In 2019 French- and Italian-speaking Catholics joined their Spanish brethren in their wording of the sixth petition of the Lord's Prayer. Their missals now read (here in English): ‘Do not let us fall/give into temptation’. This followed Pope Francis's statement in December 2017, that ‘temptation’ is not a good translation: ‘It is not [God] that pushes me into temptation and then sees how I fall. A father does not do this. A father quickly helps those who are provoked into Satan's temptation’ (p. 203). When Black carefully analyses the troublesome peirasmos, he finds that temptation may not be the central issue, when God sometimes uses trials to determine loyalty; that the great apocalyptic testing which brings travail to all is part of the final progress of the kingdom; and that the devil's temptations are probably not in view here (pp. 205–7). Perhaps the foreseeable ordeal of drawing these worthy thoughts together in a single word or phrase is why the German Catholic Bishops have decided not to make the Pope's change after all.
The centuries of reciting, studying, and meditating on the Lord's Prayer make these few verses of two Gospels of immense interest to the churches. The genius of Black's commentary on the Lord's Prayer is the thoroughgoing exegesis of the complexities which his subject contains. So, our believing author (p. xxiii) approaches his subject with historical-critical tools, producing a commentary of interest to the churches’ scholars, teachers, and preachers (p. xxii). To this end it is pleasing to see some direction offered: the Prodigal Son, for example, described as a distinctively Lucan commentary on the Prayer (p. 79). Black is loathe to settle on a single reading of the Prayer's petitions, especially since facile answers to the thorny questions the Greek presents (and its likely Aramaic foundation, p. 44) are in fact unhelpful.
Two background chapters precede those on individual phrases of the Lord's Prayer: The Religious World of the Lord's Prayer (which covers the Greco-Roman, Hebrew Bible, and Second Temple evidence) and Prayer in the Gospels (which begins with Mark and John before Matthew and Luke). The petitions of the Prayer are dealt with in a chapter each. In addition to his superior exegetical work, Black includes some reflections in a pastoral style at the end of each chapter; some appear out of place, but all are designed to assist preachers. We can be grateful that the historical-critical analysis is searching and thorough, even for terms of legendary difficulty such as epiousios and tois opheiletais. Final chapters are devoted to the doxology with its long, but not likely primitive, history and the ‘pastoral coda’ to apply insights to various contemporary audiences.
Black accords pride of place to neither version found in the Gospels (p. 49), even if he comes down saying Luke's length is the oldest recorded form (p. 48); he only affirms that Luke's version may be closer to Q than Matthew's (p. 46). Mercifully, he does not put forward a primitive pre-Gospel wording of his own; his exegetical attention throughout is on the wording of canonical texts (p. 49). But he is decidedly pessimistic about the evangelists’ transmission of the words of Jesus himself: ‘That oral form is beyond recovery’ (p. 45). Some deeper discussion of orality and transmission would have been welcome in this volume. For example, Chapter Two on ‘Prayer in the Gospels’ could have been better shaped as Prayer in the New Testament, showing how the Gospels can be situated between Paul and the later New Testament and first-century writings. Further, the possible parallels of kingdom/will and temptation/evil might have presented opportunity for uncovering a preserved orality which Luke does not have.
There is also much more work to be done in a volume such as this on the reception of the Lord's Prayer, especially in the earliest centuries’ writings. For example, he mentions and dismisses the Eucharistic reading of ‘bread’ as the primary referent from which eucharistic readings emerged (p. 149). But how we might reconcile the exclusion of eucharistic readings (p. 149) with the non-privatism of the Prayer itself (p. 78) is not easy to see from Black's solutions. Similarly, there is little discussion about the ways the Prayer has been appropriated by artists, musicians, and popular authors. Perhaps Black arrives at the positions already reflected in the reception, but the reader may not be aware how the modern author situates himself within the tradition of praying.
Throughout this volume there is a welcome variety of interpreters’ views presented when those are considered helpful to Black's historical-critical analysis; there is also a ‘Conspectus of Interpretation’ in an appendix. Of course, Black gives pride of place to Origen, Luther, and Jeremias (p. 49). But among the ancient authors Black draws on, three from North Africa were roughly contemporary: Tertullian, Cyprian, and Origen. Well might we ask what precipitated such revealing and revered treatment of the Lord's Prayer at that time. Certainly, the cosmologies of biblical demiurgists were perceived as threatening the Christian positivity about the Father's interest and involvement in his noble creation. From this, could we say that the Lord's Prayer receives close scrutiny when a prevailing orthodoxy is threatened? What might that say about the task Black set himself, and the people and times he wrote for?
Almost every year of late, the secularising Left in some countries has been moving to scrap public recitation of the Lord's Prayer. In the name of inclusivity, some progressive Christian and Jewish religious leaders as well as non-religionists have voiced an objection to the Prayer's appearance in advertising, cinema, and parliament. Black's commentary may not only be the next stage in the Interpretation series, but it might also signal the continuing decline of religious literacy and tolerance in the West. If that is the case, Black's commentary shows us how the simplest, most beautiful and familiar prayer which Jesus taught is an offering to God which every Christian ought freely and joyfully to make.
