Kevin James, in his excellent book,
The Corruption of the Word: The Failure of Modern New Testament Scholarship (Micro-Load Press 1990; ISBN: 0962442003), has a section on the Lucan version of the Lord’s Prayer (pages 193-195), which follows:
Luke 11:2-4 The Lord’s Prayer
The modern versions butcher the Lord’s Prayer as found in Luke. The following omissions, authorized by modern New Testament scholarship, are highlighted and bracketed:
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(1)
[Our] Father [which art in Heaven.]
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
(2)
[Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth.]
Give us day by day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every
One that is indebted to us.
(3)
And lead us not into temptation; [but deliver us from evil.]
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Let’s look at the support for each side at each of the three omissions:
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Omission No.
(1)
With MV [Modern Versions]: Papyrus 75, Aleph, Codex B, 1, 700; Latin Vulgate (most manuscripts); one Syriac manuscript; Marcion and Origen.
With KJ [King James]: Codex D, Codex W, 461, E, 440, 76, 538, 903, 962, 1278 and all other known Greek manuscripts; Old Latin (including Veronensis and Usserianus 2; some Vulgates; all Egyptian translations; all other Syriac manuscripts.
(2)
With MV: Papyrus 75, Aleph, Codex B, 1, L; Latin Vulgate (most); two Syriac manuscripts; Marcion and Origen.
With KJ: All as in omission 1, with addition of 700 and Aleph; 461 omits “thy will be done” due to like-ending error, and one Old Latin manuscript and the Egyptian versions omit “as in heaven, so in earth.”
(3)
With MV: Papyrus 75, Aleph, Codex B, 1, 700; Latin Vulgate (most); one Syriac manuscript; one Egyptian translation and part of another; Marcion, Tertullian, Origen.
With KJ: All other Greeks; Old Latin; some Vulgates; three Syriac translations; part of one Egyptian version.
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The above information shows that only three Greek manuscripts (Papyrus 75, Codex B, and 1) agree entirely with the omissions found in the modern versions. The agreement of Jerome’s Latin Vulgate is expected since he used manuscripts of Origen’s to revise the Latin translation.
Modern scholarship insists that all other witnesses have taken words from the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew and added them here to make both prayers agree in phrasing. But if it were the policy that both Lord’s prayers should be identical, how can we explain why no Greek witness added Matthew 6:13 (“for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, amen”) to the end of Luke 11:4 to make the job complete?
And how is it that the two oldest translations (Old Latin and Syriac Pesh-itta) and the Egyptian versions (except for omission three), representing a much wider area of influence than the locality occupied by Codex B and its allies, added these words at the same places as the Greek manuscripts, yet also rejected any addition of Matthew 6:13?
It is curious that Marcion, the second century heretic, agreed with all three omissions found in the modern versions. He also changed “thy kingdom come” to “thy holy spirit come upon us and cleanse us,” had “
your daily bread” for “
our daily bread,” and altered “lead us not into temptation” to “leave us not to captivity” (or “entanglement”).
Marcion taught that there were two gods, the war god of the Old testament who was the creator, and the unknown God of love, manifested by Jesus [see Harold O.J. Brown,
Heresies: The Image of Christ in the Mirror of Heresy and Orthodoxy from the Apostles to the Present (Doubleday 1984), pp. 61, 64]. Jesus was not the Messiah but came to destroy the influence of the Old Testament god of wrath, who was responsible for the unhappiness of men. To Marcion, then, this prayer was not to the Father of the Old Testament but to the unknown Father of love, represented by Jesus.
Marcion also took some of his doctrine from the Gnostics. One of their views was that Christ had been sent “to free the souls of the spiritual from the power of the base creative angels who held them prisoner in vile physical bodies.” [ibid., Brown, p. 59]
This explains the omission of the last part of the Lord’s Prayer in Luke. Because Marcion and the Gnostics viewed Jesus as the savior, the Father (as the unknown God) could not “deliver us from evil.”
The excision of “our” and “who art in heaven” can also be explained. Since Christ was a manifestation of the unknown God who was not involved in the creation of the evil fleshly world, he was not the Father of men. Therefore, “our” Father, as spoken by men, was inappropriate. “Who art in heaven,” was also erroneous, for the “Father” was there on earth at the time the prayer was given, according to Marcion’s doctrine.
Finally, “Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth.”, was eliminated because Jesus’ goal was to liberate the soul from its fleshly bondage on earth so that it could rise up into the heavens. Because heaven was disconnected from the evil material earth, the will of the God of love could not be the same in heaven as in earth.
The above is just one explanation (of many possibilities) for why a conflict with early heretical ideas could have caused the omissions found in the modern versions. Whether Marcion, himself, is responsible for the altered version of the Lord’s Prayer in Luke, or whether he copied portions of it from Gnostic predecessors is impossible to determine. (It is known that Basilides, an important Gnostic figure, spread this teaching to Alexandria, Egypt before A.D. 138 [see Glanville Downey,
A History of Antioch in Syria from Selecus to the Arab Conquest (Princeton Univ. Press, 1961), pp. 290-291].) The fact that the full altered text is found only in Papyrus 75, Codex B, and manuscript 1, copies known for their irregularities, condemns the modern Greek version of the Lord’s prayer in Luke.
[End of James’ writing]