuries old chain of oral tradition, so did structure and institutionalization of personal worship suddenly become extremely important when Rome's incursion into Palestine became imminent.  In short, Jews had to augment the way they identified themselves, because Rome was about to destroy the one thing they had identified with more than anything over the previous centuries.  Rote systems of prayer rapidly evolved as one way to shore up Jewish identity in the dispersion.

What does this all mean for Jesus' understanding of prayer?  What might Jesus have grown up being taught about prayer?

Ultimately, it is hard to say exactly what Jesus was taught in this regard.  He was certainly aware that the priests in the Temple were steadily praying along with their near-constant blood sacrifices, just the way the Greeks had been doing for centuries at their various temples.  It is also certain that he knew the ancient traditions, and understood that the Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs had frequently offered spontaneous conversational prayer to God.  We can tell from Jesus' commandment to not pray in public for the purpose of attracting human praise that some people of his era must have made it a habit to do so, but, again, the nature of these publicly offered prayers was likely spontaneous and unscripted.  All things considered, it seems unlikely that Jesus would have been taught to pray at certain times of the day, or a certain number of times each day, or in a certain place or position, or with certain words.  Jewish traditions of his era and the immediately preceding centuries simply didn't involve prescribed prayer as such.  Prayer, for the Jews of Jesus' time, would have been as spontaneous as it seems to have been for their Biblical ancestors.

Obviously, as we can see in our Gospel readings, Jesus meant to change the way his followers were praying, and offered specific guidance along these lines.  Jesus gives his followers a form of prayer different than that of the Romans, the Greeks, and the ancient Jews.  In the coming sessions, we will continue to read the Lord's Prayer in its entirety, continue to strive to identify its moral value, and continue to consider the changing meaning of prayer itself during the ministry of Jesus Christ.

Thank you for reading.  Please share this writing.  Happy Easter.

Love
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* The "diaspora" indicates all Jews who do not live in Palestine.

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To read what came prior to this, click here.