Re: virus: Paul and James

Eric Boyd (6ceb3@qlink.queensu.ca)
Thu, 25 Mar 1999 19:39:17 -0500

Hi,

Eva-Lise Carlstrom <eva-lise@efn.org> writes: <<
The King James has "debts" in the prayer itself, but "trespasses" in the next passage. Of course, the Lord's Prayer as commonly used is not in the Bible in precisely that form, and its context indicates that Jesus was presenting it as an example of how one might daily pray, an illustration of the kind of personal, direct, common-language prayer he advocated, as opposed to rote ritual precisely like what it has become.
>>

What an interesting point. You haven't solved the mystery, of course, but you have given me some food for thought. For instance, what if it's the case that the Lord's prayer has trespasses in *no* current or past version; i.e. that somebody adapted the words, in the sense of a common-language prayer, but it later became so ritualized -- what does this indicate about (a) America's (and Canada's) evolving attitude to the bible and (b) memetics in general?

ERiC