Friday, November 19, 2010

The Lord's Prayer is 'fully Jewish, says theologian'

The Lord's Prayer is utterly, totally, fully Jewish - there's nothing in it that is particularly Christian," an American theologian argues in a new book, reports The Jerusalem Post.

In traditional Christian thinking, the Our Father is seen as establishing a relationship between the individual petitioner and God, but former priest John Dominic Crossan takes a different view in his book released last week, The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of the Lord's Prayer, and in recent media interviews.

Within the context of Judaism in the 1st century CE, the term "Father," or "Abba" in Aramaic, would connote a householder who must provide equally for all members of his family, according to Crossan.

In that sense, God is "The Big Householder in the Sky" who exercises "distributive justice" and who would be appalled by the huge discrepancy between rich and poor, Crossan argues.

That concept "reflects the radical vision of justice that is the core of Israel's biblical tradition," Crossan writes.

"The Lord's Prayer comes from the heart of Judaism to the lips of Christianity."

There is "a huge discrepancy between what most people think Christianity is really about and what Jesus thinks Christianity is really about," Crossan said in an interview with the Religion News Service.
SIC: CTH/AUS