Re: CHAT: Lord's Prayer

I had a very busy week with three late evenings, so I'm desperately trying
to catch up on the 100+ mails I'm getting each day.   No doubt by the time
this gets sent off, some will be a bit behind in the thread.  Anyway, FWIW
here are a few of my observations:

[OUR FATHER WHO ART IN HEAVEN]
At 10:29 am -0500 12/11/99, Bryan Maloney wrote:
[....]
>For example, the following still adheres pretty much to the scansion of
>the more familiar but has had the English phrasing and word choice
>revised to make the intended meaning clearer to a modern English speaker:
>
>Our Father, who is in heaven,
                 ^ surely this should be "are"?

We are addressing God the Father.  The relative with second person forms
has caused great trouble for those trying to put Christian liturgies into
modern English. Forms like "Our father, you who are...." are IMO too
stilted.

The traditional "who art" avoids this.  But the Greek, in fact, doesn't
have any relative or 2nd person verb!  It just has:

Pater he:mo:n ho en tois ouranois
Our Father in the heavens

The "who art" is due to the Latin form 'Pater noster qui es in caelis';
'qui es' is necessary in Latin where in the ancient language phrases
beginning with prepositions could be used only adverbially, not
adjectivally.  Ancient Greek could use them either way, just as English
does.


>May your kingdom come,
>May your will be done
>On earth as it is in Heaven.
>Give us this day our daily bread,
>And forgive us our debts
>As we forgive our debtors,
>And lead us away from temptation,
>And deliver us from the Evil One.
>For yours is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory,
>Amen.

[HALLOWED BE...ETC]
At 12:46 am -0600 12/11/99, Ed Heil wrote:
[....]
>To make it truly everyday English you'd probably have to say
>something
>like "May your kingdom come... May your will be done... May your name
>
>be considered holy"?
No - 'may....' expresses a wish which, in Greek, would require the optative
mood.

At 12:53 pm -0500 12/11/99, Bryan Maloney wrote:
[....]
>> 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.
The original Greek is not subjunctive either.  The 3rd singular
_imperative_ is used in all three petitions:
hagiasthe:to: to onoma sou
elthato: he: basileia sou
gene:sthe:to: to thele:ma sou.......

The equivalent modern English would be something like: "Let your name be
kept holy; let your kingdom come..." etc

But that somehow doesn't have the same feel as the traditional forms  :)


[THE DOXOLOGY]
At 9:07 pm -0800 11/11/99, Barry Garcia wrote:
[snip]
>
>In mass, we stop after "but deliver us from evil".
That's because the prayer actually does stop there as given in the oldest
texts of the scriptures.

>Thats where the priest
>says a small separate prayer, and then after he is done we say: "For the
>kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever
>Amen".
That's a version of the doxology that got added to some later texts &
appears in some of the older translations of Matthew.  It was common (and
indeed still is) to add doxolgies to passages of scripture used in
liturgical worship.
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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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