DO WE KNOW WHAT WE KNOW?

 

 

Houtōs oun proseuchesthe humeis: pater hèmōn ho en tois ouranois, hagiasthètō to onoma sou; elthetō hè basileia sou; genèthètō to thelèma sou, hōs en ouranōi kai epi tès gès; to arton hèmōn ton epiousion dos hèmin sèmeron; kai aphes hèmin ta opheilèmata hèmōn, hōs kai hèmeis aphèkamen tois opheilètais hèmōn; kai mè eisenegkèis hèmas eis peirasmon, alla hrusai hèmas apo tou ponèrou. Ean gar aphète tois anthrōpois ta paraptōmata autōn, apèsei kai humin ho patèr humōn o ouranios. Ean de mè aphète tois anthropōn ta paraptōmata autōn, oude ho patèr humōn aphèsei ta paraptōmata humōn.

 

⁹ thus therefore pray ye: `Our Father who [art] in the heavens, hallowed be Thy name.

¹⁰ `Thy reign come: Thy will come to pass, as in heaven also on the earth.

¹¹ `Our bread for the day give us to-day.

¹² `And forgive us our debts, as also we forgive our debtors.

¹³ `And do Thou not force us into a testing, but deliver us from the evil, because Thine is the reign, and the power, and the glory -- to the ages. Amen.

¹⁴ `For, if ye forgive men their false steps He also will forgive you -- your Father who [is] in the heavens;

¹⁵ but if ye do not forgive men their false steps, neither will your Father forgive your false steps.

 

What is there to say about this prayer that has not been said a million times or more? That it is useful to remember that basileia reflects a condition (“reign”) more than a place (“kingdom”); that Greek readers would have read “may [what is] thy will come to pass” rather than “be done”; that they would have read epiousion as a very rare word for “for the coming day”; that opheilèmata are debts while paraptomata are false steps or payment errors; that peirasmos is more a test, an assay, than a seductive temptation; that, once again, ponèron is “bad” or “wicked” rather than “evil”, and that the genitive case after apo, “from” may refer to a person or to a thing: “from the wicked one” or “from what is wicked”.

            On the other hand, it is interesting to put it in the context of the Sermon on the Mount so far. In the immediate context, it is the outcome of the discussion on prayer, and may thus be thought of as a blueprint for what we should murmur to the Father behind the closed door of our inmost room. And yet notice that throughout it is placed in the first person plural: even alone, we are part of the Father’s family, and even our singular prayer reflects our siblinghood therein.

            In the context of the Sermon as the new Torah, the completed Torah, the most salient aspects of the prayer are perhaps its inwardness and its polyvalence. Inwardness, because it gladly recognises our weakness and our dependence, for forgiveness and even for simple nourishment (the daily bread reminds us also of the manna that Israel received in the wilderness); polyvalence, because unlike many prayers in the Old Testament, this prayer is not a request for one specific thing but covers every aspect of our relation to our Father: adoration (hallowing), hope (the reign), obedience (His will), dependence (bread), penitence (forgiveness), weakness (do not test us as Thou didst the great ones like Job), protection (the wicked one, wickedness).

            No wonder that it has remained the prayer for Christians. It was very surprising to a number of us to see Pope Francis’s boldness in changing the wording of the penultimate petition to “let us not enter into temptation”, and doing so in a way that neither restored the original nor made the translation any clearer. In the Greek, the act we ask to be spared is an action by God, not merely a permission by God for an act of our own. It is God who might eisenengkein us to a testing, and roots of that verb are those of “forcing” and “into”. It would have been better for His Holiness to have concentrated on the peirasmos rather than on the verb.

            And for those who thrill to the idea of reading, and hearing, the original words Yeshua pronounced, above is the reconstructed written version in Jewish Aramaic of the 1^st century; below is the transliterated Aramaic text; and a reading can be heard here. 

Abbun d'bishmayya

yitqadesh shmakh

titey malkhutakh

tihey re`utakh

heykhma debishmayya

keyn af be’ar`a

lachman deme’ar`a

hab lan yoma deyn umachra

ushbaq lan chobayn

heykhma de’af shebaqnan lechayyabayn

we’al ta`eylan lenisayuna

ela atseylan min bisha

 

ANYTHING BUT TEMPTATION

 

In November of last year, I wrote about the expression in the Lord's Prayer that had always worried me, and that clearly worries the committees who keep updating the translations: "Lead us not into temptation". The thought of the Father leading us deliberately into temptation, then punishing us for having given in, is repellent; so the modern French version has "Do not let us enter into temptation." But taking a look at the Greek helps. To put it a little colloquially, "Do not put us to the test, but deliver us from bad stuff" is essentially what Jesus said when he taught the disciples to pray. The link of the "but" makes most sense when one stresses "deliver". Peirasmos is a trial, une épreuve as the French say, as in "the times that try men's souls". The implication, as I said back then, seems to be that we ask not to be put to the really hairy tests, like Abraham with Isaac, or Job, or Jacob who wrestled all night long with an angel. We aren't up to that sort of thing. We pray to the Father to deliver us from the ponèron, bad things, the real horror, the evil: that is not something we can do for ourselves.

It is a kindness in Jesus to propose this sentence in the exemplary Prayer: he recognises that we are ordinary folk, and that perhaps the Father may need to be reminded of this before, as in Job, giving in to the provocation of Shaitan, the Adversary.

It is in any case worth while to forget "temptation", a word that, encouraged by Oscar Wilde, needs a long rest. This is serious stuff: it is not the "temptation" of chocolate, or even of perfumed silks, of the "temptress" or the péché mignon: it is the knife at Isaac's throat, it is Exodus 4:24 "in a lodging-place by the way, the Lord met Moses and sought to kill him", it is the Lord wagering with Lucifer that Job will stand the test. Ouch. Do not, Father, make us go there. Save us from the Horror. Phew. By the skin of our teeth.

 

Posted with Blogsy