Re: CHAT: Lord's Prayer

On Fri, 12 Nov 1999, Don Blaheta wrote:

> meter).  Likewise, what's this with "sin against us", which means
> something *entirely* different from "trespass against us"---laux mi, you
> can only sin against God, not other people.  Whereas a trespass against
Wrong--at least the Orthodox Church teaches that we can sin against God,
against people,  against countries, etc.  The idea that "sin" is
EXCLUSIVELY and ONLY "spiritual crime" is an aberration, not part of the
oldest Hebrew and early Christian tradition of interpretation.  The
English word "sin" is used to translate the Greek "amartia"--meaning "to
miss the mark".  It can refer to "spiritual crime" but to a host of OTHER
acts that "miss the mark" as well.

> to mind some sort of legalistic thing.  Not to mention that "lead us
> not into" is *quite* different from "save us from".
A literal interpretation of "lead us not into" is also an outright
mistake.  Perusal of the original Greek, informed by a knowledge of the
metaphor of the day and place, tells us that the phrase word-for-word
translated as "lead us not into" is actually a poetic way of saying "lead
us away from".

> Or perhaps "your kingdom shall come...", but that doesn't have the right
> prayery sort of ring to it.

But that isn't subjunctive.  The original is subjunctive.