The earlier forms of the Pater Noster

As George Howard points out on p. 202 of Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, the Shaprut Hebrew Matthew and the oldest and best manuscripts of Luke agree that "who art in heaven" was not originally part of the prayer, According to my hypothesis, Luke used an early form of Matthew (Matthew I), which was probably written in Hebrew, for the sayings portion of his Gospel. Thus, although Matthew I has not survived, it is reflected in Luke. The Shaprut Hebrew Matthew reflects Matthew II, an intermediate form of Matthew. So, if we want to see the original form of the Lord's Prayer, or Avinu, the best that we can do is to go to Luke XI:2. In the RSV, it goes like this:

Father, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come.

Give us each day our daily bread;

and forgive us our sins,

for we ourselves forgive everyone

who is indebted to us.

and lead us not into temptation.

Here is how it sounds in Hebrew, in the Salkinson translation:

avinu yitkadash shmecha

tavo malchutecha

ten-lanu lechem chukenu yom b'yomo.

us'lach lanu et-ashmoteynu 

ki gam-anachnu solchim l'kol-asher

asham lanu

v'al-t'viyenu liy'dey nisayon.

And here's how it looks in Hebrew, in the form given in the Shaprut Hebrew Matthew, reflecting Matthew II, which is still older than canonical Matthew (Matthew III): 

אבינו יתקדש שמך ויתברך מלכותך רצונך יהיה עשוי בשמיםובארץ ׃

ותתן לחמנו תמידית ׃

ומחול לנו חטאתינו כאשר אנחנו מוחלים לחוטאים לנו

ואל תביאנו לידי נסיון ושמרינו מכל רע אמן ׃

The best texts of Luke just say "Father," but here we are back to "Our Father," which is also how Salkinson translated the Luke. Other than that, the main difference between this and Luke is that it says "may your name be sanctified; may your kingdom be blessed." This makes for a more beautiful parallelism. I prefer it for this reason, and also because, as we are told in the Gospel of Thomas, the kingdom of heaven is already among us. I believe, therefore, that if we just change the אבינו of the Shaprut version to אבא, we'll be close enough to the original ("Matthew I") version of the prayer.

Next, we will try to reconstruct the original, "Matthew I" form of the Beatitudes.

(to be continued)

Text © 2018-2019 by Donald C. Traxler.