May 03, 2010
Cut and Paste
Both of my young grandchildren use the English Standard Version of the Bible, however their dad had the American Standard and their mother the New King James. Last week mom and dad bought new Bibles and switched to the ESV. “Good!” said six year-old David. “Now we’re all going to be reading the same thing.” I can so appreciate where he’s coming from. Every once in a while the congregation is led in saying the Lord’s Prayer in unison…that is until we get to the part about forgive us ‘our debts’ and some of us don’t know whether it’s our debts, or our trespasses (Matt 6:9-13). I conferred with an older preacher and we both agreed that we memorized it as trespasses, but I can’t for the life of me find a translation that uses the word trespass in the Lord’s Prayer. However, the word trespass does appear in the two verses following the Lord’s Prayer in the King James Version. So now I’m in a quandary…did I do a mental cut and paste and get it mixed up, or did my childhood Sunday School teacher goof and give me a gold star for an incorrect memorization?
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----The cut and paste probably happened because Luke 11:4 reads, “forgive us our sins.” The Greek at that passage uses “hamartia” for “sins”, but at Matthew 6:14 it uses “paraptomata” for “trespasses”: “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.” So I doubt if you will find “trespasses” in any translation at Luke 11:4, either. Nor is there any confusion between these Greek terms at either passage amongst any of the major or minor manuscripts of the early centuries. But there is evidence in them of another interesting cut and paste. Two minor manuscripts of the eleventh and twelfth centuries include, “Thy Holy Spirit come upon us and cleanse us,” at Luke 11:2. This inclusion was apparently in at least one manuscript extant during the fourth and fifth centuries, but which we no longer have. For both Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus of Turin quote Luke 11:2 as such, and Tertullian includes it in his comments upon the petitions of the Lord’s prayer at Luke 11:2-4. The team of scholars who prepared the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament presume this reading is an adaptation of a liturgical form of the Lord’s prayer used for baptisms. So don’t feel too perplexed to find “trespasses” cut and pasted into Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer. It has happened before. I remember encountering “trespasses” in the Lord’s prayer as well. It is probably a liturgical adaptation, maybe for no other reason than someone way back when thought it might sound better.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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