SABBATH.
LireraturE.—Hessey, Sunday: its origin, history, and present obligation, BL, 1860, 5th ed. 1889; Beet in Expositor, 2nd ser. viii. 838-850 ; and the Literature under SaBBaTH.
N. J. Ὁ. WHITE.
LORD’S PRAYER.—This prayer is so called, not because the Lord used it, which He could not do, for some of the petitions would be mean- ingless for Him (and ef. Jn 20"), but because He taught it to His disciples and us. It is given us by two evangelists (Mt 6°18, Lk 11%), in differ- ent forms, and in totally different connexions. The form given by St. Luke is not only much shorter, but differs somewhat in wording; and whereas St. Matthew represents Christ as giving this form of prayer spontaneously in the Sermon on the Mount, St. Luke plates the delivery of the prayer after the close of the Galilean ministry, and in answer to a request from one of His dis- ciples, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, even as John also taught his disciples.’ But St. Luke gives no note
either of time or place, probably because his source |
eave none. And it is quite possible that the in- cident which he here records took place very much earlier than the point in Christ’s ministry at which he jplaces it. There can be no doubt that if the prayer was delivered only once, then it is St. Luke who has preserved the true historical occasion. His narra- tive has every appearance of originality, and one sees no motive for invention, whereas it is quite credible that St. Matthew, in recording Christ’s injunctions about prayer, might emphasize and illustrate these by adding to them the form of rayer which He had enjoined. Accordingly, a arge number of the best critics (Baumgarten - Crusius, Neander, de Wette, Ewald, Bleek, Holtzmann, Weiss, Godet, Oosterzee, etc.) regard the position of the prayer in Mt as unhistorical. But it must be remembered that there is no proof that the prayer was taught on one occasion only. The argument that, if the prayer was delivered in the Sermon on the Mount, then a disciple can- not afterwards have asked for a form of prayer ; and that if he asked for one, then it cannot have been previously delivered, holds good only if we suppose that Christ’s followers remained always the same. There is nothing to show that ‘one of his disciples’ (Lk 11") means one of the Twelve.
Different groups of disciples might at different times require teaching as to a form of prayer; and at one time Christ might give such instruc- tion unasked, at another because He was requested todoso. In either case it is remarkable that the prayer is not directly alluded to elsewhere in the Gospels (cf. Mk 1435), nor in the Acts (cf. 2), nor in the Epistles (cf. Ro 12, Col 45. There may be indirect allusions to the last petition, Jn 17, Bete ἣν and possibly 2 ΤΊ 418, See Lightfoot on 2Th 3°.
But if we admit that the prayer was delivered only once, and that St. Luke gives the actual occasion, it by no means follows that he gives the original form of the prayer, as Meyer, Kamp- hausen, and others suppose. In one sense neither form is original, for the original would be in Aramaic; and it is quite evident that both Mt and Lk used a Gr. source, as the large amount of agreement in wording, and, above all, their common use of the unique word ἐπιούσιος, shows. Their versions cannot be independent tr™ of the same Aram. original. Much more probably they had the same Gr. original; and Mt, although he puts it in the wrong place, yet reproduces it more exactly. Of course, if the prayer was delivered more than once, then both forms may be original,
' | in the sense that both represent in Greek a form See further, art. CHURCH, vol. i. p. 427", and |
which Christ used in His instructions. It is conceivable that one form was suitable for one group of disciples, another for the whole body of them.*
Accepting, however, the hypothesis that Mt more accurately gives us the original form, it may be asked whether the variations in Lk are due to himself or to the source which he used. There are good reasons for believing that some of them are due to himself. This is most apparent in the fourth petition. For δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον (Mt) Lk has δίδου ἡμῖν τὸ καθ᾽ ἡμέραν. Seeing that τὸ καθ᾽ ἡμέραν occurs in NT in St. Luke’s writings only (1957, Ac 174), we may feel confident that it is he who has changed σήμερον into τὸ καθ᾽ ἡμέραν rather than St. Matthew who has done the reverse. This change of σήμερον into τὸ καθ᾽ ἡμέραν involved the change from the aorist to the present imperative ; and thus ‘Give us this day’ became ‘ Continually give us day by day.’ In Lk the petition is made more comprehensive. That the aorist rather than the
resent was the original form, is shown by the tact that in all the other petitions the aorist is used. Again, when we tind ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰ ὀφειλήματα in Mt, and ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰς ἁμαρτίας in Lk, we con- jecture that it is Lk who has changed the ex- pression in order to make the meaning clearer to Gentile readers. The insertion of παντί with ὀφείλοντι is also very characteristic of St. Luke, and certainly ὡς καὶ αὐτοὶ ἀφίομεν is more likely to be a modification of ὡς καὶ ἡμεῖς ἀφήκαμεν than vice versa ; all the more so, as Lk is specially fond of the combination καὶ αὐτός, καὶ αὐτοί, «.7.X.