The Lord's Prayer: Our Father who are in heaven

Pater Noster or Our Father - The Lord's Prayer

The Lord's Prayer (also known as the Our Father or Pater Noster) is perhaps the best-known prayer in Christianity and is directed to the One and Only who is considerd Father of us all. Two versions of it occur in the New Testament, one in the Gospel of Matthew 6:9–13 as part of the discourse on ostentation, a section of the Sermon on the Mount; and the other in the Gospel of Luke 11:2–4.

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus gives a clear view how people do have to behave, between which border men may move and to whom they must pray, not to him but to his Father who is also our Father.

Rabbi Aron Mendes Chumaceiro has said that nearly all the elements of the prayer have counterparts in the Jewish Bible and Deuterocanonical books: the first part in Isaiah 63:15-16 ("Look down from heaven and see, from your holy and beautiful habitation ... For you are our Father ...") and Ezekiel 36:23 ("I will vindicate the holiness of my great name ...") and 38:23 ("I will show my greatness and my holiness and make myself known in the eyes of many nations ..."), the second part in Obadiah 1:21 ("Saviours shall go up to Mount Zion to rule Mount Esau, and the kingdom shall be the LORD's") and 1 Samuel 3:18 ("... It is the LORD. Let him do what seems good to him"), the third part in Proverbs 30:8 ("... feed me with my apportioned bread"), the fourth part in Sirach 28:2 ("Forgive your neighbour the wrong he has done, and then your sins will be pardoned when you pray"). "Deliver us from evil" can be compared with Psalm 119:133 ("... let no iniquity get dominion over me.").Chumaceiro says that, because the idea of God leading a human into temptation contradicts the righteousness and love of God, "Lead us not into temptation" has no counterpart in the Old Testament.

The word "πειρασμός", which is translated as "temptation", could also be translated as "test" or "trial", making evident the attitude of someone's heart. Well-known examples in the Old Testament are God's test of Abraham (Genesis 22:1), his "moving" (the Hebrew word means basically "to prick, as by weeds, thorns") David to do (numbering Israel) what David later acknowledged as sin (2 Samuel 24:1-10; see also 1 Chronicles 21:1-7), and the Book of Job.

There are several different English translations of the Lord's Prayer from Greek or Latin. One of the first texts in English is the Northumbrian translation from around 650. The three best-known are

• The translation in the 1662 Anglican Book of Common Prayer (BCP) of the Church of England

• The slightly modernized form used in the Catholic mass and (along with the doxology) in the 1928 version of the Prayer Book of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America

• The 1988 translation of the ecumenical English Language Liturgical Consultation (ELLC).

Our Father who art in heaven,

hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come.

Thy will be done

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,

and forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive those who trespass against us,

and lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom,

and the power, and the glory,

for ever and ever.

Amen.

The Lord's prayer is an abbreviated version of the Jewish Amidah prayers. This prayer has been prayed 3 times a day by Jews all over the world for many centuries.

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Matthew 6:9–13

Pray then like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.