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.
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.
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.
------------------------------
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."
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.
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:
The same article continues on:
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
-------------------------
* The "diaspora" indicates all Jews who do not live in Palestine.
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
-------------------------
* The "diaspora" indicates all Jews who do not live in Palestine.
-------------------------
To read what came prior to this, click here.
