St Luke 11:1-13
Jesus teaches prayer
11:1 He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”
11:2 so he said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, may your name be revered as holy. May your kingdom come.
11:3 Give us each day our daily bread.
11:4 And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.”
11:5 And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread,
11:6 for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’
11:7 And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’
11:8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything out of friendship, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.
11:9 “So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.
11:10 For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
11:11 Is there anyone among you who, if your child asked for a fish, would give a snake instead of a fish?
11:12 Or if the child asked for an egg, would give a scorpion?
11:13 If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
[1] Καὶ ἐγένετο ἐν τῷ εἶναι αὐτὸν ἐν τόπῳ τινὶ προσευχόμενον, ὡς ἐπαύσατο, εἶπέ τις τῶν μαθητῶν αὐτοῦ πρὸς αὐτόν· Κύριε, δίδαξον ἡμᾶς προσεύχεσθαι, καθὼς καὶ ᾿Ιωάννης ἐδίδαξε τοὺς μαθητὰς αὐτοῦ.
[2 ] εἶπε δὲ αὐτοῖς· ὅταν προσεύχησθε, λέγετε·
Πάτερ ἡμῶν
ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς·
ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου·
ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σου·
γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου,
ὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ, καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς·
[3] τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δίδου ἡμῖν τὸ καθ᾿ ἡμέραν·
[4] καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἡμῶν·
καὶ γὰρ αὐτοὶ ἀφίεμεν παντὶ τῷ ὀφείλοντι ἡμῖν·
καὶ μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν,
ἀλλὰ ῥῦσαιἡμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ.
[5] Καὶ εἶπε πρὸς αὐτούς· τίς ἐξ ὑμῶν ἕξει φίλον, καὶ πορεύσεται πρὸς αὐτὸν μεσονυκτίου καὶ ἐρεῖ αὐτῷ· φίλε, χρῆσόν μοι τρεῖς ἄρτους,
[6] ἐπειδὴ φίλος μου παρεγένετο ἐξ ὁδοῦ πρός με καὶ οὐκ ἔχω ὃ παραθήσω αὐτῷ·
[7] κἀκεῖνος ἔσωθεν ἀποκριθεὶς εἴπῃ· μή μοι κόπους πάρεχε· ἤδη ἡ θύρα κέκλεισται καὶ τὰ παιδία μου μετ᾿ ἐμοῦ εἰς τὴν κοίτην εἰσίν· οὐ δύναμαι ἀναστὰς δοῦναί σοι;
[8] λέγω ὑμῖν, εἰ καὶ οὐ δώσει αὐτῷ ἀναστὰς διὰ τὸ εἶναι αὐτοῦ φίλον, διά γε τὴν ἀναίδειαν αὐτοῦ ἐγερθεὶς δώσει αὐτῷ ὅσων χρῄζει.
[9] κἀγὼ ὑμῖν λέγω, αἰτεῖτε, καὶ δοθήσεται ὑμῖν, ζητεῖτε, καὶ εὑρήσετε, κρούετε, καὶ ἀνοιγήσεται ὑμῖν·
[10] πᾶς γὰρ ὁ αἰτῶν λαμβάνει καὶ ὁ ζητῶν εὑρίσκει καὶ τῷ κρούοντι ἀνοιχθήσεται.
[11] τίνα δὲ ἐξ ὑμῶν τὸν πατέρα αἰτήσει ὁ υἱὸς ἄρτον, μὴ λίθον ἐπιδώσει αὐτῷ; ἢ καὶ ἰχθύν, μὴ ἀντὶ ἰχθύος ὄφιν ἐπιδώσει αὐτῷ;
[12] ἢ καὶ ἐὰν αἰτήσῃ ᾠόν, μὴ ἐπιδώσει αὐτῷ σκορπίον;
[13] εἰ οὖν ὑμεῖς, ὑπάρχοντες πονηροί, οἴδατε δόματα ἀγαθὰ διδόναι τοῖς τέκνοις ὑμῶν, πόσῳ μᾶλλον ὁ πατὴρ ὁ ἐξ οὐρανοῦ δώσει πνεῦμα ἀγαθὸν τοῖς αἰτοῦσιν αὐτόν;
Comments
Readers familiar with ancient Greek religion and literature will find parallels with the Lord’s Prayer. Some of these are noted below. An ancient prayer, whether private or public, normally consisted of a) an invocation sometimes brimming with participles, epithets, titles of the god addressed, and references to her/his possible whereabouts; b) an optional reminder of the god’s past interventions or of the petitioner’s past favours to the deity (pars epica); c) the request or petition (the core and raison d’être of the prayer); and d) the close. Further, see K. Dowden, ‘Rhetoric and religion’, in I. Worthington (ed.), A companion to Greek rhetoric, Malden, MA & Oxford, 320-35.
[1] προσευχόμενον: the vb προσεύχομαι (‘Ι pray’) occurs three times in the pericope. In cl. Gk πρ. means ‘I pray, I vow’ (to a deity), and is also used in LXX. The simplex εὔχομαι is common in anc. Gk, and occurs in LXX, but is far less common in NT (EDNT s.v., 1).
[2] λέγετε: ‘Say’ (2nd pers. pl., pres. imper.). Jesus establishes the λεγόμενα (‘things said’) in prayer by performing them himself. No accompanying δρώμενα (‘things done’) or other performative details are given. The words of prayer he crystallises are simple and to-the-point. In Mt 6:7-8, moments before introducing a related version of the ‘Our Father’, Jesus warns against imitating the wordy, repetitious ‘stammering’(πολυλογία, βαττολογεῖν) of pagans at prayer. Jesus dismisses mumbo-jumbo.
Πάτερ ἡμῶν
ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς: lit., ‘FATHER our, who is in the heavens’. The first word is emphatic; the present part. ὤν, ‘being’, attributive, is understood. Zeus, the supreme patriarch, bore the title ‘father of gods and men’ in Hesiod (Theogony 47, 542, 929) and Homeric epic (Iliad 1.544, 4. 68, etc., Odyssey 1.28, etc.), and was sometimes addressed as such, e.g. Priam, looking up to the sky, appeals to the god thus: Ζεὺς πάτερ (Iliad 24.308). Zeus was a father not in the theogonic sense but inasmuch as he had the authority of a father in a patriarchal system (OCD3, s.v. ‘Zeus’). (When invoked as an ancestral figure, Poseidon could occasionally be addressed as ‘Father’.) The name ‘Zeus’, incidentally, is derived from an Indo-European component that means ‘day’,‘ (bright) sky’.
Jesus again mentions the heavenly Father in v. 13, ὁ πατὴρ ὁ ἐξ οὐρανοῦ
(‘the father from heaven’). Jesus associates God with the ‘heavens’, οὐρανοί, pl. of ‘heaven, sky’. Cl. Gk prose writers never use the pl., which is only used infrequently and mostly in poetic contexts in the LXX, e.g. Psalms, (LSJ s.v. & Muraoka s.v., b).
ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου: ‘hallowed be thy name’. In pagan prayer gratitude was expressed through glorification esp. through formulations of honour.
ἡ βασιλεία σου: Jesus cites God’s ‘kingdom, reign’. Zeus ‘reigns in heaven’ (Hesiod, Theogony 71). Further, ‘Zeus is king, not tyrant. One of his main domains is right and justice…Human kings are under his special protection.’ (OCD3, p. 1637).
τὸ θέλημά σου: θέλημα, τό (< θέλω), ‘will’, apparently not freq. in cl. Gk; used in LXX (‘desire, interest’: Muraoka s.v.), and more freq. in NT, most often of God’s will (EDNT s.v., 3). The will of Zeus famously lies behind the plot of the Iliad, and in cult and myth his will is signalled ‘in dreams, augural signs, thunder and lightning’ (OCD3, p. 1637).
[3] δίδου ἡμῖν: the request section, conventional also in ancient Greek prayer, takes up vv. 3-4. the imper. δίδου has a continuous, ongoing aspect: ‘keep giving us’. I.e. ‘Give us today and tomorrow, and the day after that, and so forth.’ τὸ καθ᾿ ἡμέραν: adv. phrase in the acc., meaning ‘daily’ (adv.). Jesus implies a succession of ‘todays’.
[4] τοῦ πονηροῦ: here the substantive ὁ πονηρός (masc. personal) is understood: ‘the Evil One’. In cl. Gk πονηρός < πόνος, ‘toil, exertion’, can mean ‘toilsome, wearisome’ (LSJ s.v., I.2); but also ‘worthless’, ‘wicked’, of a reputation, life, speech, a person (LSJ s.v., III); in LXX, ‘evil’ (in a moral or ethical sense: Muraoka s.v., 1a) as here. Who the ‘Evil One’ is will concern theologians. Cf. v. 13, πονηροί.
Philosophers such as Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle (who wrote a book on prayer, Diogenes Laertius 5.22) held that mortals should pray for ‘good things’ (τἀγαθά) without specifying them. The gods would decide which things were appropriate. In (pseudo-) Plato, Alcibiades 2 Socrates recites a model prayer he claims to have heard from a wise (φρόνιμος) poet (143a1–3):
“Ζεῦ βασιλεῦ, τὰ μὲν ἐσθλά, φησί, καὶ εὐχομένοις
καὶ ἀνεύκτοις
ἄμμι δίδου, τὰ δὲ δειλὰ καὶ εὐχομένοις ἀπαλέξειν
‘Zeus Basileus (‘King’), give us good things (τὰ μὲν ἐσθλά)
both when we pray and when we do not.
And, as we pray, ward off the bad things (τὰ δὲ δειλά).’
[13] ὁ πατὴρ ὁ ἐξ οὐρανοῦ δώσει πνεῦμα ἀγαθὸν τοῖς αἰτοῦσιν αὐτόν: the Heavenly Father will grant ‘good spirit’ to those who petition Him. The Engl. translation renders this as ‘Holy Spirit’.
Insights into Biblical Greek Grammar and Syntax 