The Lord`s Prayer

[Ian]

I`m sure this question has been posed before but locating it and its answers appears to be beyond the search engine`s abilities!:

In the Lord`s Prayer why does Jesus exhort us to pray that (by implication from the grammar) God does not lead us into temptation?
Would not "do not allow us to be lead into temptation" be more the supplicant`s hope? "

[steve]

I see this couplet:

Do not lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from the evil one

not as two petitions but as one. It presupposes that God does lead us into testing (temptation) for our good and for His purposes (just as the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness "to be tempted by the devil." So we are to be tested as well.
However, we are praying that we will not merely be led into the place of testing but that we will also be delivered from failing the tests. I consider this to be an example of that idiom that I have elsewhere called a "limited negative"—one in which a statement that appears to be an absolute negative is limited by a second clause, so that the couplet is read to mean:

Do not [merely] lead us into temptation,
But [also] deliver us from the evil one

There was another thread about this idiom. It can be seen here:
http://theos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f= ... d+negative

[Ian]

Thank you Steve. It would explain an awful lot. And I notice that the verse I brought up is in your list of "probable instances". But forgive me for saying this: is it any wonder that the Bible can exasperate the modern seeker who is subconciously expecting an International Handbook of Truth (an assumption perhaps stemming from being told that the Bible is "the word of God"), when in fact what he is reading are words, 100% true though they may be, aimed directly at certain people at a certain period in time, at people who are able effortlessly to understand their cultural context. I have had to unlearn this assumption over and over again.

[steve]

This is a valid observation. It helps a great deal when one begins to take the Bible for what it is—not a magic book that speaks equally clearly to every culture—but a collection of books produced in the milieu of two or three ancient cultures, which, in order to become accessible to other times and cultures, have to be translated, not only in its words (from Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic) but also in its idiom. This realization both removes much confusion and inspires study.