The "Our Father" and What It Can Tell Us about the Gospels

 

The above image (which is a modification of one that I found on the internet, and I do not own any rights to it) contains the "Our Father" in standard Jewish Aramaic. It is written in Dead Sea Scrolls script, which is approximately the way it would have been written in the time of Rabbi Yeshua (Jesus).

I've written previously on this subject (see entries published in this blog on 30 May 2019, 24 July 2019, and 3,4,5 July 2020.

The "Our Father" ("Avinu" in Hebrew, "Abun" in Aramaic) is an ancient prayer, and it would have been first taught in Jewish Aramaic, not in Syriac. The prayer in the image above would sound like this:

Abbun d'bishmayya

yitkadesh sh'makh

titey malkhutakh

tihey re'utakh

heykhma d'bishmayya,

keyn af be'ar'a.

lachman d'me'ar'a

hab lan yoma deyn umachra.

ushbaq lan chobayn,

heykm d'af sh'baqnan l'chayyabayn.

ve al ta'eylan l'nisayuna,

ela atseylan min bisha.

This translates to:

Our Father in the heavens,

may your name be sanctified,

may your kingdom come,

may your will be done

as in the heavens

so also on earth.

Our bread, which is from the earth,

give us day by day.

Forgive us our sins,

as we also forgive those indebted to us.

And do not bring us to trial,

but deliver us from evil.

I am certain that this is the most original version that we have. It incorporates rhyme, which is an aid to memorization, as well as at least one play on words, a common feature of Semitic literature, and this one (ta'eylan/atseylan) works only in Aramaic. 

At this point, I think I need to back up a bit. I was recently reading a Hebrew translation of this prayer (that of Salkinson). I compared the last line to the last line in Delitzsch's Hebrew translation, and I noticed a strange thing: where Salkinson had "hatsilenu," Delitzsch had "chaltsenu." What was going on here? Had Delitzsch made a mistake? Was he dyslexic?

What happened was this: Salkinson translated according to the well-known meaning, "deliver," and he used exactly the right Hebrew word (which happens also to be cognate with "atseylan" in Jewish Aramaic, so we know it's correct). Delitzsch, on the other hand, had slavishly followed the Greek, which is based on a confusion of two similar-appearing Hebrew words (hatsilenu הצילנו and chaltsenu חלצנו).

The word in the canonical, Greek text of Matthew is "rhusai" (from Strong #4506, rhuomai), a Greek word meaning "to draw off," here taken to mean "rescue" or "deliver." This word is based on a misreading of "hatsilenu" as "chaltsenu" in an unpointed Hebrew manuscript. The meaning of the second verb is, in fact, "to draw off." By following the Greek text so literally, Delitzsch reproduced the original error of the translator into Greek (or of a Hebrew copyist, it makes no difference), and thus brought the error, unnoticed for almost 2000 years, to our attention.

I consider this to be strong evidence, and perhaps even sufficient proof, that our canonical, Greek Matthew was translated into Greek from a Hebrew manuscript.

There is more that could be said about this prayer and what it can tell us. Let me know if you are interested. If so, I'll continue this article.

Text Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Donald Jacobson Traxler.