Church of the Resurrection

Origins of the Our Father

Contents:


Where did the Our Father come from?
  1. Scripture
  2. The Original Words of Jesus
  3. Similarities between Talmud Prayers and the "Our Father"
The Doxology
  1. Why is it only added at Mass?
  2. Didache
  3. Doxology Defined
  4. Greater Doxology
  5. Lesser Doxology
Use of the "Our Father" from Ancient Times
  1. In the Mass
  2. In Baptism
  3. In the Divine Office
  4. In Monasteries

Where did the Our Father prayer come from?

From Scripture

The Our Father or Lord's Prayer is probably the best known prayer in Christianity. Its author is Jesus Christ. One version is found in Scripture in Luke (Lk 11: 2-4) where the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray, and the second version is found in Matthew in the Sermon on the Mount. (Mt 6:9-13) (see poster). The two versions are different, but form a common outline. Luke's version presents a brief text of 5 petitions or requests, while Matthew gives us a more developed version of seven petitions. Matthew's version is the one we use today.

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Which are the original words of Jesus?

The logical conclusion might be that no one form records the exact words of Jesus who could have repeated them at different times and different places using variations. Both versions also reflect editorial modifications by the authors of the gospels to reflect the traditions of the separate groups of Greek-speaking Christians which the authors represented. The Gospel writers were not as concerned about the exact words of Jesus as much as conveying the intent of Jesus' words.

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Similarities Between Jewish Talmud Prayers and the Our Father

There are similarities between the Our Father prayer and prayers of Jewish origin which were current about the time of Christ. These resemblances are partial and can be found in the Kaddish in the Talmud, a Jewish document of the 2nd to 5th century. The invocation of "Our Father" or Abba is common in Jewish liturgy. E.g. "Our Father, our King! Disclose the glory of Thy Kingdom unto us speedily," or in Hasidaean circles, "Our Father who art in heaven" was commonly used. In the Kaddish, "May His great name be hallowed in the world which He created, according to His will, and may He establish His Kingdom speedily and at a near time."

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The Doxology

Why don't Catholics end the Our Father with the words, "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory" except at Mass?

This ending to the Our Father commonly used by many Protestants and used by Catholics in the Mass is called the DOXOLOGY. The word "doxology" comes from Judaism and the early Christian communities. It was the practice in the early days of the Church to end sermons and prayers with a doxology, that is, words of praise to God. A popular theory is that the doxology was originally added as a result of its use during liturgy, possibly based on 1 Chronicles 29:11, as it was standard for Jewish prayers to have doxological endings.

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Didache

One of the earliest sources where the doxology is found at the end of the Our Father is the Didache, a first century manual of morals, worship and doctrine of the Church dating from approximately 50-160 C.E. (or A.D.)
Didache, Chapter 8 (www.earlychristianwritings.com)
8:3 Neither pray you as the hypocrites, but as the Lord commanded in His Gospel, thus pray you:
8:4 Our Father, Who are in heaven, hallowed be thy name;
8:5 Thy kingdom come;
8:6 Thy will be done, as in heaven, so also on earth;
8:7 Give us today our daily bread;
8:8 And forgive us our debt, as we also forgive our debtors;
8:9 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one;
8:10 For thine is the power and the glory for ever and ever.
8:11 Pray thus three times a day.

Some of the earliest Greek copies or manuscripts of the Gospels added this ending to the original Gospel text of the Our Father and other copies did not. St Jerome (347-420 C.E.) in translating the New Testament from the original Hebrew and Greek manuscripts to Latin did not include this doxology rejecting it as unauthentic, thus it was not included in Catholic Bibles. The doxology is also not found in some early non-Catholic translations, e.g., The Original Wickliff's Bible (1379) or Tynedale's Testament (1526). It is found in the manuscript that was used in the early 1600s in England to translate the King James Bible. The Protestant Revised Version of the Bible (1881) omits the doxology as do current editions of the Revised Standard Version and the New Revised Standard Version.

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Doxology Defined

1) a usually liturgical expression of praise to God. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
2) a word for the Christian prayers of praise that are usually directed to the Trinity. (Catholic Faith Handbook for Youth, St. Marys Press, 2004).

Greater Doxology
(Catholic Source Book, P. Klein, Brown-Roa, 2000)

"Glory to God in the Highest", spoken in unison or sung at Mass, is the greater doxology.
Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth,
Lord God, heavenly King, Almighty God and Father
We worship you, we give you thanks,
We praise you for your glory
Etc.

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Lesser Doxology
(Catholic Source Book)

Glory to the Father is the lesser doxology, said at the end of psalms in the Liturgy of the Hours or after each decade of the rosary. Probably adapted from a Jewish blessing , the "Glory Be" was influenced by the Trinitarian Baptism formula (Mt 28:19). It was forbidden by English Puritans as unscriptural.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,
As it was in the beginning is now, and will be forever. Amen

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Use of the Our Father From Ancient Times..

In the Mass

Pope St. Gregory I (540-604 C.E.) gave the Our Father its present place in the Roman Mass between the Preparation rite (he took and blessed) and the Communion rite (he broke and gave). The communal praying of the Lord's Prayer at Mass gathers up the intercessions that accompany the consecration of the bread and wine into Christ's Body and Blood and prepares the worshipers for Holy Communion. It is as though the prayer gathers up all our intentions and lifts them up to our nurturing Father before opening the door to the banqueting table of Communion.

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In Baptism

From the earliest times, the Our Father has been a conspicuous feature in the ritual of Baptism.

In the Divine Office

The Our Father recurs repeatedly in the Divine Office besides being recited both as the beginning and at the end. (The Divine Office consists of the psalms, readings and prayers said daily by ordained priests.)

In Monasteries

In the early centuries of the church, the 150 Psalms constituted the prayer book of Jews, Jesus, and early Christians which included monks and lay brothers in monastic communities. Lay brothers often couldn'r read and knew no Latin so they recited the Our Father in Latin in lieu of reading the psalms in daily prayer. To count the number of times they recited the prayer, often over a hundred, they made use of pebbles or beads strung upon a cord, and this apparatus was commonly known as a "pater-noster" ('our father' in Latin). Today we call it a rosary, and Hail Marys have replaced most of the Our Fathers.

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