Matthew 6:9-13//Luke 11:2-4: an eschatological prayer?

Abstract

This article argues that in the eyes of Matthew and Luke the so-called Lord's Prayer reflects a perception of Jesus that his disciples are in grave danger of becoming members of "this generation," that is, those among Jesus' co-religionists who reject what Jesus shows is God's will for Israel. Its focus and concern is that the disciples invoke God's protection against engaging in this apostasy. Three considerations support this contention: (1) that teaching on the nature of true discipleship is the context in which the Lord's Prayer appears in both Matthew and Luke; (2) that a concern to secure divine aid to be obedient to God's will is the center of the prayers which the Matthean and Lukan Jesus himself prays; and (3) that when read against the Old Testament background which the language of the Lord's prayer evokes, each of the prayer's constituent petitions makes more sense as a plea for protection against disobedience and unfaithfulness than as a call for end time blessings.

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This article is about the Lord's Prayer (=LP) and the temporal dimension it evidences. On the questions of the authenticity and original form of the LP, I assume three things: (1) that contra A. Harnack (1907), M.D. Goulder (1964), S. Van Tilborg (1972), and others, Matthew 6:9-13//Luke 11:2-4 not only represents traditional and authentic dominical material but reproduces one prayer taught by Jesus to his disciples; (2) that, contra H. Taussig (1988) and J. D. Crossan (1991), the prayer originally contained five petitions (regarding the hallowing of God's name, the "coming" of God's kingdom, the provision of bread, the forgiveness of sins, and protection from PEIRASMOS ("testing"); and (3) that its original Greek wording ran as follows:

   PATER,
   hAGIASQHTO TO ONOMA SOU
   ELQETW hH BASILEIA SOU
   TON ARTON hHMON TON EPIOUSION
   DOS hHMIN SHMERON
   KAI AFES hHMIN TA OFEILHMATA hHMON
   hWS KAI hHMEIS AFHKAMEN TOIS OFEILETAIS hHMON
   KAI MH EISENEGKES hHMAS EIS PEIRASMON.

But since my argument is to establish what it is that Matthew and Luke present as the horizon, focus, and concern of the LP, and not what Jesus himself intended in this regard, the validity of my assumptions is not at issue.

With few exceptions, most contemporary NT scholars accept the view, first propounded (so far as I can tell) by Johannes Weiss (1893), and argued in detail by E. Lohmeyer (1965), J. Jeremias (1964, 1967, 1971), R.E. Brown (1960), and most recently by J. P. Meier (1994), D. Hagner (1993), and W.D. Davies and D. Allison (1985), among others (see also, e.g., Zahn, Schweitzer, Eisler, Bultmann, Greeven, Michaelis, Bornkamm, Grundmann, Schurmann, Schulz, Vogtle, and Beasley-Murray), that Matthew 6:9-13//Luke 11:2-4, the so-called Lord's Prayer (more accurately, the disciples' prayer) is apocalyptically eschatological in nature. It is, they note, pointing especially to (what is perceived to be) the close "fit" between the language and imagery of the LP and that of contemporary apocalyptic eschatology, (a) not only a text in which a heartfelt longing for the arrival of the future BASILEIA TOU QEOU (reign or imperial rule of God) both stands as its contextualizing background and serves as its interpretative horizon; the LP is also (b) a supplication whose very purpose is to implore God to bring about the immediate inauguration or arrival of that BASILEIA (reign/rule) and thus bestow upon the faithful all of the end time blessings that, according to Israelite and early Jesus movement apocalyptic expectation, would attend its dawning. To quote Davies and Allison:

   ... [the LP] is from beginning to end concerned with the last things ...
   [The petitions] `Hallowed be thy name' [and] `thy kingdom come' ... entreat
   God to reveal his eschatological glory and usher in his everlasting reign.
   In the petition for bread, ... what is longed after is the heavenly manna,
   the bread of life, and the morrow is the great tomorrow, the consummation.
   `Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors' is prayed in
   the face of the coming assize, when sins will be judged. And `do not put us
   to the test' refers to the coming time of trouble, to the messianic woes
   ... to the final time of tribulation which will precede the renewal [so
   that here] one prays for preservation from evil or apostasy in the great
   [end time] tribulation (cf. Rev. 3:10) [594-95].

Thus, in having his disciples pray the prayer, what Jesus, according to Matthew and Luke, is urging the disciples to do is (the argument goes) to take advantage of "the privilege" that is theirs by virtue of their having been designated "sons" of the father to whom they pray, "... of stretching forth their hands to grasp the glory of the [future] consummation ... right into their ... lives, even now, even here, today" (Jeremias 1967: 104).

In my opinion, however, the background and horizon of the prayer is in Matthew's and Luke's eyes not the future coming of God as King, let alone any zealous longing for it. Nor do they think that the prayer's primary concern is to encourage those who pray it to give voice to the desire for a speedy realization of the blessings that the elect would

experience once God finally and decisively manifested himself in all his transcendent power. Rather, Matthew and Luke believe (a) that the prayer is grounded in (and arises from) a perception on Jesus' part that his disciples are in grave danger of becoming members of "this generation ," i.e., those among Jesus' co-religionists who reject what Jesus shows is God's will for Israel and thereby, in their recalcitrance, take up the mantle of the infamous Israelite "generation" who tested God in the Wilderness (see E. Lovestam, 1995) and (b) that the prayer's focus and concern is to have the disciples invoke God's protection against engaging in "this generation's" recalcitrance. I offer six reasons for holding this view:

1. The Identity of the Intended Pray-ers of the LP

My first reason is that those to whom the prayer is given are, according to Matthew and Luke, a group which not only is defined in terms of having a special responsibility to be faithful to God, but is also viewed by the Matthean and Lukan Jesus as constantly in danger of failing in that responsibility, thus becoming like those whom Jesus labels "this generation."

In both GMatt and GLuke those to whom Jesus gives the LP are, of course, his disciples. But who are the disciples? What are their defining characteristics? They are, first of all, those, along with "all of Israel," to whom Jesus has addressed a programmatic call, made in the light of his conviction of the imminent arrival of a divine visitation upon Israel (TON KAIRON THS EPISKOPHS SOU, the time of your visitation), to "turn" in obedience to the ways of God upon which his ministry is based (cf. Matt 4:17; Luke 4:17-21; 19:44). But secondly, and more importantly, the disciples are those among all the other groups whom Jesus addresses with this call who are:

(a) specifically chosen by Jesus to be the faithful remnant of Israel which is to hallow God's name and in their faithfulness make God's reign palpable (Matt 5:11, 13-14; Luke 6:12-16, 22-23),

(b) given instructions on what turning back and being faithful to God entails which in content is often specifically formulated in terms of not being like the "hypocrites" or "this generation," and

(c) continually warned about not slackening in any way in either their dedication to God's ways or their confidence that God is faithful (Matt 5:13-14; 21-47; 6:19-34; 7:7-11; Luke 11:9-13), which is explicitly what, according to Matthew and Luke, "this generation" has done.

The fact, then, that those to whom the LP is given are defined in GMatt and GLuke in this way strongly suggests that according to Matthew and Luke there was a vivid awareness on Jesus' part that those who are instructed to utter the LP are in danger of falling away from their calling to follow the ways of God as Jesus has revealed them and consequently of becoming members of "this generation."

And in the light of this, it is reasonable to conclude that according to Matthew and Luke the center of what Jesus calls his disciples to ask for in the LP is divine protection against engaging in "this generation's" apostasy.

2. The Center of the Disciples' Petitionary Prayers

My second reason for claiming that the focus of the LP is a concern to secure for the disciples divine aid in a struggle against the apostasy and recalcitrance of "this generation" is that, according to Matthew and Luke, such a concern lies at the center of all other explicitly petitionary prayers which Jesus himself is depicted as having urged upon the disciples.

Apart from Matthew 6:9-13, Matthew depicts Jesus as instructing his disciples three times on what to ask for when they engage in petitionary prayer, first at Matthew 9:38: "... pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest," then at Matthew 24:20: "Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a sabbath...," and finally at Matthew 26:41: "Watch and pray that you may not enter into PEIRASMOS (testing); the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak."

(One might wish to argue that Matthew 5:44, "But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you...," should be included among these instances. But I think it is to be excluded on the grounds that no instruction regarding what it is the disciples are to ask God for with respect to their persecutors is stated.)

Apart from Luke 11:2-4, Luke has four such instances: Luke 10:2: "And he said to them, `The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest,'" Luke 21:36: "But watch at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of man," Luke 22:40: "And when he came to the place he said to them, `Pray that you may not enter into PEIRASMOS," and Luke 22:46: "And he said to them, `Why do you sleep? Rise and pray that you may not enter into PEIRASMOS (testing)."

(I do not include Luke 6:28 ["... bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you"] or Luke 18:1 ["And he told them a parable, to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart"] among the petitionary prayers urged by Jesus upon the disciples for the same reason whereby I excluded Matthew 5:44 from consideration: namely, that there is within these passages no instruction regarding the content of the prayer they are to pray.)

There need be little doubt that the focus of what Jesus urges his disciples to pray for at Matthew 26:41/Luke 22:40, 46--to be spared from "entering into PEIRAMSOS")--is securing divine aid against the apostasy of "this generation.". To "enter into PEIRASMOS" is not only to fall away from God in to apostasy, but, as is shown by the story of Jesus' Wilderness PEIRASMOS (testing) with which both Matthew and Luke begin Jesus' ministry (Matt 4:1-11//Luke 4:1-13) and in which Jesus is presented as recapitulating and not failing in the "testings" of the prototype of "this generation" (on this, see Gerhardsson), to enter into PEIRASMOS (testing) is to become a member of "this generation."

Nor can we doubt that securing divine aid against apostasy is also what Jesus urges his disciples to petition God for at Matthew 24:20, where Jesus instructs the disciples to beg God to insure that the flight they must undertake in order not to be led astray by Messianic claimants who, in the coming times of crisis, will represent the ideology of "this generation" (on this, see Hanger, 704-06) may not be in winter or on a sabbath. And the theme is also clearly apparent at Luke 21:36 where the commanded object of prayer is for "strength to escape all these things" that will take place during the judgment that Jesus predicts will befall Jerusalem. For, in Matthew 24:20, as R. Gundry has shown (483), the "winter"--i.e., the rainy season of flooded wadis and muddy roads--and "Sabbath"--the day when Rabbinic restrictions, suspension of services to travelers, and the inability to purchase supplies hindered flight--that Jesus tells his disciples to pray against were things which placed those who would be obedient to God's commands in peril of their lives and thus made disobedience and the ideology of "this generation" (which counsels against flight) attractive. And in Luke 21:36 the "these things" which God is to be begged to supply strength to endure are, as J. Nolland notes (1013), the trials of faithfulness mentioned in Luke 21:6-19 that the disciples have been destined to face and to which members of "this generation" readily succumb.

But what about Matthew 9:38 and its Lukan counterpart in Luke 10:2, where we find Jesus encouraging the disciples to "beg" (DEHQHTE) God to swell their ranks so that the golden opportunity that is now and only briefly upon them to complete the task to which they have been commissioned: namely, to gather Israel into the garner of God's kingdom, is not forever lost? Is the focus of this prayer also the securing of divine aid to forestall apostasy? The answer becomes clear when we look at the prayer from a reverse angle, that is to say, from the point of view of its non-fulfillment, and take into account what this implies would surely happen to the disciples if God did not accede to their request for additional "laborers into his harvest." What would happen is that the disciples would be overwhelmed by the immensity of their assigned task and despair of ever completing it. Thus, in the light of this observation, the disciples' begging God to give them additional laborers is tantamount to asking for help to avoid falling away from him. So here, too, as in the rest of the instances of prayers urged on the disciples by Jesus, the focus of this prayer is securing divine aid against engaging in apostasy.

Now if in GMatt and GLuke all petitionary prayers other than the LP which Jesus urges on the disciples have securing divine aid against engaging or being caught up in apostasy as their focus, is it not likely that this is the focus of the LP as well?

3. The Context of the LP

My third reason for claiming that in the eyes of Matthew and Luke the LP is a prayer that is concerned to secure for the community of believers divine aid against engaging in apostasy, especially the apostasy of "this generation." is that the contexts in which each of the canonical versions of the prayer now appears give the LP this thematic tinge. For these contexts are ones in which Jesus is explicitly concerned with teaching his disciples how to avoid the apostasy of "this generation." Indeed, this concern becomes clear as soon as we note just what these contexts are.

The context--that is, the particular unit or units of material of which it (the LP) is an integral part--of Matthew 6:9-13 is Matthew. 5:1-7:28, Matthew's Sermon on the Mount. Notably, this is a passage in which the disciples (here specifically portrayed as fledgling "sons of God" and as Salt and Light) are (a) not only given a new ethic which in content is often specifically formulated in terms of not being like the "hypocrites" or "the men of old," or "this generation," but are (b) spoken to as ones in imminent danger of being turned from this ethic (Matt 5:11-12; 13-15; 6:25-33; 7:15-16a) and (c) sternly warned about how important it is that they not slacken in any way in either their dedication to God's ways or their confidence that God is faithful (Matt 5:13-14; 21-47; 6:19-34; 7:7-11)--a characteristic of "this generation."

For Luke 11:2-4 the context is (the first portion o0 Luke 9:51-18:14, Luke's presentation of the "Exodus" of Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem, in which the main emphasis of that section, namely, how disciples and other would-be followers of Jesus are to hear and do the word of God (see Reike: 206-16), is frequently set out by holding up the behavior and unfaithfulness of "this generation" as the paradigm of how not to walk with God (see Bock: 2, 964).

On the grounds, then, that the theme of a particular Gospel passage resembles, shares in, is shaped by, or is to be adduced from that of the particular unit(s) of material of which that passage is a part, there is ample reason for concluding that the focus of the LP is not "praying down" into the now things from the future, but the disciples' girding and guarding themselves against engaging in "this generation's" apostasy.

4. The Jewish Matrix of the LP

My fourth reason for holding my view on the focus and concern of the LP is grounded in the fact that the focus and concern of allegedly ancient Jewish prayers that (it is claimed) form the thematic and theological matrix for the LP is "God's protection of the believing community from apostasizing."

Many scholars (e.g. Torrey: 309; Burney: 161-62; Kuhn: 30-40; Schweizer: 151; Perrin: 28-29; and especially those urging the "eschatological" orientation of the LP (Jeremias 1967: 104-05; Bultmann: 181; Lohmeyer: 27-29; Brown: 281-12 n. 20; Meier 2: 297, 299) have drawn attention to the fact that at various points within its text the LP bears both a formal and a material resemblance to certain allegedly ancient Jewish liturgical prayers (but see also Abrahams: 93-108; J. J. Petrowski; and M. Brocke). They point out, for instance, that the two opening petitions of the LP, hAGIASQHNTW TO ONOMA SOU; (Father, may your name be made holy); and ELQETW hH BASILEIA SOU (let your reign come) (Matt 6:9//Luke 11:2), are strikingly echoed both in the Kaddish:

   Magnified and hallowed be his great name in the world [or:
   age] that he has created for his good pleasure;
   May he cause his kingdom to reign [or: may his kingdom
   reign] in your lives and in your days and in the lives of the
   whole house of Israel very soon and in a near time.

and in the 11th petition of the Palestinian rescension of the Amidah:

   Restore our judges as at first and our counsellors as in the
   beginning,
   and you yourself reign over us.
   Blessed are you LORD, who love justice

In addition, they also draw attention to the fact that Matt 6:13a//Luke 11:4b, KAI MH EISENEGKHS hHMAS EIS PEIRASMON (and lead us not into testing), finds a parallel in that portion of the mandatory Evening Prayer (preserved in b. Ber. 60b) that reads as follows:

   and lead me not into sin,
   or into iniquity
   or into testing,
   or into contempt.

and whose reference to "testing" is thought to be a reference to an anticipated final great Testing, an end time persecution of God's saints by pseudo-prophets and false saviors (Jeremias 1967: 105-06).

From this, and from the co-ordinate assumption that the Amidah, the Kaddish and the Evening Prayer predate the LP, it is often argued that our interpretation of the focus and concern of the LP should be based upon or derived from that which these Jewish prayers evince, since these prayers obviously represent the model which the LP follows and give shape to the sentiment which it expresses (see Perrin: 28-29; Kuhn: 30-33, 40-46; Jeremias 1967: 98, 104-105; Schweizer: 151; Brown: 281-82 n. 20). There are, of course, formidable difficulties to this approach, the most important of them being not only our lack of knowledge of the earliest form and wording of the Amidah, the Kaddish, and the Evening Prayer, but also the question, raised by Billerbeck (1: 406-07) and others, and noted by Heineman (72-78) and Meier (2:297, 299, 361-62 n. 36, 363 n. 44), of whether these prayers, whatever they originally said, are actually in any way contemporaneous with the LP.

But for the sake of argument, let us assume four things. Let us assume not only (a) that their earliest form and wording can be and has been recovered; (b) that in this wording there are parallels to that of the LP, and (c) that the prayers are to be dated to early in the first century, but also (d) that the focus and concern of these prayers is reflected in the LP. The question then is: What is the focus and concern of these prayers? If we take our cue only from the petitions of the Amidah, the Kaddish, and the Evening Prayer noted above, as the eschatologists seem to do, then the answer would appear to be: the wholly future Kingdom or Reign of God and the ardent hope that it may be brought ahead of its time into the present. (I say "appear" because there is some reason to believe, especially in the interpretation of the "testing" referred to in the Evening prayer as meaning "the final, end time testing," the eschatologists have seen within these texts what they wanted to see).

However, once we take into account (a) the theological thrust of the liturgical setting in which the Kaddish was typically said as well as (b) what the 11th petition in the Amidah and the "lead me not" petitions in the Evening Prayer follow on from, and (c) the frame of reference that these "contextualizations" give to them (the petitions), it becomes clear that the answer to the question of what these prayers have as their focus and concern is actually "securing divine aid to remain obedient in difficult times and to be protected against becoming like the Wilderness generation."

Consider, first, our passage from the Evening Prayer (b. Ber. 60b). The "lead us not" petition which parallels Matthew 6:13//Luke 11:4 is introduced by the call of the pious one for God to

   grant that my portion be your torah
   And accustom me [lit., make my custom] to
   the performance of [lit. to the hands of
   [your] commandment.
   And prevent me from making my custom transgression,

which is itself grounded in a recitation of the Shema (Billerbeck II: 151, 697; VI, 220-21; Jeremias 1967: 72), the confession of faith derived from Deuteronomy 6:4 and other passages, which both calls those of Israel to love God with the whole of heart, soul, and mind, and warns them sternly against repeating the sins of the "Wilderness generation" of "forgetting" their covenant obligations to him, refusing to trust in him and his ways, and putting him to the test (cf. Deut 6:12, 16).

The parallel to Matthew 6:9//Luke 11:2 in the Amidah is preceded and contextualized not only by a benediction, which, according to Finklestein, read as follows:

1. Blessed are you LORD God of our Fathers: God of Abraham, God of Isaac and God of Jacob; a God great, mighty and revered; the God Most High, Master of heaven & earth.

--Blessed are you LORD the Shield of Abraham.

2. Mighty are you who sustain the living and revive the dead.

--Blessed are you LORD, who revive the dead.

3. Holy are you and revered is your Name and there is no God beside you.

--Blessed are you LORD, Holy God.

but also by the specific petitions:

4. Our Father (Abinu), grant us knowledge and understanding and awareness of you.

--Blessed are you LORD, who grant knowledge.

5. Our Father, bring us back to your Torah and return us in perfect repentance to you Presence.

--Blessed are you LORD, who delight in repentance.

And the Kaddish, when recited liturgically, was apparently done so only after, and therefore within the context of thought provided by, the recitation of not only the Amidah, but, more importantly, also, and like the Evening prayer, of the Shema.

So it would seem that if the LP is indeed somehow grounded in these prayers and derives its focus and concern from that which they possess, then the focus and concern of the LP is not the future coming of God's Kingdom, but preservation in faithfulness and avoidance of apostasy, especially as this was exemplified by the Wilderness generation.

5. The Scriptural Background of the Petitions

My fifth reason for saying that the LP is not an eschatological prayer, but is instead focused as I have claimed, is that when the Prayer's constituent petitions are read against the OT background which the language of, and the themes present in, the Lord's Prayer evokes or is grounded in, each of the petitions makes far more sense as a plea for protection against disobedience and unfaithfulness, especially the unfaithfulness and disobedience of the Wilderness generation, than as a call for end time blessing.

To see this we need, of course, first to outline what the scriptural background of the prayer actually is. Obviously, given the "hallowing of the name" language in the first petition, Isaiah 29:23-24; 48:11; and 52:5-6, if not also Ezekiel 36: 23-27, and the themes displayed therein, must be viewed as candidates for this office (Schweizer: 150). And if N. T. Wright is correct in his analysis of the import of the opening words of the LP wherein Jesus instructs his disciples to invoke God as "Father" (Wright: 14-15), then Exodus 4:22-23, with its invitation from God to Israel to get ready to be his Son, figures as background to the prayer.

But given also that we find in the prayer such terms as ARTOS (bread), ONOMA (name), and PERIRASMOS (testing) couched not only in close association with one another, but within exhortations to a community which has been called by God to be his "son" not to shame God's name, but to serve it, to be in concert with (and therefore to avoid all that resists the establishment of) God's will being done on earth, then what should be seen as the primary background of the LP is the biblical "Massah" tradition, that is, the tradition first spelled out in Exodus 17:1-7; Numbers 14; Deuteronomy 6-8, and then reflected upon elsewhere in both the OT and NT and frequently in Rabbinic literature (cf. Pss 78, 95, 106; Wis. 1:1-3; 1 Corinthians 10; the Epistle to Hebrews; and M Aboth 5:4; b Ar 15 ab) (The last of these sources recounts how the Wilderness generation was condemned by God to never enter the rest appointed for them because of their continual "putting God to the test.") For these themes and this language are central to biblical versions of the Massah tradition and all of its subsequent explication (see C. B. Houk: 216-25; R. F. Cyster: 377-81). How then does the fact that the Massah tradition is the scriptural background in which the LP is grounded and to which it alludes show that the petitions of the LP make far more sense as a pleas for protection against (the Wilderness generation's) disobedience and unfaithfulness than as calls for end time blessing? Consider for instance, the bread petition. With the Massah tradition as its background, TON ARTON hHMON TON EPIOUSION DOS hHMIN SHMERON (Do give to us "today" our "daily" bread) becomes a request to God for help both to be content with the bread that he gives and to avoid the kind of behavior (i.e., "grumbling") that Israel engaged in when they began to regard the food that God provided them as not sufficient for their needs. For the petition alludes to that aspect of the Massah tradition which recounts how the Wilderness generation ultimately refused in its day of salvation, its "today," to accept and be constrained by what God had deemed (and what its experience had proven was) that generation's "necessary" bread, and was thereby excluded from its inheritance. Faithful Israel, the tradition argues, would have begged God to supply them with it and to go on doing so (cf. Num 11; 21; Deut 6; Pss 78; 95. See also Gerhardsson: 45-48). The upshot of this is twofold: It means (a) the words TON ARTON hHMON TON EPIOUSION DOS hHMIN SHMERON (and, notably, the Lukan variant) bear the meaning "Do give us, now that it is Today, our necessary bread!," and (b) that the presupposition here is that should the disciples follow Jesus' urging and pray as Sons the "bread" words he urges on them, they in effect would then show themselves wishing to be distinguished from, and guarded against becoming, the community of Sons (i.e., the Wilderness generation) who had this same bread and yet, craving other food, spurned it as "worthless" (Num 11; Ps 78) and demanded to be released from its constraint, thereby, as Ps 78 notes (cf. Ex 17:1-7; Num 14:22; Ps 95:6), "test[ing] God in their hearts." (It is worth noting parenthetically that of all the interpretations that have been made of the import of Matthew 6:11//Luke 11:3a [on these, see Foerster, 595-99], my interpretation is the only one that not only does not clash with the dominical injunctions against anxiety over the cares of "the morrow" [cf. e.g., Matt 6:34 and Luke 12:21-31]), but is also fully consonant with these injunctions' theological thrust.)

Consider the Forgiveness petition (Matt 6:12//Luke 11:4a). When it is set against the Massah tradition, it shows itself to be a plea for the community to be protected against falling into the apostasy that the Wilderness generation engaged in so that all of God's nominal elect may be spared the judgment they deserve. For, in the light of its particular language, what the petition is alluding to within the Massah tradition is Moses' petition to God in Exodus 34:6-10 (the sequel to the Golden calf episode) and its echo in Numbers 14:11-22 (the story of the apostasy of most of Israel after hearing the report of those who were sent to spy out Canaan).

Here, as in Matthew 6:12//Luke 11:4a, we find a petition for "forgiveness" (cf. Ex 36:9, "and you shall pardon our sins and our iniquity [KAI AFELEIS SU TAS hAMARTIAS hHMON KAI TAS ANOMIAS hHMON], we shall be yours [KAI ESOMEQA SOI]; Num 11:19, "Pardon the iniquity of this people [AFES THN hAMARTIAN TW LAW TOUTW], I pray thee, according to the greatness of thy steadfast love, and according as thou hast forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now") uttered by a faithful remnant of a larger community, against a backdrop of disobedience on the part of that larger community (which, notably, has been "putting God to the test," cf. Ex 17; 33; and note Num 14:22), because the petitioner recognizes that forgiveness is not so much the pardoning of sins or the removal of guilt, as both the ground and enabler of obedience and the guarantee of the continuation of Israel as God's elect. In other words, what we really have behind Matthew 6:12//Luke 11.4a is the expression of something along the lines of the following sentiment:

   Regard us not as the unfaithful in the Wilderness generation, but as you
   did Caleb and keep us as your people, for unlike the Wilderness generation,
   we have obeyed your word.

Consider the PEIRASMOS petition. When it is set against the Massah tradition, it is shown to be a plea to be spared not the "final" testing," but the particular sin that Israel engaged in at Massah, the grumbling and the disobedience that was tantamount to "putting God to the test" (an interpretation which would seem to be demanded of the passage whatever its Scriptural background since it is the only one that does not stand in tension with both (a) the whole of the biblical witness on the inevitability, let alone the desirability, of PEIRASMOS for those who would serve God [cf. Sir 2:1; Ps 11:5; Prov 3:12 and the Rabbinic notion, found at Num. R 15:12, Cant. R. II, 16:2, and elsewhere, that those whom God would elevate, he first "tests." See also Gerhardsson: 32-33; On PEIRASMOS as a desideratum, see Ps 26 [25 LXX]:2; Pss 139 [138 LXX]:1; 139 [138 LXX]:23; Wis 3:1-6; 11:9; 12:20-22; 2 Macc. 6:12-16; Judith 8:25-27; Ps of Solomon 13:9; 18:4, where PEIRASMOS is presented as a way either of reducing all doubt of how much an individual or a community loved God or of knowing that one was the object of God's fatherly love and concern] and (b) the teaching of Jesus himself, found in the dominical agraphon (see Jeremias 1964: 73-74), quoted by Tertullian in his DE BAPTISMO 20.2, that No one can obtain the kingdom of heaven who has not passed through testing (neminem intemptatum regna caelestia consecuturum).

Consider the Name petition. Set within the Massah tradition, it shows itself to be concerned with insuring that the would-be faithful within Israel do not "forget" God as the Wilderness generation did, since it calls to mind the testamentary exhortation of Moses in Deuteronomy 6:10-19 to those in Israel who would "cleave to God and swear by God's name" (KAI PROS AUTON KOLLHQHSH KAI TW ONOMATI AUTOU OMH) to "not go after other Gods" as the Wilderness generation did, and to be diligent, as they were not, in keeping "the commandments of the LORD your God, and his testimonies, and his statutes, which he has commanded you."

Consider, finally, the Kingdom petition. Set within the Massah tradition, it also shows itself to be a plea to be kept apart from all that would render those elected to be Sons of God unworthy of this calling, for it recalls the declaration from God at Exodus 19:5-6 that Israel, God's Son, "shall be my own possession among all peoples ... and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (see Houk: 222).

6. The Thrust of the Petitions and the Focus of the Prayer

My final reason for saying that the LP is not an eschatological prayer is that upon examination, the petitions do not show the particular eschatological thrust that they are claimed to possess. If anything, their focus is the enablement of discipleship.

Space prevents me from showing that this is indeed the case with each of the petitions. So I will concentrate on the one petition which, ever since Weiss' "discovery" that "apocalyptic eschatology" was the matrix in which the LP and the rest of Jesus' mission, ministry, and teaching was couched, has served (as the eschatologists themselves admit) as the linchpin of the view that the LP is a prayer concerned with praying down into the now the glory of the end of the ages as this is presented in apocalyptic eschatological expectation. This, of course, is the kingdom petition, ELQETW hE BASILEIA SOU (Let your reign come--Matt 6:10a//Luke 11:2c).

Surely, the eschatologists argue, this petition stands as conclusive proof that for Matthew and Luke the LP is an eschatological prayer. For is it not self evident, they ask, given the import of the language of Matt 6:10a//Luke 11:2c, and the formal parallelism of the Kingdom petition with those in the Amidah and the Kaddish which speak of the hastening of God's kingdom and which (it is claimed) have eschatological intent, that what we have here is a plea for God to act now to do something he was expected to do only in the future: namely, establish decisively his sovereignty on earth?

Well, no, it is not self evident, and for two reasons. First, to say that the petition is a plea for God soon to usher in his BASILEIA (reign/rule) implies that, at the time the prayer was given, Jesus believed that God not only had not yet done so, but, more importantly had no intention of doing so, at least in the foreseeable future (on this, see Polag:, 60; Beasely-Murray: 150). And yet nothing is more certain in the portrait of Jesus that both Matthew and Luke paint than that Jesus knew God's kingdom to be a powerfully present reality. Indeed, in the contexts in GMatt and GLuke in which the giving of the LP takes place, the prevailing assumption about God's BASILEIA is that it and the opportunity it offers for the salvation of God's people has already arrived (cf. Matt 4:16; Luke 4:16-21; 19:44). In the light of this, it seems unlikely that the petition in Matthew 6:10a//Luke 11:2c is a plea for God to act now to do something he was expected to do only in the (distant?) future. Why urge anyone to pray for the accomplishment of a fait accompli?

Second, there is the observation that insofar as the wording of petitions in Jewish prayers wherein God is clearly urged to bring about the early dawning of his Kingdom stands as any kind of evidence for what prayers with this intent should look like or how they should be worded, then taking Matthew 6:10a//Luke 11:2c as having the intent that "eschatologists" say it has is ruled out. As these Jewish prayers evince, the standard practice when invoking God to hasten the arrival of his kingly rule was to use the expression "cause to reign" or a form of the verb "to reveal," not "to come." Thus if what Jesus actually intended his disciples to pray for in the Kingdom petition was God's speeding up the timetable for the arrival of the BASILEIA TOU QEOU (reign/rule of God), he should have urged them to say not ELQETW hE BASILEIA SOU (let your reign/rule come) but something more along the lines of APOKALUPSATW (be revealed) or (EM)FANEROUTW hE BASILEIA SOU (let your reign be manifested). And when we add to this observation the fact (acknowledged even by such staunch advocates of the eschatological interpretation of the LP as Meier [298], and Davies and Allison [1:604]; see also Chilton: 37) that "kingdom" or the expression "God's Kingdom" cannot be found anywhere in the entire corpus of the literature of formative Judaism (let alone that of Jewish petitionary prayers, or for that matter that of the NT) as the subject of the verb "to come," we have good reason to doubt that the expression ELQETW hE BASILEIA SOU means what the proponents of the eschatological interpretation of the LP claim it does.

In fact what it seems to mean is "may we be made worthy of your reign by being conformed not to our own will but to yours." Three things indicate this. First, as we have seen, the petition is set by both Matthew and Luke within the context of Jesus' larger proclamation not only that the Kingdom has arrived but that both those who seek the Kingdom and those who think they have it as their heritage must turn and conform themselves to its demands if it is ever to be theirs. With this as its immediate background, ELQETW hE BASILEIA SOU echoes the calls in Rabbinic literature (cf. Yoma 86b; Sanhedrin 97b) for Israel to seek God's aid to be conformed to charity, obedience, justice, and repentance in order to be rendered worthy of the deliverance that was faithful Israel's inheritance (so Moore 2: 350-52).

Second, there is the implication of the fact, noted by George Caird, that in the formal and material parallel to the Kingdom petition (Matt 6:10a//Luke 11:2c) found in Rev 22:20c--namely, the petition ERXOU, KURIE IHSOU (Come, Lord Jesus!), which, like Matthew 6:10a//Luke 11:2c, (a) is a prayer consisting of a form of ERXOMAI (to come) in the imperative + subject, and (b) also is uttered in the context of an announcement of the dawning of a divine visitation (cf. Rev 22:20a, b: "He who testifies to these things says, "Surely I am coming soon." Compare Matthew 4:17; Luke 4:1 6-21)--the function ERXOMAI has there is to express the desire to be turned from disobedience and conformed to what is called upon to "come." As Caird notes, Revelation 22:20c is

   a prayer that Christ will come again to win in his faithful servant the
   victory which is both Calvary and Armageddon. It is the prayer which says,
   "All I ask is to know Christ and the power of his resurrection, to share
   his sufferings and conform to the pattern of his death, if only I may
   arrive at the resurrection of the dead" (Phil. iii. 10-11). It is a prayer
   that the Christian, confronted by the great ordeal, may "endure as one who
   sees the invisible" (Heb. xi. 27), and may hear above the harsh sentence of
   the Roman judge the triumph song of heaven" [288, italics mine].

This being the case, then, mutatis mutandis, what the ELQETW (let come) in the petition ELQETW hE BASILEIA SOU does is to express the wish to be made worthy of God's Kingdom and to be protected from all that would prevent this end.

And third, there is the implication of Matthew's expansion and explication of the petition ELQETW hE BASILEIA SOU with the phrase "May your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" (GENHQETW TO QELHMA SOU, hWS EN OURANW KAI EPI GHS, Matt 6:10b, c). If we assume, as I think we should (note how the phrase's conformity with the Matthean version of Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane--where God's enabling of obedience at a time of trial is exactly what is therein expressed--makes the ethical interpretation of Matthew 6:10b, c certain), that the concern of this explicatory phrase is God's enabling of the disciples' obedience in the face of a desire to be otherwise, we have early testimony that the objective of the petition which the phrase explicates (ELQETW hH BASILEIA SOU) was known to be something other than having God decisively manifest himself ahead of the time he intended to do so. Quite the contrary, it is to have God ensure that the will of his people is co-ordinate with and not antithetical to God's own purposes for them.

In the light of all this, the eschatological interpretation of Matthew 6:10a//Luke 11:2c seems forced. Indeed, the evidence shows that rather than its being an imploration to God to make his kingdom arrive, ELQETW hE BASILEIA SOU is actually a plea for divine aid for obedience and against engaging in apostasy as Jesus defines it.

Now the significance of this conclusion must not be underestimated. If this is the case with the petition that is the linchpin for the eschatological interpretation of the focus and concern of the LP, how much more likely is this same conclusion to be true of the other petitions, which, as even the eschatologists admit, have even less of a claim to be interpreted eschatologically than the kingdom petition? And this consideration, along with all of the evidence I have adduced in favor of my interpretation of what Matthew and Luke presented the focus and concern of the LP as being, gives us good grounds for concluding that, so far as Matthew and Luke were concerned, the LP was not "eschatological" in nature, but was rather a prayer focused upon and concerned with God's granting those urged to pray it the gift of faithfulness.

Conclusions

If indeed, then, the focus and concern of the LP is as I have claimed--i.e., not with bringing into the now things which properly belong to the future, but with gaining divine provision for guarding the disciples from going over to the side of "this generation"--then certain things follow.

First, we need make no distinctions, as is traditionally done, between "we" petitions and "thou" petitions in the LP. Invoking God, as they do, to help those who utter them, each petition has a dual focus and is a mixture of "we" and "thou."

Second, given the dual witness of Matthew and Luke to the meaning of the prayer, we have--on the criteria of multiple attestation--good grounds for saying that how Matthew and Luke see the focus and concern of the LP was also the way that Jesus himself intended it to be seen, assuming, of course, as I think we should, that the prayer, bereft of what are usually seen as Matthew's additions to it, goes back to Jesus.

Third, if what Matthew and Luke hold to be the focus and concern of the LP was also that of Jesus, then it is illegitimate to use the LP as evidence that Jesus held to an apocalyptic eschatology. It may very well be the case that Jesus expected a decisive and cataclysmic revelation of God in all his transcendent power in the near future. But if I am correct in all that I have argued, the LP cannot be appealed to, as it so often is, in support of this reconstruction of Jesus' views on this matter.

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Jeffrey B. Gibson (D. Phil, Oxford University) currently teaches Humanities in the City Colleges of Chicago and New Testament and Biblical Studies at Loyola University's Institute for Pastoral Studies (e-mail: [e-mail]). He is currently involved in research on the Lord's Prayer and in the Greco-Roman rhetorical background of suffering and dying language in the New Testament. Dr. Gibson is the author of THE TEMPTATIONS OF JESUS IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995) and of the forthcoming volume on Suffering and Dying Language in the new Rhetoric of Religious Antiquity series.