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 …
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