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From: harwood@cvl.UUCP (David Harwood)
Newsgroups: mod.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Meditations/Questions on The Lord's Prayer
Message-ID: <6373@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Mon, 20-Oct-86 22:29:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.6373
Posted: Mon Oct 20 22:29:07 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 21-Oct-86 18:02:03 EDT
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[no, the lineeater has not suddenly struck Rutgers.  The last message
 had a tab where one didn't belong.  Let's try this again.  In a
 Christian group, it is *not* appropriate to offer sacrifices to
 the lineeater.  --clh]

	As RSV notes, there are 7 petitions to the Lord's Prayer.
The phrase "on earth as in heaven" belongs to each of the first three
which are concerned with God's glory. This is a traditional Jewish
concept, exemplified when Moses, later David, was to build a Tabernacle,
later Temple, for the Lord on Earth after the design of the one in
Heaven revealed to him by God. This is what Christ is doing - making
a heavenly Temple among the hearts of mankind; and for this reason,
more than any other, Jesus is called "Son of David", since he is
the spiritual descendent of David who would build a Temple for the
Lord on Earth, just as we are by our faith the offspring of
Abraham.
	Otherwise, some of the verses are perhaps related to other
texts:
	"Our Father ... Hallowed be Thy Name" -> John 12, "Father, 
glorify Your Name," also cf John 17, "I have made Your Name known...,"
Christ being the self-revelation of God. Cf Exodus 3 where God first
reveals Himself (His Name, His self-revelation flashing from amidst 
"the bush") to Moses; also the Messianic Psalm 22, "I shall proclaim 
Your Name to my brothers..."
	"Thy kingdom come..." -> the ambiguity of the realized/future
kingdom of God, realized among some and to be fulfilled among all,
with the coming of Christ. The same ambiguity lies in the traditional
NT Greek expression, "Maranatha" - the Lord has come/ Let the Lord come.
	As well known, "Give us this day our daily bread ..." is the
petition for the providential manna which appeared daily to the Hebrews
as they journeyed in the wilderness of Sin.
	Found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Qumran Psalter of ~100 B.C.
includes additional Psalms of David, with these verses from pre-Christian
Psalm 155:
	"My transgressions do not remember against me..." becomes
"Forgive us our tresspasses ..." We also have in QPs155, "The rewards
of evil may the Judge of truth turn away from me..."
	And "Oh Lord, do not condemn me according to my sins ..."
becomes the Lukan, "Forgive us our sins ..." The traditional Jewish
concept of the symmetry of God's justice is present everywhere in the
Gospels: God judges individuals as we judge others; our kindness and
mercy, else unkindness and retaliation, is reflected back upon us. So
we have "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and earlier
Hillel's "Do not to others what you would not have others do to you,"
also found in the very important first century Christian writing, Didache.
And similarly the Lukan version of the Lord's Prayer, "Forgive us our 
sins as we forgive others ..."; and in Mattean admonition, "if you do 
not forgive others their failings, neither shall our heavenly Father
forgive you."
	Also we read in QPs155,	"lead me not into that which is too 
difficult for me," which becomes "lead us not into temptation..."
	And there, "O Lord, purify me from the evil plague,
and do not let it return again to me...", becomes "Deliver us from
evil (or the evil one)." An marginal annotation to one Syriac version
of Ps 155 has "the man" referring to "plague", perhaps paralleling
the personification, "evil one".
	How very important for our understanding of NT thought is
the ancient religious ideology of Judaism, especially of the Essenes at
Qumran, as well as of the Pharisees who precede rabbinical Judaism.
Both old and new are stubbornly misunderstood without the other.
	As an aside, I like to point out to my friends that Judaism 
and Christianity are like the ass and its colt offspring which bear 
the Messiah unto the City of Peace - the colt of the ass being the 
only unclean animal to be redeemed for service, by sacrifice of a perfect
lamb. Cf Exodus on the feast of first-fruits (Tabernacles). Christ comes
upon the ass, itself cloaked with garments of the disciples - the ass
is as them. 
	Of course, the Messianic prophecy of Zechariah is to be fulfilled
by Christ; this is derived by elaboration of Jewish tradition from the
earlier Messianic blessing in Genesis of Judah by Jacob, which refers to
the colt and ass which are tethered together, as in the Gospel, to the
eternal vine.
	Now, Luke, written for Gentile Christians, follows Mark and has
Christ come upon the colt of an ass - the offspring alone; one might say,
upon Gentile Christians without Jews. But Matthew was written for Jewish
Christian communities, according to scholars -- and there we read that
Christ has come upon both the ass and its offspring colt; one might say,
upon Jews as well as their Gentile religious offspring.
	The Lord has come/May the Lord come.

						David Harwood