LORD'S PRAYER. The model pfayer taught to His disciples by Jesus (Matt. vi. 943: Luke xi. 1-4). The form and the occasion of the Lord's Prayer are reported differently in the two Gospels which contain it. In Matthew it is found in the Sermon on the Mount. According to Luke it was given later in answer to a request of one of the disciples. The majority of scholars incline to the opinion that Luke's account is more historical. though some. Plummer. for example. think that Jesus may well have taught this prayer on two separate occasions. If the prayer was given twice. it was not expressed both times in exactly the same language. Luke's version, to the best manuscripts. dif fers from Matthew's (1) in being shorter and (2) in other minor particulars. When the two are placed side by side the differences are noticeable, thus: (The best omit the doxology in both Gospels.) If one of the two forms is not original, it is probable that the longer is most like what .Jesus taught. The earliest witness to the prayer out side of the New Testament, the 7'H/citing of the Twelve .Ipostics, of the first or early in the sec ond century, agrees with Matthew, except that it has a doxology attached.
It is altogether likely that Jesus taught the prayer in Aramaic. the mother tongue of Himself and the disciples. The Greek. as we have it in the Gospels. is then a translation made some time after the prayer in its original Aramaic had become widely known and read. Both the longer and the shorter forms may have been in circula tion. one of which was reported to Luke; the other and more widely known was embodied in the collection of Login which underlies our Gospel of Matthew (q.v.). This is more satis factory than to suppose that Luke purposely shortened the prayer.
Two phrases demand special mention. The word translated 'daily' is Irwticios, a rare word, apparently coined by the first translators of the prayer from the original Aramaic. Its exa meaning is disputed. According to analogy it should come from brl ievaL, and mean 'com ing,' i.e. 'for the morrow' ( cf. it 17rwigra, in Acts 26. etc.). But many. following Origen. pre
fer to derive it from eiri and the substantive or abstract clinic (to be). On the basis of the Greek alone no satisfactory conclusion can lie reached. The old Latin version translated the term by quotidianum, i.e. daily, which the Vul gate retained in Luke. but changed to supensub slantinkin in Matthew. Quotbliannen is evi dence that in very ancient times the idea in in-Lao-tot was thought to be temporal. not quali tative. The old Syriac remlering, 'the continual bread of the day,' reflects the same conviction. The later Syriac version. like the later Latin. changed the translation to 'necessary.' Jerome says that the old Gospel of the Hebrews rein maim'', that is. 'to-morrow' (bread of or f it to morrow). It is, therefore. probable that Jesus (speaking Aramaic) said the equivalent of 'bread for the coming day.' and that the
translators rendered this into Greek by a word coined under the influence of it er(00
The extent to which this prayer was original with Jesus has been keenly disputed. It was once claimed that He drew all its material from current Jewish prayers. This was met by a counter-denial of as sweeping a character. The truth is that some of the phrases, e.g. Our Father' in a more restricted sense), and some of its ideas were already at hand. Jesus' origi nality lay not only in the new elements lie contributed, but in what He omitted (of the ordinary prayer-forms current in His day) and in the remarkable arrangement of the whole.