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

 

In this part we will go outside the Gospel of Matthew, to the Gospel of Luke. The version of the Lord's Prayer in Luke (11:2-4) is much shorter than that in Matthew. In the image above, we see it in St. Jerome's Latin, in the Vulgate (late fourth century). Here is how it translates into English:

Father, may your name be sanctified,

may your kingdom come.

Give us daily our daily bread,

and forgive us our sins,

just as we also forgive all those

who are indebted to us,

and do not lead us into temptation.

Those familiar with the version in the Gospel of Matthew will notice right away that this Lukan version does not say "our," or "who is in the heavens." It does not say "may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Instead of "give us this day our daily bread," it says "give us daily our daily bread." It does say "do not lead us into temptation," but it does not say "deliver us from evil."

Never noticed that before? You're not alone. Many people who are familiar with the version in Matthew are not even aware that there is a version in Luke, or that it differs. If you go to Luke 11:2 in the King James Version (KJV), you will find a longer version, basically the same as that in Matthew, which has all the elements that are "missing" above. How did that happen?

The short answer is that the KJV is based on the so-called Received Text or Textus Receptus, which is actually the Byzantine Text. The Byzantine textual type is characterized by many interpolations that were intended to bring the gospels into closer agreement with one another, thus obscuring textual relationships.

How do we know that the shorter version is the original Lukan version? We know it because the oldest and best texts, such as the Codex Vaticanus ("B"), a fourth-century Greek Bible, considered to be the very best, and the Codex Sinaiticus ("א," also fourth-century), discovered in 1851 and considered to be the second-best, both have the shorter version, as do some other excellent, ancient sources.

Interesting. There is a principle in textual criticism by which the terser, briefer reading is considered to usually be the older, more original reading. So what are we to make of the fact that the Avinu/Our Father in canonical, Greek Matthew is longer and more elaborate (both in the Our Father and in the Beatitudes, for example) than the version in Shem-Tob's Hebrew Matthew? Not only that, but in both of these cases (the Our Father and the Beatitudes) the version in Luke is even shorter and less elaborate. There are probably other examples, but I've really only studied these two.

We could jump to the conclusion that the Gospel according to Luke is older than the Gospel according to Matthew. But the preponderance of evidence is that Luke is, for the most part, a de-Semitized version of Matthew, suitable for the needs of Paul and his mission to the Gentiles. But why would Luke have left out such important things as whole clauses of the "Lord's Prayer" and even some of the Beatitudes? Watch this space.

(to be continued)