Feb 22, 2018
Last in a series by Assistant Pastor Philip Lawton
Seventh Day Baptist Church of Shiloh, NJ
Check out Phil’s blog at contemplatingkenosis.blogspot.com
I want to do a little exercise. I want you to get out your personal Bible and turn to Matthew 6:13. Now read it. Those of you reading KJV will not notice anything out of the ordinary. If you have NASB you may notice a section in brackets. If you are reading NIV or ESV you may notice that part of what you expect to be there has been moved to the footnotes.
At this point I imagine a great number of you are confused. You thought that the word of God was the Word of God. You read that passage in Revelation about not changing anything
in scripture and now you think that this is exactly what some publishers and translators have done. There may be some of you that see this as yet another confirmation of the superiority of KJV 1611. I’m going to be honest with you. I don’t think that Jesus ever said the second half of Matthew 6:13.
I want to say here that this final entry in the series will be a little history and Greek heavy. Because of that I am going to break my protocol and not bury the lead. (Yes, you read that right. I intentionally leave my point till the end.) Just because Jesus didn’t say it, doesn’t make it false. It is God’s kingdom. He does have the power. And He does deserve all the glory. This is a fitting benediction to the prayer taught us by Jesus the Messiah.
A King’s Coin and a Shepherd’s Stone
Many of you probably know that the books of the Bible were originally written in Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. These texts were copied and recopied over the years. Around the time of the Reformation, the printing press was invented. This, combined with the Protestant leanings towards the priesthood of all believers, meant that in the late Middle Ages the Bible began being widely distributed in common languages.
What was remarkable about these scrolls was that some of them were older than any previously found texts.
This desire to have the Bible in the common language started in Germany with the German reformers, but soon spread to England. In 1611, King James I sponsored a translation of the Bible into English. There had been English versions before this, but he authorized this one and it became the standard of English translation for centuries.
In 1946, in Judea, a shepherd went searching for a lost sheep. (Perhaps he left the other 99.) He discovered a cave and out of curiosity he threw a stone into it. He was surprised to hear the sound of a breaking pot. What he discovered came to be known as “The Dead Sea Scrolls.” They were a collection of ancient manuscripts of the Bible in Greek. What was remarkable about these scrolls was that some of them were older than any previously found texts. This means that they predated the texts used to create all versions of the Bible up to that point, even the KJV.
Clerical Errors
I do a lot of writing. When I was teaching I did a lot of reading. Sometimes I make typos. Sometimes I can’t make out what someone has written. These are things common to humanity. We are not perfect. Where problems with this arise is when we think about the Word of God. We often have this thought that the Bible was transcribed word for word. Even if that were true for every single ancient manuscript in Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic, that cannot be true for translations into English.
What was discovered with the Dead Sea Scrolls was that there were a few additions to the manuscripts from which King James had translated. One of those additions was in Matthew 6:13. The oldest manuscripts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls do not have “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.” What this means is that somewhere along the line a monk, or several, added those lines to the text. And that got copied — over, and over, and over, and over again.
The oldest manuscripts found among the
Dead Sea Scrolls do not have
“For thine is the kingdom, and the power,
and the glory forever. Amen.”
So why would a monk add this to the text? Well the best reason would be that, at the time of copying, they were already saying this as a prayer. The monks had daily prayers and at some point this benediction was added to the prayer taught to us by Jesus. The monk, knowing the prayer, added these lines to the end of it.
Just to reassure you, that kind of thing did not happen very often. Most of the clerical errors in the Bible come down to someone having trouble reading handwriting. In Greek shorthand, there is only one letter difference between Jesus and Christ. You can see how someone might put one over the other.
God is Greater than Our Mistakes
Now some of you are sitting there thinking that I just told you that you cannot trust your own Bible. Hear me. You can trust the Bible you have in front of you. It is the Word of God. It is as true now as it was before you started reading this. Nothing about the faithfulness of God has changed. Nothing about the sovereignty of God has changed. Only your understanding has changed.
I believe in a God who is bigger than my mistakes. I believe in a God who works good in all things. I believe in a God who knows where snow and hail are stored. I believe in a God I cannot hide from.
God is not going to let the clerical errors of the past change His goodness, or mercy, or grace, or justice, or love. God is the same today, yesterday, and forever. What’s more the Word of God is the person of Christ Jesus. If we really want to know who God is, if we really want to know what it means to be a Christian, then we can look to Jesus.
I called this entry “Benediction” because that is what this part is. It is a benediction. It is the human response to the prayer that Jesus taught us. Should we pray it? Of course! It is true. And it is truer now than ever before. The point of this entire series was to point us back to God. It was to show us that we need to think about what we pray. It was to help us understand our place in light of who God is. If we focus on anything other than God then we have lost the plot. It is God’s Kingdom, not ours. God has the power, not us. And only God deserves the glory.
May you continue to submit to
the power and kingdom of God.
May you give God all the glory.
May you understand that Jesus is the Word of God.
And may God continue to work good in all things.
Amen!
