Do We Need a New Lord’s Prayer?

Pope Francis is no stranger to controversy.  This week he suggested that Catholics need to re-translate part of the text of the Lord’s Prayer.  Now, before you say, so what?, consider that Christians the world over pray the Lord’s prayer weekly in worship and some daily in their personal devotions. It is part of the spiritual heritage of the ages.

Now, I realize, I’m limited in this post to the English language and more Catholics around the world don’t speak English than do.  But still, it seems, from my limited knowledge of languages, that the idea the Pope is concerned about is reproduced in other western language versions of the Lord’s Prayer.

In particular, the line in question is the one which says “lead us not into temptation” (Matt 6:13; Luke 11:6).  The phrase makes it seem, he says, as if God actively leads his people to be tempted to sin.  Instead, he says, we should translate the line “do not let us fall into sin.”

Now let’s see how three major English translations render that line.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil . . .  (King James Version)

And do not bring us to the time of trial
but rescue us from the evil one.  (New Revised Standard Version)

And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one. (New International Version)

Four observations.  First, most western Christians have memorized the King James Version (KJV).  Second, the power of the KJV to shape modern translations should not be underestimated.  Even translations like THE VOICE use the same language.  Third, the NRSV comes closest to the Pope’s suggestion. Four, modern translations view the prayer as poetic and so render it in poetic verse.

The challenge of translation from one language to the next is a significant one.  I’ve written about this problem on this site. But with the NT it is even more challenging because we are even further removed from the original source than we might imagine.  Jesus spoke Aramaic.  The Gospels are written in Greek.  And most of us rely heavily on English translations.

Now, I think the Pope is onto something to which Christians—Protestant, Catholics and Orthodox—need to pay attention.  God does not tempt people to sin. They are tempted by their own desires, or so says James (1:13-15).

The crux of the matter is the meaning of the word peirasmos. It is a word that does not occur outside the New Testament, so we can’t appeal to other Greek texts from the period—what scholars call comparative philology.  Based on the NT itself, it seems the semantic field or range of meanings of this Greek word includes temptation (to sin) and trial or testing (of faith).  If we take the rest of the NT seriously, as it seems the translators of the NRSV, it is best to take this as something like “(to God) do not bring us to a time of testing.”  The opposite is this: “(God) rescue us from the evil one.”

It seems to me that the prayer of Jesus is similar to Jewish prayers from the same period.  They ask roughly the same thing.  “God, do not hand your people over to trials and tests, instead rescue them from evil.”  In the arc of the Scriptural story think of someone like Job, Abraham (and his near sacrifice of Isaac), and the people of Israel in exile.

Whether Pope Francis’ teaching on this makes it down to your average congregation, we will see. If I were a “bettin’ man,” I’d say it will.  In the end, no we don’t need a new Lord’s prayer, what we do need is good translations of the one we have.