WM 378: Gerhard: DOXOLOGY of the Lord's Prayer (Matt 6:13b) NOT SUPERFLUOUS!

 

Blog post on the doxology of the Lord's Prayer.

JTR

WM 285: James White, Doxology of the Lord's Prayer, Baptist Catechism, and "Confessionalism gone awry"

 

Getting back in the groove!

JTR

John A. Broadus's Commentary on Matthew, the Doxology of the Lord's Prayer, and a Providential Irony

Note: Article adopted from tweets this week (@Riddle1689).

I got this copy of John Broadus's Commentary on Matthew (1886) in the mail this week. I’m preaching through Matthew on Sunday mornings and found this for only $10 on amazon.

The Broadus commentary on Matthew is a whopper. After 51 pp. of front matter, including a 43-page general series intro by A. Hovey and an author's preface, the commentary and indices extend to 610 pp.

Sad to see inroads of modern textual criticism in Broadus's Matthew Commentary (1886). Hovey's intro zealously extols Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. The Preface notes it follows "the Common English Version... but with constant comparison of the recent Anglo-American revision" (xlix).

One way that Broadus’s Matthew Commentary (1886) shows the inroads of modern textual criticism comes in its complete rejection of the authenticity of the doxology of the Lord’s Prayer (Matt 6:13b).

Broadus writes: “The doxology to this prayer in Comm. Ver. Is beyond all question spurious and rightly omitted by Rev. Ver. We may give up the pleasing and familiar words with regret, but surely it is more important to know what the Bible really contains and really means, than to cling to something not really in the Bible, merely because it gratifies our taste, or even because it has for us some precious associations” (139).

This confident statement contra the doxology’s authenticity is, however, open to challenge (see WM 123).

Within the pages of the commentary, I discovered a colorized devotional card with the Lord’s Prayer, which includes the doxology. I found this a providential irony. Through scholars for over 150 years now have tried to convince us that the doxology is spurious, the Lord’s people keep clinging to it. Is this only to gratify their tastes, or due to “some precious associations”? Or, does it display this tenacity, because it is the inspired Word of God?

JTR

WM 218: Doxology or Devil? A Case for the Longer Ending of the Lord's Prayer

Thanks to Brett Mahlen and Christian McShaffrey for joining me on this episode to discuss their recent article, "Doxology or Devil? A Case for the Longer Ending of the Lord's Prayer," Puritan Reformed Journal, Vol. 13, No. 2 (2021): 21-31. You can find a link to the article here.

JTR

The Vision (5.28.21): The Spiritual Discipline of Prayer

 

Image: Rose, North Garden, Virginia, May 2021

Note: Devotion taken from last Sunday's sermon on Matthew 6:5-15 (audio not yet available).

And when thou prayest… (Matthew 6:5).

In the opening verses of Matthew chapter 6 (vv. 1-18), Christ gives guidance for three spiritual disciplines or acts of piety to be practiced by his disciples. Those include: almsgiving (vv. 1-4); prayer (vv. 5-15); and fasting (vv. 16-18).

The second of these two disciplines is prayer. Christ begins, “And when thou prayest….” (v. 5). This reminds us of the teaching on almsgiving, “But when thou doest alms…. (v. 3).” Just as it is expected that a disciple will give alms, it is also expected that a disciple will give himself to prayer. Prayer is not optional in the Christian life. There can be no such thing as a prayerless Christian.

Prayer is both speaking to God (giving to him praise and thanksgiving; offering to him petitions, intercessions, and supplications), and it is listening to God. It is being still and knowing that he is God. It is listening as he speaks in “a still, small voice” as he did to the prophet Elijah (2 Kings 19:12).

As part of Christ’s teaching on prayer in the Sermon on the Mount, he provides his students what we call the Lord’s Prayer as a model prayer (Matt 6:9-13), a pattern which we can follow.

One commentator has referred to the Lord’s Prayer as “the compositional center” of the Sermon on the Mount (Alfeyev, Sermon on the Mount, 217). Indeed, it is nearly dead center in this sermon. There are 54 verses from the mouth of Christ coming before the Lord’s Prayer (from Matt 5:3—6:8) and 47 verses that come after it (from 6:14—7:27). We might round it to about 50 verses before the Lord’s Prayer and about 50 verses after.

Not only is the Lord’s Prayer the “compositional center” of the Sermon of the Mount (Matt 5—7), but the teaching on prayer is at the center of the teaching on piety in Matt 6:1-18 (with almsgiving coming before it and fasting after it). Something is being told us about the centrality of prayer in the Christian life.

Let us then have the attitude of the disciples who came to Christ asking, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1), and let us take up the spiritual discipline of prayer.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

WM 123: Text Note: The Doxology of the Lord's Prayer (Matt 6:13b)

I have recorded and posted WM 123: Text Note: The Doxology of the Lord's Prayer (Matt 6:13b) (Listen here).

Here are my notes:

When illustrating the differences between the modern and traditional text of the NT the doxology of the Lord’s Prayer (Matt 6:13b) proves an important example, since this passage is so well known and loved in liturgy and personal piety.

The key questions: What did the Lord Jesus teach his disciples to pray? What did Matthew record when he included this prayer in his Gospel in the Sermon on the Mount?

Part One: An email exchange on the Doxology of the Lord’s Prayer (Matt 6:13b):

Back on March 31 a listener wrote (exchange slightly edited):

Hello again Pastor,

I was wondering if you have done anything like a podcast on the ending of the Lord’s Prayer?

I was in a conversation the other day with someone from church and the authenticity of the ending of the Lord’s Prayer came up.  They said “it’s not in Erasmus”

I just said well I didn’t know that and that is interesting.

I wasn’t really looking for a debate.

I do see it in almost all the printed texts it seems from Beza, Steph.... but…I don’t see it in Erasmus from what I can tell at least.

But all my old Reformed commentaries have it from John Calvin to John Gill.

My response (a month later on May 1):

Sorry to be so long in getting back.

I'd love to do a WM on Matt 6:13b sometime. Hopefully, I'll get to it eventually.

I checked my digital copy of Erasmus's first edition (1516), and it is there in both Greek and Latin. I'll attach a picture.

You may know that the doxology also appears in the Lord's Prayer when cited in chapter 8 of the Didache (but omitting "the kingdom"), which dates to c. 100, so it is the earliest attested reading.

Hope this helps, JTR

Image: Erasmus 1516 Greek and Latin NT (including Matt 6:13b):

To which he responded the next day (May 2):

Thanks for the response. It does help.

Oddly it was my Pastor that said it wasn’t in Erasmus. He probably just heard someone blabbering nonsense about the ending one day. There is so much! bad information out there on this issue of the text.

Have a great day

Part Two: Tyndale and the Doxology of the Lord’s Prayer (Matt 6:13b):

I thought of that exchange recently when someone pointed me to a blog article on text criticism that appeared on the Gospel Coalition website on April 11, 2019. The article is by Justin Dillehay, pastor of Grace BC in Hartsville, TN, and titled “4 Ways to Shepherd Your Flock Through Textual Variants” (read it here), and it also addresses the doxology of the Lord’s Prayer (Matt 6:13b).

In the article he makes reference to Tyndale’s omission of Matt 6:13b in the first edition of his English Bible (1526).

So, I wondered if the earlier writer’s pastor had confused Tyndale with Erasmus (or the if the writer had confused his pastor’s words).

I also wanted to be sure this was factually accurate, so I checked a digital copy of Tyndale’s 1526 online, and it does, indeed, omit Matt 6:13b. Here is an image from Tyndale's 1526 NT:

I then, however, checked my copy of David Daniell’s modern spelling edition of Tyndale's 1534 NT (Yale, 1989, 1995) and found it includes the doxology: “For thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory for ever. Amen.” So, I searched for a digital copy of the original of Tyndale's 1534 NT also:

In his introduction to his edition of Tyndale’s 1534 NT, David Daniell writes:

“Tyndale translated the New Testament twice, and continually revised. His 1534 New Testament was his greatest work.”

We are left to ponder why Tyndale omitted Matthew 6:13b in his 1526 edition. It is possible that he did so in order to bring his translation of the prayer into conformity with the Latin Vulgate which also omits it. This is one of many examples  of places where the modern critical text adopts readings in line with the Vulgate. The Clementine Vulgate concludes the Lord’s Prayer: “Et ne nos inducas in tentationem. Sed libera nos a malo. Amen.” (Matt 6:13). The Lord’s Prayer which includes the doxology might therefore be considered a distinctively Protestant understanding of the prayer.

It is important to remember that it was the 1534, not the 1526 edition, which is considered to be Tyndale’s “greatest work.” The fact that he omitted the doxology of the Lord’s Prayer in the preliminary 1526 NT, therefore, should not be used as a justification for its omission today, especially since upon later consideration Tyndale determined to include it.

Part Three: A Brief Look at the External Evidence:

In support of the modern critical text’s omission: Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, along with D, Z, 1070, family 1, Lectionary 2211. Among versional support we have the Latin tradition, Middle Egyptian (Mesokemetic), and some Bohairic Coptic mss. Among the Fathers Origen is cited.

In support of the traditional text we have K, L, W, Delta, Theta, family 13, 33, etc. and the Majority tradition. Among the versions we have some individual Latin mss. like f and q, the Harklean Syriac, some Boharic Coptic mss., etc.

Most interesting is the reading in chapter 8 of the Didache (c. 100) which includes the doxology but omits “the kingdom” reading: “thine is the power and glory forever.” It also omits the “Amen” and is followed by the injunction: “Pray thus three times a day.”

The NA 28 puts a thumb on the scale by prefacing the textual variants by a reference in parenthesis to the prayer of David in 1 Chronicles 29:11-13. The implication apparently being that later scribes would have tried to make David’s doxology part of the prayer of Jesus, the Son of David. But this begs the question as to whether Christ himself appropriated these words in order intentionally to echo David.

NA 28 also adds to the apparatus an obscure variant from the fifteenth century ms. 1253 which reads: “for thine is the kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit forever. Amen.” This suggests that the ending was malleable and open to orthodox “improvement.” But the ending in 1253 is clearly late while the doxology is very early (cf. Didache, W, etc.).

Metzger’s textual commentary (second edition) offers more insight on the modern text critical assessment.

Part Four: Conclusion:

The doxology (including the Amen) is the fitting ending to the Lord’s Prayer. It’s appearance in the Didache proves it to be the earliest attested reading. Clearly, it is not a late development. It was the reading affirmed in the majority of Greek manuscripts, including some of the earliest age (like W) and is only excluded by a handful of Greek mss. Though omitted in the Latin tradition, it was nevertheless, preserved in the West, with the printing of the TR and distinctively affirmed by various Protestant translations, including Tyndale’s definitive 1534 English translation.

JTR