Defending the Lord's Prayer 2

Jerusalem Blade · #1 (**permalink**) 12-31-2007, 10:00 AM

This thread (much shorter than the previous one) will look at Dr. White’s and Dean Burgon’s respective views of the Lord’s Prayer as exhibited in Luke 11:2-4. It was already commented on briefly by Martin Shue in his defense of the Prayer in Matthew 6 (see post #6 of http://www.puritanboard.com/f63/defe...yer-1-a-27974/). Burgon, however, examines it at length in his classic defense of the Traditional Text, The Revision Revised (which is also a refutation of the CT), which book is available in reprint from various sources (just Google it, plus I will post some links for it shortly). In the aforementioned book, the excerpt of Burgon's I print below is to be found on pages 34-36.

Jerusalem Blade · #2 (**permalink**) 12-31-2007, 10:03 AM

From James White’s The King James Only Controversy, “Part Two – The Textual data”, pages 252, 253.

Luke 11:2-4: THE LORD’S PRAYER

Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer is highly abbreviated in its original form. Scribes sensed a problem and made a number of attempts at harmonization. The influence of Matthew’s version is seen throughout the later Greek manuscripts and, hence, in the TR’s reading of Luke’s account. Entire phrases are imported into Luke, resulting in a much longer version in the King James Version. The comparison between the KJV and a modern translation such as the NIV is often disconcerting to someone who is not familiar with the reasons for the differences.

KJV

And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.

NIV

He said to them, “When you pray, say, ‘Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.’ ”

Each of the [bold] phrases is found in Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer. These additions were made quite early on, demonstrating that this prayer had an important part in the liturgy of the ancient church. As was the case with the longer addition in Matthew 6:13, so too we find a number of variants here as well. Most are to be traced directly to Matthew 6. One of the more interesting, however, that does not come from Matthew is the addition on the part of a few later minuscules of the phrase “Let Your Holy Spirit come upon us and cleanse us.” This phrase was known to Gregory of Nyssa, so it goes back to a period earlier than its manuscript support would indicate (though it has insufficient attestation to be taken as original).

Jerusalem Blade · #3 (**permalink**) 12-31-2007, 10:07 AM

John Burgon on Luke 11:2-4

An instructive specimen of depravation follows, which can be traced to Marcion’s mutilated recension of S. Luke’s Gospel. We venture to entreat the favour of the reader’s sustained attention to the license with which the LORD’S Prayer as given in S. Luke’s Gospel (xi. 2-4), is exhibited by codices aABCD. For every reason one would have expected that so precious a formula would have been enshrined in the ‘old uncials’ in peculiar safety; handled by copyists of the IVth, Vth, and VIth centuries with peculiar reverence. Let us ascertain exactly what has befallen it:—

(a) D introduces the LORD’S Prayer by interpolating the following paraphrase of S. Matthew vi. 7:—‘Use not vain repetitions as the rest: for some suppose that they shall be heard by their much speaking. But when ye pray… After which portentous exordium,

(b) Ba omit the 5 words ‘Our’ ‘which art in heaven,’ Then,

(c) D omits the article (to,) before ‘name:’ and supplements the first petition with the words ‘upon us’ (ef hmaj). It must needs also transpose the words ‘Thy kingdom (h basileia sou).

(d) B in turn omits the third petition,—‘Thy will be done, as in heaven, also on the earth;’ which 11 words a retains, but adds ‘so’ before ‘also, and omits the article (thj); finding for once an ally in ACD.

(e) aD for didou write doj (from Matt.).

(f) a omits the article (to,) before ‘day by day.’ And,

(g) D, instead of the 3 last-named words, writes ‘this day (from Matt.): substitutes ‘debts (ta ofeilhmata) for ‘sins’ (ta amarthmata),—also from Matt.): and in place of ‘for [we] [/i]ourselves[/i]’ (kai gar autoi) writes ‘as also we’ (wj kai hmeij, again from Matt.).—But,

(h) a shows its sympathy with D by accepting two-thirds of this last blunder: exhibiting ‘as also [we] ourselves’ (wj kai autoi).

(i) D consistently reads ‘our debtors (toij ofeiletaij hmwn) in place of ‘every one that is indebted to us’ (panti ofeilonti hmin).—Finally,

(j) Ba omit the last petition,—‘but deliver us from evil’ (alla rusai hmaj apo tou ponhrou)—unsupported by AC or D. Of lesser discrepancies we decline to take account.

So then, these five ‘first-class authorities’ are found to throw themselves into six different combinations in their departures from S. Luke’s way of exhibiting the LORD’S Prayer,—which, among them, they contrive to falsify in respect of no less than 45 words; and yet they are never able to agree among themselves as to any single various reading: while only once are more than two of them observed to stand together, —viz. in the unauthorized omission of the article. In respect of 32 (out of the 45) words, they bear in turn solitary evidence. What need to declare that it is certainly false in every instance? Such however is the infatuation of the Critics, that the vagaries of B are all taken for gospel. Besides omitting the 11 words which B jointly omits with a, Drs. Westcott and Hort erase from the Book of Life those other 11 precious words which are omitted by B only. And in this way it comes to pass that the mutilated condition [the words omitted are…22] to which the scalpel of Marcion the heretic reduced the LORD’S Prayer some 1730 years ago, (for the mischief can all be traced back to him!), is palmed off on the Church of England by the Revisionists as the work of the HOLY GHOST! (from The Revision Revised, pp. 34-36)

Jerusalem Blade · #4 (**permalink**) 01-01-2008, 03:55 AM

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:

-------------------------------------------------------------

(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.]

-------------------------------------------------------------

Let’s look at the support for each side at each of the three omissions:

-------------------------------------------------------------

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.

-------------------------------------------------------------

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]

KMK · #5 (**permalink**) 02-09-2008, 03:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jerusalem Blade

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?

Have any modern text critics attempted to answer this question?