St Luke's Church Eccleshill - Articles from "The Link"

In our "Questions to the clergy" slot, John will try to answer any query you throw at him, without hesitation, deviation or repetition...

What form of the Lord's Prayer?

Q. Why has the Lord’s Prayer been modernized, and what governs whether a church uses the modern version or the old one?

A. This question is in two halves.

First, the reason the Lord’s Prayer has been modernized is the same as why bible translations and other prayers are now in modern English. The New Testament documents were all written in the up-to-date language (Koine Greek) of the time, and from them we can tell that early Christians prayed to God in the same style of language as they used to talk to each other. Prayer is simply talking to God, and we need to learn to talk naturally to him.

From that it follows that to have a church service in an ancient form of English is deeply unhelpful when you’re trying to teach people to pray. And therefore all the old prayers have been brought into modern language. Some, I admit, less successfully than others.

Of course, different people translate things differently. So in order to avoid churches all using different versions of traditional prayers, and confusing everyone, there was an International Commission on English Texts which worked across the denominations to make sure that everyone used the same versions. It didn’t quite work out like that in the Lord’s Prayer (the ICET version has “save us from the time of trial” instead of “lead us not into temptation”) but it has nearly worked. However, the Church of Scotland still uses “debts” instead of “sins” (or “trespasses” in the old version). (There’s a good item on Wikipedia about all this.)

About which form a church uses, when modern-language services were first introduced, there was a fairly strong line that you did the same thing throughout the whole service - either all ancient or all modern. So the 1928 book, Series 1 and Series 2 services all used the old words, and Series 3 and the ASB used the new ones. And that’s why St Luke’s uses the new one - we began it with Series 3 (1971), moved on to the ASB, and we now use the form of Common Worship which is closest to what we did when we used ASB.

I must admit that it disturbs me a bit that many Christians seem to have difficulties with the words of the new Lord’s Prayer - it has, after all, been going 35 years now! Maybe we ought to have some Sundays when we don’t give out service books? Instead we could ask everyone to join in the prayers by memory! On second thoughts - maybe not?

John Hartley

	*St Luke's Church, Eccleshill - The Link* magazine** The Link is published monthly at 40p (Senior Citizens 35p), and we deliver free within the parish and post copies (at the reader's expense) to those who request it. Please contact us if you would like a free copy for a trial period. January 2007, Page 8.
Home Page. Index of articles: by subject, by date. In this issue: (January 2007) New gifts, Welcome, Luke, Song, Question. Other questions.	In our "Questions to the clergy" slot, John will try to answer any query you throw at him, without hesitation, deviation or repetition... What form of the Lord's Prayer? Q. Why has the Lord’s Prayer been modernized, and what governs whether a church uses the modern version or the old one? A. This question is in two halves. First, the reason the Lord’s Prayer has been modernized is the same as why bible translations and other prayers are now in modern English. The New Testament documents were all written in the up-to-date language (Koine Greek) of the time, and from them we can tell that early Christians prayed to God in the same style of language as they used to talk to each other. Prayer is simply talking to God, and we need to learn to talk naturally to him. From that it follows that to have a church service in an ancient form of English is deeply unhelpful when you’re trying to teach people to pray. And therefore all the old prayers have been brought into modern language. Some, I admit, less successfully than others. Of course, different people translate things differently. So in order to avoid churches all using different versions of traditional prayers, and confusing everyone, there was an International Commission on English Texts which worked across the denominations to make sure that everyone used the same versions. It didn’t quite work out like that in the Lord’s Prayer (the ICET version has “save us from the time of trial” instead of “lead us not into temptation”) but it has nearly worked. However, the Church of Scotland still uses “debts” instead of “sins” (or “trespasses” in the old version). (There’s a good item on Wikipedia about all this.) About which form a church uses, when modern-language services were first introduced, there was a fairly strong line that you did the same thing throughout the whole service - either all ancient or all modern. So the 1928 book, Series 1 and Series 2 services all used the old words, and Series 3 and the ASB used the new ones. And that’s why St Luke’s uses the new one - we began it with Series 3 (1971), moved on to the ASB, and we now use the form of Common Worship which is closest to what we did when we used ASB. I must admit that it disturbs me a bit that many Christians seem to have difficulties with the words of the new Lord’s Prayer - it has, after all, been going 35 years now! Maybe we ought to have some Sundays when we don’t give out service books? Instead we could ask everyone to join in the prayers by memory! On second thoughts - maybe not? John Hartley
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