October 27, 2013 – Catechism 2759 – 2764

I wonder if there is a verse more diversly translated in the different Bible translations than this one.  Matthew 6:13.  http://biblehub.com/matthew/6-13.htm  How is it that some translations just add a whole other phrase to the end of the prayer taught be Jesus.  I don’t know if I have written about it before, but there is nothing wrong with the doxology, it is beautiful, and has been used from the very beginning in the liturgy of the Catholic Mass, but it isn’t Biblical.  It is humorous that those groups that want to use the Bible as the sole source for all we believe in choose to use a translation of the Bible that adds line from Catholic liturgy, not actual Scripture.  Somewhere along the line, some scribe added this line from the liturgy when copying the text.

This is from the end of the web page.  “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen—If any reliance is to be placed on external evidence, this doxology, we think, can hardly be considered part of the original text. It is wanting in all the most ancient manuscripts; it is wanting in the Old Latin version and in the Vulgate: the former mounting up to about the middle of the second century, and the latter being a revision of it in the fourth century by Jerome, a most reverential and conservative as well as able and impartial critic. As might be expected from this, it is passed by in silence by the earliest Latin fathers; but even the Greek commentators, when expounding this prayer, pass by the doxology. On the other hand, it is found in a majority of manuscripts, though not the oldest; it is found in all the Syriac versions, even the Peschito—dating probably as early as the second century—although this version lacks the "Amen," which the doxology, if genuine, could hardly have wanted; it is found in the Sahidic or Thebaic version made for the Christians of Upper Egypt, possibly as early as the Old Latin; and it is found in perhaps most of the later versions. On a review of the evidence, the strong probability, we think, is that it was no part of the original text.” From Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Commentary, not a Catholic commentary.