Fact check: Lead us not into temptation vs. Save us from the time of trial

What does the original text of the Lord's prayer say? Hint: it does not say "Save us from the time of trial."

Lord’s Prayer - what does the original Greek New Testament say?

The Lord’s prayer is the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray, and is the most important prayer any Christian might learn or pray. It is to be found in Matthew 6:9-13 and an alternate version in Luke 11:2-4.

The Lord’s prayer is worth reading in context in the Bible, that is, with the preceding and following verses, to see how it fits into the whole picture, but I will not quote it now: you can look it up yourself.

Alternative translation

Anyway, in 1978, the worldwide Anglican communion decided to issue an alternative liturgy with modernised wording for some sections, and congregations could decide which to use. One of the sections they decided to revise was the Lord’s prayer.

At the time, they issued a modernised version of the Lord’s prayer.

The choice at that time for Anglican ministers running a church service was between these two:

TRADITIONAL MODERN

Our Father, who art in heaven,           Our Father in heaven,
    hallowed be thy Name,                     hallowed be your Name,
    thy kingdom come,                            your kingdom come,
   thy will be done,                                  your will be done,
        on earth as it is in heaven.           on earth as in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.        Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,             Forgive us our sins
    as we forgive those                             as we forgive those
        who trespass against us.                who sin against us.
And lead us not into temptation,         Save us from the time of trial,
    but deliver us from evil.                     and deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,                      For the kingdom, the power,
    and the power, and the glory,            and the glory are yours,
    for ever and ever. Amen.                    now and for ever. Amen.

Save us from the time of trial; or lead us not into temptation?

Obviously most Anglican ministers chose the one on the right.

Now I have no argument with most of the ‘modern’ version, except for one line: ‘save us from the time of trial.’ I really don’t think it captures the meaning of the original Greek in any way, shape or form.

Here is a word for word breakdown:

and not lead us into temptation (trial or test)

καὶ μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν,

Now at the time when this change was made, scholars were making two points: they were pointing to another short book in the Bible, James’ letter, in which James makes this point:

Yet no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself tempts no one. But each one is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desires. Then when desire conceives, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is full grown, it gives birth to death. James 1:3-5

and these scholars were essentially saying “surely Jesus didn’t mean we should ask God not to lead us into temptation when He wouldn’t anyway?

Of course James is talking about the post-sin situation, after you’ve been tempted and then given in to the temptation, when of course you shouldn’t be blaming God for making you sin; you were completely responsible for what you yourself did.

So this is essentially an invalid argument; especially when one bears in mind that Matthew 4:1 says, “Then the Jesus was led up into the desert by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil.”

Τότε ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἀνήχθη εἰς τὴν ἔρημον ὑπὸ τοῦ πνεύματος πειρασθῆναι ὑπὸ τοῦ διαβόλου.

The salient point here is that it is the same Greek word that Matthew uses, meaning “tempted”; the meaning is quite clear here, God intended for Jesus to go to the desert, the Holy Spirit led Him there, where He would be tempted, for this was God’s will ultimately so that Jesus could live a fully human life, being tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin, and could then die as a perfect, innocent sacrifice for sin.

Interestingly, the devil, despite the fact that he was himself disobeying God, and in addition sinning grievously by tempting God as well, in fact, was actually part of God’s plan all along, in mockery of all his evil intentions.

So why “save us from the time of trial”?

Anyhow the liberal scholars’ claim was that Jesus was not talking about being tempted to sin, but that Jesus was thinking here about the second coming and the ‘time of trial’ that happens before the second coming, the ‘great tribulation’. Don’t quote me on this, but as far as I can tell the more liberal scholars in the 1970s were following their hero Albert Schweitzer the slightly deluded 19th century German father of liberal theology in believing that Jesus thought he would be returning in glory within a generation of his death, resurrection, and ascension.

Now, never mind that Jesus himself contradicted this, “But as for that day and hour no one knows it—not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son —except the Father alone.” These smart scholars apparently knew better than the gospel writers and Jesus Himself what He meant¹!

Most of those theologians are retired now, at least from their professorships, in fact, probably most of them have already retired from this mortal coil. They already have their reward, then.

So what does “generation” mean?

But they have to have been wrong about “this generation”; because when Jesus said, “Amen, I tell you that this generation will not pass away, before all this comes to pass. Heaven and Earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away,” there are at least two possibilities as to what the Lord meant.

And this is the Greek for that passage by the way:

ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι οὐ μὴ παρέλθῃ ἡ γενεὰ αὕτη ἕως ἂν πάντα ταῦτα γένηται. Ὁ οὐρανὸς καὶ ἡ γῆ παρελεύσεται, οἱ δὲ λόγοι μου οὐ μὴ παρέλθωσιν.

The Greek word γενεὰ translated generation has a wider meaning in Greek than the English word generation; it can also mean race, or national family, I believe it encompasses those who are related as a racial or ethnic family.

My (perhaps eclectic) theory

So my theory is that by γενεὰ Jesus means that the Jewish people will not pass away before “all this” happens. This meant that Hitler’s efforts to destroy the Jews from the face of the earth were doomed from the start: this race of people will be here on earth until “all this” happens, and afterwards.

And what is “all this” by the way? Well, in the context Jesus is talking about His return in glory on the clouds, after which the new creation begins in which the righteous will be at home, and “all this” is the series of trials and tribulations that are to happen before his return².

Incidentally, in the scripture Jesus says that no one knows when that day or hour will be, but the plain and simple truth is, none of us have more than one generation to get ready for Jesus’ return. The generation in which we live. If we should die first, then when Jesus returns on the clouds we will certainly awaken, either to everlasting glory or to everlasting condemnation and contempt, depending on whether we have lived our lives in faithfulness to Jesus, or squandered the opportunities God has given us.

The other possible meaning of ‘generation’, though, is that the generation that starts seeing these things happen will not pass away before they happen. This third meaning may be the right one, I do not know.

Please come back, Lord Jesus! Please come back!

Of course, as Christians we are praying for Jesus to return, in fact, to come back quickly, as it says at the end of Revelation “Maranatha”, Lord come back quickly! so indirectly we are praying for the things that will happen before this; which of course kind of contradicts the “save us from the time of trial” interpretation. I myself would like Jesus to return and save us, even if we have to go through those hard times just before! Yes, if God decrees that we should pass through those times of trial that will happen before Jesus returns so be it! What joy it will be to see His second coming! It will make up for anything we have had to suffer beforehand - in any case all our times on this earth, shuffling along in this mortal coil, are times of trial, that we must pass through, but when we see Jesus face to face, all of this will be forgotten.

And all of this is true.

But in the Lord’s prayer, anyway, this is not what Jesus is talking about.

Tertullian - an early church father

Tertullian was one of the earliest commentators on the Lord’s prayer, and writing in Latin in his De Oratione he explained it this way: “lead us not into temptation, that is to say, do not allow us to be led” (ne nos inducas in temptationem, id est, ne nos patiaris induci).

Tertullian was not talking about the period of trial before Jesus returned. He was certainly talking about daily temptations to sin.

That is what “Lead us not into temptation” means.

‘Save us from the time of trial’ is at least a paraphrase, at worst a mistranslation

The thing is, nowhere in the text is the word “save” to be found, or the word, “time.” The most that could be said for “save us from the time of trial” is that it is an incomprehensible paraphrase, to most people, except to those already familiar with the prior translation, “Lead us not into temptation,” who will generally interpret it to mean the same.

So in my opinion the Anglican communion should drop that outdated seventies phraseology from the prayer book entirely and use a translation something like this instead:

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your Name,

your kingdom come,

your will be done,

on earth as in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

Forgive us our sins

as we forgive those

who sin against us.

Lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil.

For the kingdom, the power,

and the glory are yours,

now and for ever. Amen.

A note on Pope Francis’ translation

I read somewhere, by the way, that Pope Francis has translated it, “Do not let us be led into temptation,” or somesuch, for the latest Roman Catholic liturgy; this may be an acceptable translation of the Latin, I don’t know, but not of the Greek, at least in my opinion.

The Pope’s translation may be theologically more acceptable, but do you know, I would rather the Bible simply be translated honestly, as much word for word as possible, rather than trying to iron out the kinks in it³. How do we know that in God’s plan, what seems to us to be a problem or an inconsistency, is not just something we simply don’t understand…. yet?

God knows the answers to all these questions.

We don’t have to know everything.

<Sigh>

We human beings can be so arrogant.

God have mercy on us.

A note about the image: I wanted to have an image of a white guy, humbly praying, just because there were so many images of black guys and women humbly praying but not one image of a white guy. Sorry, but this is racism too, people. Also I noted that there were no Asians in the images of people praying, nor Indians, indigenous Australians, Maori, Pacific Islanders, Russians, Ukrainians, etc etc. Where does unsplash get their images from? Google? It is a shame that these racist manipulators have made us so much more aware of race, when most of us, I think, would rather not even notice it. So this image is, instead, a jar of clay, 2 Corinthians 4:7 "But we have this treasure inside jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us."

1. Ironically, these theologians were saying that Jesus was talking about one of two things they didn’t actually believe were real: sin, or the second coming.

As he was sitting on the Mount of Olives, his disciples came to him privately and said, “Tell us, when will these thingshappen? And what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” Jesus answered them, “Watch out that no one misleads you. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will mislead many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. Make sure that you are not alarmed, for this must happen, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise up in arms against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these things are the beginning of birth pains.

“Then they will hand you over to be persecuted and will kill you. You will be hated by all the nations because of my name. Then many will be led into sin, and they will betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will appear and deceive many, and because lawlessness will increase so much, the love of many will grow cold. But the person who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole inhabited earth as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.

“So when you see the abomination of desolation—spoken about by Daniel the prophet—standing in the holy place” (let the reader understand), “then those in Judea must flee to the mountains. The one on the roof must not come down to take anything out of his house, and the one in the field must not turn back to get his cloak. Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing their babies in those days! Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a Sabbath. For then there will be great suffering unlike anything that has happened from the beginning of the world until now, or ever will happen. And if those days had not been cut short, no one would be saved. But for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short. Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There he is!’ do not believe him. For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. Remember, I have told you ahead of time. So then, if someone says to you, ‘Look, he is in the wilderness,’ do not go out, or ‘Look, he is in the inner rooms,’ do not believe him. For just like the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so the coming of the Son of Man will be. Wherever the corpse is, there the vultureswill gather.

“Immediately after the suffering of those days, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of heaven will be shaken. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man arriving on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet blast, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

“Learn this parable from the fig tree: Whenever its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also you, when you see all these things, know that he is near, right at the door. I tell you the truth, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

“But as for that day and hour no one knows it—not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son —except the Father alone. For just like the days of Noah were, so the coming of the Son of Man will be. For in those days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark. And they knew nothing until the flood came and took them all away. It will be the same at the coming of the Son of Man. Then there will be two men in the field; one will be taken and one left. There will be two women grinding grain with a mill; one will be taken and one left.

“Therefore stay alert, because you do not know on what dayyour Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have been alert and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

2.

3. Anyway, who is the more important, James the author of the epistle, or Jesus? Wouldn’t we rather give priority to the words and theological opinions of the author of our faith?