Here is a bit of sleuthing regarding the Lord\u2019s Prayer.<\/p>\n
Have you ever noticed when praying the Lord\u2019s Prayer aloud that everybody does good until you get to the line \u201cforgive us our…\u201d?<\/p>\n
At that point in the prayer cacophony breaks out as some people say \u201cdebts\u201d and others say \u201ctrespasses.\u201d<\/p>\n
The other day I got curious about that and went in search of the translations that render this differently. I started with the New International Version:
\n NIV:<\/p>\n
Our Father in heaven,
\nhallowed be your name,
\nyour kingdom come,
\nyour will be done,
\non earth as it is in heaven.
\nGive us today our daily bread.
\nAnd forgive us our debts,
\nas we also have forgiven our debtors…
\nOkay, so the NIV has \u201cdebts.\u201d So I went on to look at other translations. And guess what? There is almost universal agreement among the major translations, all having \u201cdebts\u201d like the NIV:
\n ESV, ASV, NASV, KJV, NRSV, NJ:<\/p>\n
our debts…our debtors.
\nTo be sure, some more modern, dynamic and contemporary translations have \u201csins\u201d or \u201cwrongs.\u201d But none of these, along with the more established translations, have \u201ctrespasses.\u201d<\/p>\n
So that left me scratching my head. Where in the world did \u201ctrespasses\u201d come from?<\/p>\n
Given that I use the Book of Common Prayer I knew it had \u201ctrespasses.\u201d So my hunch was that \u201cforgive us our trespasses\u201d came from the Book of Common Prayer rather than from the bible translations. I\u2019m using the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. But just to make sure I went back to the 1549 edition, the very first Book of Common Prayer. And sure enough, \u201cforgive us our trespasses\u201d is there:
\n Book of Common Prayer (1549): OURE father, whiche arte in heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy kyngdom come. Thy wyll be done in earth as it is in heaven. Geve us this daye oure dayly bread. And forgeve us oure trespasses, as we forgeve them that trespasse agaynst us. And leade us not into temptacion. But deliver us from evell. Amen.
\nBut that raises another question. Where did the 1549 Book of Common Prayer come up with this translation? Recall, the Authorized (King James) Version didn\u2019t appear until 1611.<\/p>\n
After some sleuthing I learned that the 1549 edition of the Book of Common Prayer used the Tyndale Bible (1526). And checking the Tyndale Bible I think we find the origin of \u201cforgive us our trespasses\u201d:
\n Tyndale Bible (1526):<\/p>\n
And forgeve vs oure treaspases eve as we forgeve oure trespacers.
\nIn short, from the KJV onward the translation of Matthew 6:12 has gone with \u201cdebts.\u201d But the 1526 Tyndale Bible had it as \u201ctrespasses.\u201d This translation was used in the 1549 Book of Common Prayer and is preserved in the Book of Common Prayer to the present day.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a Tyndale vs. King James thing.<\/p>\n
And thus the cacophony in our churches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here is a bit of sleuthing regarding the Lord\u2019s Prayer. Have you ever noticed when praying the Lord\u2019s Prayer aloud that everybody does good until you get to the line \u201cforgive us our…\u201d? At that point in the prayer cacophony breaks out as some people say \u201cdebts\u201d and others say \u201ctrespasses.\u201d The other day I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4832,912,4830,4831],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5509"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}