t On this point see the older works of Méller, Augusti, Wet- stein, Lightfoot, and Schéttgen; also, Achelis, Bergpredigt, p. 238f.; B. Weiss, Meyer-Komm. ti. d. Mattevgm. p. 138;
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of these Jewish prayer-formulas are subsequent in origin to the lst cent. A.D., and may well have been influenced by the Christian Prayer. But there is no reason why Jewish prayers of Jesus’ own time should not have contained some of the essential religious ideas which Jesus reaflirms, and in language which the OT had already made sacred. Such parallelisms furnish no proper basis for an attack upon the originality and authority of Jesus. His work was not to make a clean sweep of all existing religious conceptions and phraseology, as though the world had never had any vision of God, or truth, or goodness, or right ; on the contrary, He came to show that the OT revelation was, in its best thought and teaching, a true, Divine revelation, which He would exalt and perfect (Mt 5”, cf. He 1-?). Jesus was not ‘original’ in the sense that He created a wholly new fabric of religious ideas, or introduced a wholly new set of religious terms; that kind of originality was made impossible by the fact that God was already in His world. Jesus’ originality — and the term is not misapplied — consisted in His Divine ability to separate the true from the false, the permanent from the transient, the perfect from the imperfect; and then to carry forward the whole circle of ideas and practices to their ideal expression. The work of an artist is not to manufacture his paints, but to produce with them a perfect picture. Jesus’ mission was to clarify and to perfect religious truth, to show the unity and perspective of its many elements, and to transform humanity by revealing the nature, the beauty, and the necessity of the ideal life.
One observes also with interest how the Lord’s Prayer embodies the experiences of Jesus in His own personal and official life. His teaching grows out of and expresses His own religious perceptions and realizations, so that there is a STi unity, an instructive correspondence, between this Prayer and His experience.* He finds God to be His Father and their Father, the common Father of all, to whom prayer is to be addressed. He lives and works that God may be revered, that His Kingdom may come, and that His will may be perfectly done by men. He has experienced the truth that God cares for the physical needs of men, and it is their privilege to trust Him for these things. He knows and teaches that men are sinful, needing God’s forgiveness ; they also must show a forgiving spirit towards one another. He has Himself passed through severe temptations, praying for deliverance from them (cf. Mk 14°6. 88, Mt 4!).+ In giving this ideal Prayer to His dis- ciples, Jesus does not necessarily imply that His experience is in no respect different from theirs, e.g. that there is no uniqueness in His relation to God, or in His character and career as regards sin. But He does mean that He has shared humanity with them, has lived through its experiences, has found the way to attain the human ideal, and will declare to them in His words and in Himself the secret of the true life.
(4) An analysis of the Lord’s Prayer, accepting the Mattheean form as practically authentic, dis- closes a well-considered literary structure: there are seven clauses in all, the first containing the address, followed by two groups of petitions, three in each. Regard, therefore, is had to the sacred Plummer, art. Lorp’s Prayer in vol. iii. ; Nestle, art. ‘ Lord’s Prayer’ in Encycl. Bibl. iii. 2821; Taylor, Sayings of the Jewish Father's2 (1900), Pp. 124-130; Dalman, Worte Jesu, i, 299-306 ; i a Goltz, Das Gebet in der dltesten Christenheit (1901), pp.
* See v. d. Goltz, op, cit. yp. 1-53; Burton, ‘The Personal Religion of Jesus’ in Biblical World, vol. xiv. (1899), pp. 394-403,
+ Chase, Lord’s Prayer in the Early Church (1901), p. 104f.,
notes, but exaggerates, the relation of the Lord’s Prayer to the personal experiences of Jesus.
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numbers 3 and 7, for the purpose of moulding per- fectly the literary form of the Prayer.* The first group of petitions pertains to God—‘ Thy name,’ ‘Thy kingdom,’ ‘ Thy will.’ They express the most profound and comprehensive aspiration of men, that God may be all in all. Only when this is the supreme desire, can one offer the three petitions of the second group, which pertain to the needs of the individual life—‘ our amily bread,’ ‘our debts,’ ‘ de- liverance from temptation.’ The several clauses would have been, in the original Aramaic, shorter and more nearly uniform in length than appears in a Greek translation. One cannot be certain whether the ‘as in heaven, so on earth,’ which fol- lows the third petition, pertains to that alone, or equally to all the three petitions of the group.+ The address of the Prayer (Ildrep quay 6 év rots ovpavois) introduces the term ‘Father,’ which was Jesus’ prevailing and characteristic designation for God. It signified God’s supremacy, authority, and power, but at the same time His love, patience, and care formen. The OT also has the term, but in the national sense, denoting God’s relation to His covenant people; later there grew up the individual consciousness, and God came to be thought of as a personal Father to the worshipper.{ Jesus was accustomed to use this title for God in various ways :§ often without any limiting attribu- tive except the article, often also with a limiting ‘my’ or ‘your’; but it is only in this passage, Mt 6°, that Jesus is reported to have used the attributive ‘our.’ One might therefore infer that this ‘our’ is an unauthentic liturgical addition ; but this inference is neither necessary nor satis- factory. ‘Our Father’ is a significant address, indicating at once the ground and the motive of prayer to Him, as well as the brotherhood of men under a common Father; the ‘our’ contributes an important element, therefore, to the address, and the occasion of its use is great enough to call for a special expression. It may be that the phrase ‘ Our Father’ was oftener upon Jesus’ lips than our Gospel records now show ; the widening gulf which the disciples fixed between their ascended Lord and themselves might tend to the disuse of phrases which indicated that ‘it behoved him in all things