Ever the innovator, Pope Francis suggested during a television interview on Wednesday an update the Lord’s Prayer, the “Our Father” given by Christ to his Apostles. The pontiff rejects the common translation of the final verse, “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” as a poor translation because it implies that God rather than Satan leads people into temptation.
“A father doesn’t do that,” insists Pope Francis. “He helps you get up right away. What induces into temptation is Satan.” Francis suggests rewriting the final verse to read, “Do not let us fall into temptation” to better explain the role of Satan as tempter. But as Spencer Klavan, lecturer in Ancient Greek at Oxford University, points out, this translation neglects the original text.
While peirasmos, the word for “temptation” in Ancient Greek, may be open to alternate interpretations, who precisely does the leading is not. Peirasmos connotes not only “temptation” but also “trial” and “testing,” as in “to test one’s mettle.” It is in all of these senses, two paragraphs before St. Matthew relates the prayer, that Jesus is “led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be [tempted/tested] by the Devil.” In both cases, while the Devil does the tempting, God leads the way to the trial.
[contentcards url=”http://www.dailywire.com/news/24497/pope-francis-wants-update-lords-prayer-michael-j-knowles” target=”_blank”]