In ExpT., besides the passages alreadv quoted, may be com- pared : vi. [1894-95] 50, 140, 146, 190, xiii. [1902] 378, 431, xvi. [1905] 5, 10.
See also O. Dibelius, D«s Vaterunser: Um.rissezueiner Gesch. des Gehets in der alten und mittleren Kirche, Giessen, 1903 (chiefly pp. .59-72 — ' Die Auffassung des Vaterunsers bei griech- ischen Schriftstellern ' ; cf. Ed. v. d. Goltz in Theol. Litztg. 1904, No. 2); C. F. Georg Heinrici, Beitrdge zur Gesch. und Erklur- ung des NT, iii. (Leipzig, 1905, pp. 65-68 [Heinrici is inclined to agree with Harnack as to the petition, ' Thy holy spirit come upon us,' collects parallels from the OT, questions direct relation to SB, and republishes (p. 109 ff.) the explanation of the Lord's Prayer ascribed to Petrus of Laodicea (published by Mai, B!bl. Pat rum, vi. 543, Migne, Patr. Gr. 86 2, p. 3321)]; together with Fed. Morelli, Iiiterpretis reg., Notm ad orationetn dominicam.
Petrus explains '. iTtoCtnov y, tov trwiCTSiii'Toc to (Tmimol y^^uuiv, TOur-trn
Tov i^r,ij.ipr,v, iWi TOM iTovTo., TOV fj-ixXoMTot,. vovyflou Petrus under- stands of the hiocjBoXo^' jcoLT 'i^oxy^v ^\ ovto? y^u.XnTa.i hia. ty^v vTSp-
On the Lord's Prayer on a papyrus of the 6th cent., as amulet, brought to Europe by Willken, but destroyed bv fire in Ham- burg, see Egijp. Explor. Rep. 1902, p. 42, 1903, p. 12 ; /Eg. Urkunden au.s Berlin, iii. No. 954 ; on the clay tablet, from Megara, containing the Lord's Prayer, see ZSTV/ ii. 228, 357.
Eb. Nestle. LORD'S PRAYER (II.).- This name for the prayer which Jesus taught His disciples (Mt 6""^^, Lk IP"*), though used so generally by Christians, does not occur in the NT, and objection to it has sometimes been offered. It might suggest that the prayer was one which Jesus Himself employed, while not only is there no evidence of His having done so, but the jjetition for forgiveness is a suffi- cient assurance that He cannot have made it His own. ' When ye pray,' He said to His disciples, ' pray thus ' ; but His own manner of praying would be different — how different we may judge from the recollections preserved in the Fourth Gospel of one of His prayers (Jn 17). And so it has sometimes been suggested that we should speak not of ' The Lord's Prayer,' but of ' The
* O. Dibelius, Das Vaterunser (1903, p. 165 flf.), knows, for this construction, only Theodoricus of Paderborn, Com. in Or. Dam. M. 147, 333 f.
LORDS PRAYER
LORDS PRAYER
61
Disciples' Prayer,' or that we should content our- selves Avith designating it hj its tirst two words, calling it the ' Our Father,' just as German Pro- testants call it the ' Vaterunser ' and Roman Catholics the ' Paternoster.' But apart fi-om the consecration of long and hallowed use, the name is ajipropriate as giving expression to the fact tiiat the prayer comes to us from the very lips of our Lord, in this sense it is the Lords Prayer. When we use it, we are approaching God with no words ■ of our own, but in the very words which our Master has taught us.
1. Occasion. — Of the two accounts, in Mt. and Lk. respectively, of the occasion when Christ gave tlie prayer, it is generally agreed that if we must choose between them, llk.'s is to be preferred as the more historical. It may be that the author of j the First Gospel, after recording the Lord's in- ! junctions with regard to the spirit and manner of j prayer (Mt 6'"*), thought this a suitable oppor- | tunity to set down the prayer-form which was really given at a different time. And yet there ! seems no positive reason why we should set a.side Mt.'s statement as to the connexion at least in which the prayer was sjwken. If Jesus gave a form of prayer at all. and meant it to l)e used as He gave it, it seems likely that He would repeat it, more especially when dealing with ditl'erent sets of hearers. And if it was natural that He should impart it when one of His disciples, not necessarily one of the Twelve, asked to be taught to pray, it was also natural that, when He had just Ijeen warning His disciples against hypocrisy in prayer and the vain repetitions of the Gentiles, He should instruct them to pray after the brief, simple, and filial manner of this model of approach to God.
2. Structure. — This is exceedingly simple. Apart from the Doxology, which occurs only in Mt., and even there forms no part of the original, but is a later- insertion due to liturgical usage, we have only an invocation and a series of six petitions. Since Augustine, the number of the petitions has com- monly l>een reckoned atseven, the last clause in Mt.'s version being regarded as two separate requests. But the \-iew that now commends itself to most scholars is that the two members of the sentence are to lie taken as one and the same petition nega- tively and positively exjiressed. This view is con- firmed by the fact that in the critical text of Lk. (see RV) the petition runs simply. ' Bring us not into temptation,' and it is further lx)rne out by the RV rendering (almost certainly correct) of ^It."s Tov wovripov by ' the eWl one ' instead of ' evil.' The petition is that we may not be brought into temp- tation, but may be delivered from the Tempter ; and these are two aspects of the selfsame request.