In order to consider in detail the differences which exist between the two accounts of the Lord’s Prayer, it is necessary to make the com- parison on the basis of the modern critical texts of the NT, such as Tischendorf’s eighth edition and Westcott and Hort’s text (with which the RV closely agrees). One notices first the exclusion of the doxology to the Prayer contained in the TR at Mt 6 (and familiar to us through the AV): 671 cov éorw % Bacidela cal 7 Sdvapus Kal » Sdta els Tods aigvas. dujv. This ending of the Prayer is not given in Luke, and the external evidence against its genuineness in Matthew is conclusive; so that its authenticity is no longer supposed.t It grew up gradually in the 2nd cent. as a product of the Jewish custom of doxologies and responses, con- tinued in the public services of the Christian Church ; see esp. 1 Ch 2983, The earliest. men- tion of the liturgical use of the Prayer is in the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, viii. 3, where the repetition of it three times daily is enjoined; and there is abundant Patristic evidence that this liturgical use rapidly increased. Readily, there- fore, this doxology, which came to be used always at the close of the Prayer, found its way into the later exemplars of the NT text; and the fact that it appears in conjunction with Mt 6° instead of Lk 1174 shows that it was the Matthean form of the Prayer which the early Church adopted for its liturgy. The doxology is found in many of the
secondary uncials, but is absent from NBD, the earlier versions, and the Patristic witnesses of the 2nd and 38rd cents. generally. Again, in numerous secondary and late witnesses of the text the frag- mentary Lukan account of the Prayer is filled out and modified by the introduction of some or all of the elements peculiar to the Matthzan account ; but these are manifest assimilations, and therefore have no textual standing in the Third Gospel. Taking Mt 6° and Lk 11°* thus according to the best Greek text, it appears that, after the ad- dress which is common to both, the Lukan account
*It has been sufficiently argued above, under i. 3, that the entire phenomena of the primitive transmission of the Gospel material require us to recognize extensive verbal variation and oceasional thought modification, such as appear in these parallel reports, throughout the narratives of the four Evangelists. There is a striking similarity between the Matthean and Lukan accounts of the Beatitudes and their two accounts of the Lord’s Prayer, and judgments arrived at concerning the features and merits of the one pair will be found to hold in general for the other pair also ; the chief differences between the two forms of the Beatitudes and the two forms of the Lord’s Prayer are due to similar causes operating on both. :
+ So Tholuck, Meyer, Feine, Bruce, H. Weiss, Plummer, B. Weiss, and many others ; those also who think that Jesus gave the Prayer in two forms hold, almost without exception, that the form in Matthew is to be preferred. The modern scholars who regard the Lukan report as the more authentic (Bleek, Kamphausen, H. Holtzmann, Wendt, Bacon), seem to follow too rigid and exclusive a theory of literary criticism. B
t See Westcott and Hort, New Testament in Greek, vol. ii. Appendix; Scrivener, Introd. to the Criticism of the New Testament 4, vol. ii. pp. 323-325 ; Chase, Lord’s Prayer in the Early Church, pp. 168-176.
EXTRA VOL.—3
SERMON ON THE MOUNT 33
has five petitions, while the Matthzan account has six (or seven). The five parallel petitions are: (1) Hallowed be Thy name, (2) Thy Kingdom come, (3) Give us our daily bread, (4) Forgive us our debts (sins), and (5) Bring us not into temptation. To these Matthew adds, between (2) and (3), ‘Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth,’ which is clearly a new petition, and after (5) he adds, ‘ but deliver us from evil,’ which may be a separate petition, but is more likely a fuller, reverse word- ing of the ‘bring us not into temptation.’* Are these two additional clauses in Matthew authentic portions of the Lord’s Prayer? The only denial of their authenticity has come from the few modern scholars who hold to the relative originality of the Lukan account here and elsewhere as against the longer Matthzan account, which they think was expanded and supplemented in transmission.+ But Matthew’s third petition, ‘Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth,’ brings into the Prayer one of Jesus’ essential ideas and constant phrases (cf. Mt 7?1 1250 26%. 42, Jn 4*4 638); it is necessary to the literary structure of the Prayer, since it forms the third member of the first triplet of petitions ; and while in a general way the same thought is expressed in the clause ‘Thy kingdom come,’ the Prayer needs this more definite statement of how the kingdom must be realized, what men must do to make the Kingdom come. It is not difficult to see why this petition was excluded from the Lukan form of the Prayer: the source from which Luke drew his account had passed through a Gentile line of transmission, in the course of which a large part of the characteristically Jewish element in the Gospel story was eliminated, as a detriment to the spread of the Gospel among the Gentiles. Its omission is therefore parallel to the omission of Mt 517-87, and much other material, from the Third Gospel.t With regard to Matthew’s other addi- tion to the Lord’s Prayer, the enlargement of the sixth petition by conjoining the phrase ‘but de- liver us from evil,’ there is less argument for its authenticity ; but its absence from Luke is readily explained in the manner just described, it is a characteristic Jewish conception entirely suitable to Jesus’ thought and expression, and it fits in with the literary structure of the second triplet of petitions, since without it the sixth petition would not correspond in structure with the other two. The phenomena of the parallelism in the wording of the several clauses which Matthew and Luke have in common are striking. The thought and the language of the two accounts agree precisely in the first, second, and sixth petitions (except that in the sixth Luke does not have the phrase aA\a picac nuas ard rob movypod).§ The third petition Luke